Thousands of revellers endure 3-hour wait amid bus chaos at Edinburgh dance festival

Organisers of a city music festival have been forced to apologise after thousands of revellers were forced to wait for more than three hours due to a lack of buses.

Spectators at a music festival.

FLY Open Air Festival officials apologised after receiving an online backlash from attendees about the poorly organised transportation services to the city centre from Hopetoun House on Saturday evening.

The dance music festival took place over the weekend and offered shuttle buses from Waterloo Place, near Waverley station, to the grounds of the stately home in South Queensferry. Pre-paid bus tickets were made available to the 7,000 festival-goers and shuttles were promised to run every ten minutes from nine o’clock on Saturday.

Police officers on site reportedly informed the rowdy crowds that only seven of the 27 expected buses were booked as a way to cut costs.

However, festival officials have said that it was not a funding issue and that they were let down by the bus companies on the night.

A 22-year-old woman with a physical disability said she left the grounds early to allow for longer bus queues, but ended up in A&E after she collapsed from being trapped in the middle of the “unorganised and manic crowds”.

She said: “The queue was not stewarded or policed other than one lone steward about half way through whilst the rowdy crowd of intoxicated 20-year-olds grew bigger, the number of busses seemed to decline and become further and further apart in time.

“I have a [non visible] physical disability and was crushed in the front middle section after standing and waiting for over three hours for a bus, being suffocated in the crowd and thrown about. My hips, where my disability is, were trapped and I had a panic 
attack.

“The stewards and police ‘letting’ people onto the bus weren’t even filling the buses, which incited mass hysteria and resulted in people at the back pushing forward to try to get on.

The festival’s website accessibility section welcomes disabled guests but the 22-year-old rejected this claim and called the festival “ableist”.

She said: “I am fully willing to help ensure this isn’t going to occur again so no one else has to endure what I have been through and make the festival accessible for all people. I would not have attended if it was made clear to me beforehand that this was an ableist festival.”

The FLY Festival tweeted an apology for the delays to services on Saturday night and offered 25 per cent off taxi services to get people to the grounds. They also assured that the problems would be fixed for the following day, when 6000 people were due to attend.

Tom Ketley, head of FLY Events said: “We’d like to apologise to everyone who had difficulty getting home from Hopetoun House on Saturday night. Due to an issue with our agreed bus supplier, there was a shortage of transport at the end of the night. We are currently investigating the issue with the bus company. Full refunds for bus tickets will be given to those affected on Saturday.

“To rectify the situation before Sunday’s event, we sourced buses from companies all over the country and festival goers with bus tickets were transported from the site within 40 minutes of the festival ending on Sunday night.”

The next FLY Open Air Festival will take place in Princes Street Gardens in September.

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