Photo Credit: Daniel Zetterstrom
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What is it about Coachella that makes it so popular? How can a 90,000+ person festival sell out two weekends before they even announce the lineup? After attending the past two weekends the answer is actually pretty obvious: the music festival experience at Coachella is so good that anyone that ever goes will want to come back immediately. Let’s dive a little deeper into what it is that makes this experience so incredible.
Coachella’s first advantage is its location. The festival is held in Indio, California on the Empire Polo grounds. The weather this time of year normally tops out around 90-97 and has lows of 65-70. This is Southern California so there is no humidity and even at it’s hottest you only deal with about 3 hours where you even feel the weather. This leaves the rest of the time to be absolutely perfect. Combine this with the fact that the entire venue is on grass, and you have yourself a perfect location for a festival.
Coachella’s real secret to creating the perfect festival experience is in the music viewing experience. Each of the stages has large LED screens and speaker towers that go all the way back to the crowd. This means that you can be 1,000 yards from the stage and still see and hear perfectly. Therefore, you and your friends have as much dancing room as you want and you never feel crowded. It’s easy to get from one stage to the next with a crowd thats so spread out. I can’t talk about Coachella stages without mentioning the Do Lab stage which gives the crowd non stop dancing and good vibes from noon-1:30am. You literally watch 12-15 different groups in your 13 hour Coachella day.
The music viewing experience is also better than anywhere else, because the artists are given a bigger budget to bring in special guests and make their artistic vision come to life. Artists also know that Coachella is their biggest publicized show of the year so they play their absolute best. A full weekend of every artist playing their best possible show is a breathtaking site to take in.
The final piece that makes Coachella such a joy to attend is their commitment to art. Coachella spends hundreds of thousands of dollars creating larger than life art installations. Each piece is beautiful during the day and that beauty is cranked up a notch at night as they all light up in a rainbow of colors. Coachella even lights up with sky with hundreds of LED balloons that are tethered to each other, as well as spotlights that dance across the skyline. All of this art turns the fairgrounds from a normal music festival into a glowing wonderland.
Coachella may be the most expensive of the mega festivals, but it also makes the best use of their money. The music viewing experience, the art, and the beautiful venue create the ultimate festival experience. If you are planning to go next year make sure to get your tickets when they go on sale. The secret is out. Coachella is the best US mega festival; they are in a true league of their own.