Also, in terms of sets I found Dash Berlin quite boring. Fortunately, Joris Voorn just killed it next door.. Joachim Garraud was also pretty good! Can't wait to d/l as many sets as possible from Miami..

how was ultra in terms of the sound clashing from various stages? for example if you were at one stage did you hear music coming from another stage during the breakdown of a track?

historically ultra has always failed in this department and im wondering if it was even worse this year because it was more compact.

The only clashing i noticed was the carl cox/asot stage blending with the UMF stage becAuse they were right opened next to each other. Just wished they had a sound barrier in between the two. You could hear the bass from the UMF stage while listening to ASOT 550 sets.

Yeah Gemini is correct there.

Overall I thought the whole experience was terrible. As I said last year I would never go again unless New Order reformed and played (which I never imagined would happen). I will say it might have been the smallest crowd New Order has ever played to and that certainly won't help the US chances of them touring much later this year. Of course they played at 6:30, before Miike Snow when logic says New Order should lead into Kraftwerk. Oh well.


The layout was awful. It was laid out as one long snake, not a circle or oblong. The main stage was hard to get to or around once it filled up. So many stages were on the other side past it that it made for a chore just to get to them. Awful, awful, awful. There were hundreds of portapotties in that corner of the park, but on the other side by the amphitheater there was just the single mens room.

The food/beer lines were very well done and went pretty quickly. I never waited more than 5 minutes for anything. $1 for a cup of ice was a bit much but whatever.

Security was extremely lax for me both days, where I had friends that couldnt bring in sunscreen (she was even VIP) and were heavily frisked. Weird.

The sound guys on the live stage had some major problems and M83 was only able to play 2 songs. Seriously. The band must have been so freaking pissed. It was unbelievable.

Also, i'm not sure how it was even possible but the average age probably dropped by 1.3 years. Or more, and the BRO factor increased quite a bit.

My friend in VIP had to pay for bottled water. WTF?

Some highlights

-- trying to find the Annie Mac stage (which was in the very corner past the main stage) and seeing the crowd for Afrojack. I have never seen a crowd and stage setup that ridiculous. Holy shit that was a lot of people. It looked amazing. I never made it over there for Tiesto or Avicii but I can't imagine how it must have looked. I did think the main stage was not loud enough for how far bad you had to be. I expected more sound.

-- New Order and Kraftwerk. Amazing.

-- Gesaffelstein was freaking awesome, and Jake Shears (from Scissor Sisters) was just in the crowd dancing. He was cool as hell.

-- Digitalism DJ set was even better than their live show.

-- 2ManyDJs rocked closing the live stage Saturday night, with the confetti and the fireworks going off a nice touch.

-- I really liked having the amphitheater as the live stage. There were always some seats open and it was a cool place to just chill out if you needed to.

Thankfully now I can truly say never again.

ps - EDC was passing out flyers afterwards and they were packets of daisy seeds with the EDC flyer on the front. Most original flyer i've seen, awesome.

This was my first UMF so I don't have the experience of all you veterans. Overall I really liked it and the experience was enjoyable enough for me to consider going next year.

Sound clashing was horrible. BOA Dome constantly clashing with main stage as was Cox/ASOT tent clashing with Ibiza/whatever-else-they-called-it-tent constantly... It was annoying during ASOT I must admit, but wasn't as bad because during the ASOT that tent was fucking banging and I love every minute of it.

Main state sound was weak if you were way in the back, close to med way it was excellent. Few more speaker around would definitely help there or louder and bass-ier.

Overall setup, hmm it's a tough cookie to sell. Even though the park is quite big. ok, big is not the word I would use, it's long and now wide enough so I understand why everything was laid out the way it was. I was thinking about it and I don't think there was a way to make it better. They even closed half the street to accommodate everything. Someone will complain because that's what we mostly do on the internets, I honestly think they did try their best to make it all fit for all 160k attending people.

ok, now onto music and people...
Where are all those fucking dubstep people came from? For god's sakes, for such a "new" genre people were pissing over themselves to see Gaylex. I mean there was a lady on a bathroom line who was around 50-55 years old and she couldn't wait to see him. She wasn't even on drugs. WTF! Thank god Cox was on that night, otherwise I would've gone back to the hotel super early on Friday.

I'm not really against dubstep, I just find Skrillex fans really annoying. After all I did enjoy Skream! and Benga sets and Pendulum almost made me come. At heart though I am a trance head and Sunday was the best day for me, I do enjoy some house and I do keep an open mind for the mainstream crap they sell nowadays.

I gotta go for now, it's taking me longer to write this review than I expected. I'll try to finish it another day or make few more posts down the line, but overall and outside of the Skrillex's crowd I really liked what they did with Ultra and I actually am looking forward to next year. Although I will go to one of the after parties next time around.

