"Extremely dehumanizing" — Coachella attendees face 12-hour waiting queues without bathroom access to get to their campsites

Coachella festival started on April 11, 2025, and will continue till April 20, 2025.

During the first day, reports came out on social media of long queues with no bathroom facilities, with festival goers reporting up to 12-hour waiting times, as mentioned by one TikTok user, here quoted via The Hollywood Reporter article on the matter:

“It’s almost 1 p.m. right now. We still haven’t even gone through security. It’s 100 degrees outside. People’s cars are overheating. They’re running out of gas. There are no bathrooms anywhere. People are literally using the bathroom behind bushes like animals, and they paid over $600 to be here. This whole experience has been so disappointing, and it’s been extremely dehumanizing. People are pissed.”

Others on social media echoed the sentiment, like the X post below:

Netizens were not the only ones to call out the festival this year. News Channel 3 website KESQ in an article, dubbed the traffic jam 'carmagaddon.'

Due to the long traffic lines, some festival attendees have resorted to semi chartered flights costing anywhere between $500 to $800 to arrive for the festival. Some attendees have started comparing the 2025 Coachella Festival to Fyre Festival, a notorious festival scam where attendees were left stranded on an island.

Coachella 2025: Sign of a bigger problem

The complaints around the 2025 edition of the festival come at a time when the festival is in a deeper crisis. The festival has been facing refusals by bands and acts to play on the stage and frustration by those who do play there. There have also been growing negativity over influencers taking over the festival instead of music lovers.

Both Rihanna and Kendrick Lamar reportedly turned down headliner sets for the 2025 edition of the festival, and the festival also reportedly sold less tickets in the last few editions, with both 2024 and 2025 editions having failed to sell out completely.

The transformation of the festival into a space for influencers began in 2015, when the unofficial Coachella adjacent festival, Revolve Festival, started being held by the Revolve brand. This was followed by other brands sending their sponsored influencers to subsequent editions of the main Coachella festival to bring the spotlight on their products.

Influencers soon started getting paid upwards of $2000 for Coachella related posts, making the festival a hotspot for influencers looking to increase their exposure and court brands willing to pay for the exposure that a large scale music festival provides.

The festival has also been criticised for its negative environmental effects, most notably by Massive Attack member Robert Del Naja, who spoke about the band's decision not to perform at Coachella in an exclusive interview with NME on December 17, 2024. Del Naja talked about the festival concerning his general opposition to Las Vegas and desert events that require flying, stating:

"We said no to Coachella for next year because again, we’ve been there once, and once was enough. It’s in Palm Springs. It’s a golf resort built on a desert, run on a sprinkler system, using public water supplies. Mental. If you want to see something that’s the most ludicrous bit of human behaviour – it’s right there."

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The festival and its lineup radial policy - non compete regulations used by festival promoters - have also caused problems for other festivals in the vicinity, with Resonate Suwanne pointing out the issue in 2024.

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