A few months ago, my friends and I bombarded each other with texts, making sure that we all secured our pre-sale tickets before they sold out. A few were skeptical to buy tickets in the first place after hearing the unfortunate news - Mysteryland “teamed up” with a few new partners. This shouldn’t be a bad thing, but it really really was. These new partners thought it was a good idea to change things up a little bit, and by a little bit I mean go from last years lineup riddled with face-melting EDM and mold it into a “diverse” blend that could appeal to a larger demographic. They played it smart though, releasing the pre-sale before dropping a line up. With last year hosting ODESZA, Skrillix, Bassnectar, The Chainsmokers, Zeds Dead, Griz, Gramatik, Tchami, and a slew of other ridiculously dope artists, we were not taking our chances.
The line-up was released a short time after we purchased our tickets, leaving some of my friends with a bad taste in their mouths. They broke my heart and sold their tickets, but I just couldn’t do it. There were sixteen artists on that list that I was interested in seeing, but one that put the icing on the festival cake. One of my favorite humans on this planet was gracing Mysteryland with his presence and I was so obnoxiously excited that I couldn’t shut up about.
This time last week I was happily sitting on my friend’s couch in Boston when he told me that some random guy on reddit was convinced that Mysteryland USA was canceled because of social media inactivity. I brushed it off because If I believed everything I heard on reddit, my head would explode. It bothered me for a while, as I was almost more excited for Mysteryland as I was for the decent list of festivals I’m attending this year - but I refused to believe it.
Three days later I received an email stating that Mysteryland was cancelled due to “unforeseeable circumstances,” and that I would be refunded shortly. Word on the street is that those unforeseeable circumstances were probably low ticket sales.
So to the organizers of Mysteryland, whoever you are - you cannot simply take a good thing and change it overnight. Clearly you are out of touch with your fan base, and you let a lot of us down. Because of you I will no longer get to have my life changed by Porter Robinson. I have two words for you - you suck.