This was my first Ultra/WMC. I'm a trance guy but mainly checked out artists who I don't normally get to see. Would I go back to Miami next year? Hell yes, but I'd probably skip out on UMF, as there were way too many parties I wanted to see.

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the park is too small, maybe they should further limit the ticket sales? tripping over tree trunks, getting pushed by lil kids trying to walk thru, ugh...i knew i shouldnt have even attempted to go the 1 night that i did

I thought it absolutely sucked compared to last year.

It was easy to bounce from stage to stage last year, this year--not so much.

The damn park was just so constricting in terms of movement. Too many obstacles, pathways, trees, concrete structures. Bicentennial was ugly but for Ultra it was freakin' perfect.

The Carl Cox tent on Friday and Saturday was amazing. Visuals, artists, sound, placement. I was first row, far left of the stage on both Friday and Saturday and felt as if I had the best spot in the entire festival. That space right up to the fence on the first row was elevated slightly, so you could really see the crowd in its entirety from that vantage point, along with the visuals in the tent. Spectacular. I also had a great breeze and jaw-dropping view of a lot of the Miami skyline along Biscayne. But for ASOT 550, the tent was simply over-capacity. Last year, the tent had more ways to enter and exit; this year just one. I had my "spot" for Tritonal and Cosmic Gate, but when we left to take a bathroom break, it was done. A mob had descended upon ASOT 550 and there was no way in hell that we were going back in that place. AvB needs to throw his own ASOT party for next year, a la what SHM do currently. I got the feeling that a lot of the kids in there were there only for ASOT and didn't care about the rest of Ultra anyways.

The UMF Korea-Ibizia-whatever tent had some great lineups but man the sound in that thing sucked. And some of the artists were too big to be in that thing. Like Dirty South. And yeah, the sound clashing with the Cox tent...

Main stage = clusterfuck. Awesome visuals and I actually did like some of the sets though. But man, what a clusterfuck.

Didn't really spend much time at the other little stages, though I did check out Joachim Garraud at the BAO Dome. That was fun.

The live stage was perfect for what it was, and I saw A&B do the pre-Ultra party there. That show was better than any of the shows I saw at the actual festival, except for maybe Cox and Sven Vath. Anjunabeats really knows how to throw a great party. Stunning.

I forgot to pack my ticket and had to miss friday while I had the ticket overnighted to me for sat morning. That sucks cuz friday was probably the day i was looking most forward to. But I went to the CLR pool party instead and got my fix of good music anyway.

Sound clash between the carl cox/asot stage and the ibiza stage was terrible. Inside the cocoon stage wasn't so bad on sat. You couldn't hear much from the other stage. But on sunday it was terrible. If you stood at the back of the ASOT stage you could clearly hear the bass from both stages. The bass was turned up too much for Digweed and Beyer's set on Sun. It overpowered the rest of the music. I guess they might have done this so you would hear less of the ASOT stage. I still enjoyed it though. Their sets were banging!

I think they should have turned the main stage to be parallel with biscayne blvd and perpendicular to the sidewalk.

I don't know if I'd want to do Ultra again. The music was good but i mainly stuck to the cocoon stage and the ibiza stage. Set up was terrible, but I guess it was the best they could do with bayfront park. Crowd was what I expected--lots of bros and dumb bitches. I definitely had a good time, but next time I might just do the other parties instead.

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Last edited by trojans14 on Mar-28-2012 at 03:51

You should've just went to the Ibiza tent for Digweed and Beyer!

Those guys were amazing, had to have been better than Gareth and ATB!

But ya, I think I'm done with Ultra. It's just too big for these urban Miami parks. I do LOVE the festival atmosphere, but I think other festivals are better at the execution. Never been to EDC Las Vegas, but I hear it's done very well.

Even EDC Orlando was phenomenal, I thought, in terms of its execution. Small festival yes, but the layout and amount of open space was superb. This Ultra was just flat out too claustrophobic. They're already advertising for Ultra 2013. I'm curious as to whether it's Bayfront again. If it isn't, then where? Broward County? Just really interesting to see what they do. If it IS Bayfront, then how do they alleviate the issues they had this year? Or do they just ignore them?

I hope the EDC Orlando rumors are true for Novemeber. It's in my backyard and 18+. I had an absolute blast last year and just think if they open up the actual Citrus Bowl as the main stage??? Wow.

Last edited by ucforange on Mar-28-2012 at 03:50

Yeah I think Ultra is too big for Downtown Miami. Either sell less tickets or move to bigger space.

EDC Vegas definitely is set up better. They're in a huge ass speedway in the middle of the desert! If electro house and/or dubstep is your thing, you'd love EDC Vegas. But they only had only one stage for only one day for techno and trance. And that stage sucked cuz it was on gravel and got really dusty.

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