Booming in Belgium

Day 0:

The first set of photos show Matt and I traveling from JFK to the festival. The ticket packages included travel, so all we had to do was make it to JFK, then we hopped on a dedicated Tomorrowland plane, picked up our luggage on the other end, and were immediately shuttled from the airport to the festival grounds. We checked in and got assigned our camping spot at the gates, and they directed us to the second pre-built tent in the entire section; it was super close to the bathrooms, the exit to the actual festival grounds, the concessions, and the air mattress refill station. The tent was a two person tent, and they supplied us an air mattress (I think it was full sized), sleeping bags, a solar powered lantern to use at night, and a mirror. That day, we were able to go into the welcome area in Dreamville, where we got some food, bought some merch, and went to a welcome stage that played music for most of the night. Matt and I made friends with our tent neighbors, a guy and a girl from Canada named Remi and Julie. They were super dope (they are in the bottom of the one bar pick, facing the camera). There is a video of the welcome stage at the end.

Day 1:

Matt and I got up in time to make it to the gates of the actual festival ground right as they opened. The energy was palpable. We started off the day coming over the hill and seeing the massive scale of the mainstage and were able to get up really close to catch some of the Eric Prydz set. After that, we spent some time exploring the festival grounds, checking out all of the 18 stages (yes, 18 stages, which all played music from noon until midnight/1 AM each day) before heading to the Dream Island stage where we were right up front to catch Ben Bastion’s set (Matt had heard of him and wanted to check it out). From there, we went back to the mainstage to catch Diplo’s and Nervo’s sets (this was before I knew Diplo is a bad person, don’t come at me). From there, I believe we went to see Robin Schulz at the Desperados stage before heading back over to the main stage to see Avicii and Armen Van Buuren further up on the hill (sadly, I did not take any videos of Avicii, just a few photos during his set). After Armin, we went to the Mad Decent Stage where we saw DJ Snake and Diplo to end the night (yea, I liked Diplo’s trap shit back then, I said don’t come at me). Literally every set was incredible, Avicii was my favorite of the day.

Day 2:

After a sort of restful nights sleep, where people roamed the tent grounds yelling “Steve!” and “Allen!”, our air mattress slowly deflated, and our tent slowly got warmer as the sun rose, we arose for day two ready to do it all again. In the beginning part of the day, we didn’t have any artists that we were dying to see, so we went immediately to the ferris wheel that was behind the one stage. From there, you could see the entire festival grounds and the surrounding hills. After a couple of laps on the cloudrider, we headed to the Q-dance stage. For those who don’t know, Q-dance is an organizing company for some of the more high energy subgenres of EDM, mainly hardstyle (check out the videos to see what that subgenre is all about). It is super high energy with constant pounding bass. We planned on only staying for a set or so, but we loved it so much that we stayed for a few hours. The hype man for the sets was incredible too, he took the experience to the next level. We ended up seeing Mark with a K, Wasted Penguinz, and Wildstylez there. After that, we spent pretty much the rest of the day at the mainstage, where we were right up front for Above & Beyond, Romeo Blanco, and Kaskade, in that order. How crazy is it that Above & Beyond were an early afternoon set. This was when I was enamored with Kaskade, and we were in the second row back for his set, it was incredible. After Kaskade, we grabbed some food before heading further back up the hill to get a better view of the whole stage. We caught the very end of Netsky’s set here, before seeing Alesso’s dusk set, which then went into Hardwell’s set. We did not stick around to see the Tiesto b2b Hardwell set as we were not the biggest big room fans, which is all they were playing. The energy of day 2 was insane, but if I had to choose, Kaskade and Alesso were my favorite sets.

Day 3:

Like Day 2, we didn’t have an artist that we were dying to see until Krewella at 4pm at the mainstage. So we spent the majority of the morning just exploring the festival grounds a little bit more. We ended up in the Bakermat and Friends stage at the far side of the festival grounds from the mainstage, where we saw Dimmi and Klingande play some super chill sets with saxophone and everything. We then were right up front again at the mainstage for Krewella’s set, where at one point I threw Matt on my shoulders. Following Krewella, we briefly caught Skream’s set before heading back to the mainstage for Nicky Romero and Steve Angello. During Nicky Romero’s set, a small Japanese girl tapped me on the shoulder, and in some broken English, asked me if I would put her on my shoulders, so I absolutely did. She was like a twig compared to Matt. Steve Angello’s set was definitely my favorite of the day, he mixed beautifully. After his set, Matt and I again didn’t have any must sees for the rest of the festival so we bounced around. At this point, we had some extra food/drink tokens, so we decided to get some beers (the drinking age in Belgium is 18 whoop whoop). We had done the entire festival sober up to this point, so the Belgian beer HIT. It was so delicious and was actually pretty high percentage. I can’t remember the name of the brand at this point, but I remember looking it up after the festival and apparently it’s a low tier Belgian beer, similar to like a bud light. Either way, I liked it. The notable sets after this point were Markus Schulz and Dave Clark, with Dave Clark ending the festival for us. To completely cap the festival, we headed up the hill by the mainstage and watched the festival farewell video. There are some photos of our travels back to the US and the last photo is an absolute beauty of a selfie that Matt crushed at the main stage.

That’s it for Tomorrowland. I highly recommend going, it was a once in a lifetime experience. Definitely worth spending my entire saving’s at the time on it. Let me know what you thought; which photos and videos did you like?