Digital Dreams Music Festival

Digital Dreams 2015 Review
Me and my buddies were dying to check out a live Martin Garrix set after missing him the opening weekend at Omnia in Las Vegas this past March. So we bought a day 2 single day pass ($ 99 plus tax and services fees totalling just under $ 130) to really see him, Zedd, Adventure Club and Sander Van Doorn. It’s amazing that Toronto now has huge outdoor summer electronic festivals with top notch worlds deejays all performing. 10+ years ago when I first started listening to electronic, the closest thing was probably an event at the Docks or Labour of Love at the Guv.
It was really disorganized this year, day 1 was cancelled because of the weather and I spoke to a guy that worked there and he said it wasn’t the rain but the heavy gusting winds that was blowing parts of the stage over leading to day 1 being cancelled. You can’t blame the weather on the organizers of the event. Day 2 was suppose to start at 2 pm and end at 11 pm. Instead they changed it last minute to a start time of 4 pm and it was only extended to 11:30 pm. So people who were raging to go from day 1 were shorted 1.5 hours of music and led to massive lineups to get in for day 2. I got there at exactly 4 pm and it took me 2.5 hrs to get in. After waiting 1 hour in line. I tried to scan my wristband and it didn’t go red or green, so essentially they sent me a dead wristband and told me to go to the customer box office. Waited in line and got it resolved with a new wristband that worked and it was their fault in 30 minutes. Now I had to wait in line again for their mistake which resulted being in line for another hour. So essentially I was only able to catch Adventure Club’s, Martin Garrix and Zedd’s full sets at the Dreams stage.
Venue: Ontario Place was a great venue for this event, the weather was still raining day 2 but something so amazing about dancing to electronic music in the rain and you’re right by Lake Ontario, perfect location and size to accommodate three stages for all the deejays performing. A lot of room to dance too.
Alcohol/​Food Vendors: I didn’t really try any food but I was drinking a lot of vodka and redbull which was something like $ 11 or $ 12. All payments were made from your wristband which you would preload with money and it was a cashless system. It went pretty flawless.
Performers: Adventure Club was pretty good, Martin Garrix was off that day after watching a lot of his sets online. Zedd imo killed it, he has so many popular hits, didn’t matter if you are really into the electronic scene, most people knew the lyrics to nearly all his songs and were singing along and bouncing up and down.
Production: Stage, visuals, fireworks and sound were okay. Not as good as say EDC Las Vegas, UMF or Tomorrowland but better than the smaller festivals.
Overall, I think the 2015 Digital Dreams festival experience was a one off hence the two stars and I’m sure future years will be better.