EVERYONE I know who attended the Clark Aurora Music festival last weekend only has one thing to say about their experience: their disappointment and dissatisfaction with how the organizers failed to stage the music festival properly. I even know a famous online seller coming from CALABARZON who mentioned how excited she was since they will be in Clark for the Hot Air Balloon Festival. It was hyped to the point that younger people looked forward to the festival as if it was the previous stagings of the Hot Air Balloon Festival. From the horrifying heavy traffic and long queues of waiting, festival-goers think their hard-earned P500.00 entrance fee was put to waste.
My sister who also went to the Clark Music festival on its first day was so dismayed to know that it was not a hot air balloon festival and that the hot air balloons were only for display. Maybe she only failed to realize that what was advertised in the tickets and promotional materials was a hot air balloon display, but nevertheless, most people also fell into the belief that they were in for a grand treat of seeing many hot air balloons just like before.
Being a part of SM City Clark when the Hot Air Balloon Festival started, I knew how the staging of this much-anticipated festival improved over the years. We also experienced heavy traffic before, but every year, there was always an improvement with the traffic lanes, parking areas, and the entrance gates for the spectators. Bottom line is, that the view of seeing the marvelous hot air balloons before their flight and while they are in the skies is definitely worth the long queues and heavy traffic.
Organizers may argue that it was a music festival in the first place. But using the hot air balloon festival concept to lure people to come is what I think became the marketing tactic used by the organizers. As a former collaborator of the famous Philippine Hot Air Balloon Festival, I feel that the Clark Aurora Music Festival used this to its advantage and disguised it as the former crowd-drawing balloon festival involving international balloon flyers.
What is worst to see after the event is that the venue was full of litter and garbage since the organizers did not properly install enough garbage bins which left the attendees to dump their plastic litter all over the place. This is why I make the plea to Clark Development Corporation to reconsider allowing these organizers to stage a similar event without properly addressing all these concerns.