Hourslong lines. Water shortages. Angry mobs. And that was all before many even entered Vegandale, a traveling food and music festival that is expected to attract 100,000 people across eight cities in the United States and Canada this year.
Thousands of attendees — who paid anywhere from $15 for general admission to $90 for V.I.P. access — showed up at Citi Field in Queens on Saturday hoping to sample an array of vegan dishes, take in a performance by the musician GloRilla and mingle with their plant-based peers.
Instead, many of them struggled even to get in, citing bottlenecks at the entrance caused by too few metal detectors and a lengthy ticketing process.
“We were starving and cranky and miserable,” said Rocco Marrongelli, a graphic designer from Queens who waited in line for more than an hour before giving up and going home.
Those who eventually got in faced more misfortune: Despite the intense sunshine (the temperature rose to 84 degrees), water was hard to find and little to no seating or shade was provided, attendees said. Some restrooms ran out of toilet paper. Hand-washing stations ran out of water.
Many ticketholders expressed their frustrations on social media, comparing Vegandale to the Fyre Festival, the 2017 luxury music festival that stranded thousands of people on an island in disaster-relief tents with subpar food.
For all that ire — and a thread on Reddit encouraging attendees to report Vegandale to City Hall — plenty of attendees posted positively about the event online. A spokesman for the city’s department of consumer and worker protection said it has received only two complaints. The state attorney general’s office said it received two complaints.
Jenna Lindsay, Vegandale’s vice president of communications and entertainment, said her team was aware of the long lines. “We faced a few logistical challenges, which are part of working with a new venue,” she said. “It was our first year at Citi Field, but the overall experience was really positive.”
Hellenic Vincent De Paul, an events producer, held the first version of the festival in Toronto in 2015 with the goal of showcasing “the moral imperative of a world free from animal exploitation,” according to Vegandale’s website. It has since expanded to cities like London, Los Angeles and Miami, and has featured performances from high-profile musical guests like DJ Khaled and Saweetie.
Mr. Marrongelli said he and his wife arrived at 11:30 a.m. to find a sea of thousands of confused and dehydrated festivalgoers — and no signs of the event staff. “Some security did come out to offer water bottles, and those people just got attacked by the mob,” he said.
Ms. Lindsay said the backups at the entrance “came with the new venue and some unexpected last-minute requirements,” including making changes to metal detectors and putting up extra fencing.
But what frustrated Mr. Marrongelli and other festivalgoers who spoke to The New York Times was that Vegandale has had plenty of time to hone its operations. He said the event ran relatively smoothly when he attended two years ago, but it was also much smaller. “I don’t think they had the manpower to face the waves of vegans that were trying to crash those gates,” said Mr. Marrongelli, 46.
The festival has drawn criticism in recent years from some vegans. At the New York event in 2023, the headliner was Rick Ross, a rapper who owns several locations of the chicken restaurant chain Wingstop.
When Aida Mercado, who works in human resources and lives on Long Island, left a comment on Vegandale’s Instagram account expressing concern that last year’s festival was promoting an artist who supports animal cruelty, she said she was blocked. She is still blocked, according to screenshots she shared with The Times.
“I think they are just using veganism to make money,” said Ms. Mercado, 44.
Vegandale turned comments off on its Instagram account sometime during Saturday’s festival and has not turned them back on. Ms. Lindsay said that sometimes the organization chooses to do so “because it makes more sense.”
“Anybody who DMs us knows that if they have any feedback, they can come to us through our customer-service email,” she said.
At the Chicago Vegandale on June 23, a fight broke out during a Saweetie concert, causing what some reports called a stampede.
“It was horrific,” said Julieann Davis, the owner of the Vegan Cheese Lady, a vendor at the Chicago festival. She saw guests trampled, while others tried to hide behind her table. One group knocked over a still-hot grill in the rush to leave, she said.
Vegandale did not issue a statement after the incident. “The show went on afterward,” Ms. Lindsay said. “It was kind of a false alarm.”
Back in New York, Sanirena Denerville, a social-media manager from Brooklyn, gained entry on Saturday at 11:30 a.m. after waiting for an hour. In line, she heard that at least one person had passed out and was taken to the hospital. The New York Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Inside the venue, there were only a few stands selling water, she said, and they were hard to find. At several points, Ms. Denerville felt dizzy from dehydration. She couldn’t wash her hands after going to the bathroom because the stations had run out of water. The only shady patch of grass she could find was wet because the sprinklers had been turned on. She ate her vegan burger while sitting on concrete in the parking lot.
(Ms. Lindsay said that there were more than 200 washrooms with “sufficient” hand-washing stations in each stall, and that staff members and sponsors handed out water to customers in line and inside the event.)
Ms. Denerville was especially excited to try dishes like jackfruit empanadas from the roughly 200 vendors. “The vendors made up for it,” said Ms. Denerville, 30, who loved the food. “If it wasn’t for that, I would be saying I wouldn’t come back.”
But some vendors felt let down by the event. Erica Muñoz, who owns Pinche Vegana, has had a booth at Vegandale in New York for the past few years. This year’s attendance felt sparse compared with others, she said.
The organizers also changed the fee structure: Instead of charging each vendor a $1,000 fee for a booth, as in festivals past, this year Vegandale collected a 30 percent commission on all sales. Ms. Muñoz estimated that she has to pay the organizers about $3,000.
“As a small business, for us to front all of those expenses and then to be left with a check that is minus 30 percent, that is a big chunk of money that is lost,” she said.
Ms. Lindsay said the commission “is consistent with industry standards, similar to the fees charged by services like Uber and DoorDash for connecting businesses with new customers.”
Kevin Gill, who works in concert production and lives in Queens, called his credit-card company to get his money back after leaving Vegandale in frustration. He was shocked that the festival has not issued an apology.
“It just seems crazy,” said Mr. Gill, who is in his 40s. “And to do it at this scale. It’s not like they are doing a 150-person event at a bar.”
The next Vegandale festival is scheduled for Sept. 28 at Klyde Warren Park in Dallas. Ms. Lindsay declined to say how many people are expected to attend.
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