By now we are all familiar with the failures of Fyre Festival, the upscale music festival that attempted to host its first weekend in late April in the Bahamas. It quickly became the laughingstock of the internet and provoked several lawsuits, including a $100 million class-action suit alleging that "the festival's lack of adequate food, water, shelter and medical care created a dangerous and panicked situation among attendees — suddenly finding themselves stranded on a remote island without basic provisions — that was closer to The Hunger Games or Lord of the Flies than Coachella."
In a series of emails obtained by Mic, Fyre Festival organizers demonstrated concern over bathroom and housing shortages and debated how to provide a "luxury" experience and mitigate costs at the same time.
From Mic:
After Lyly Villanueva, executive producer of the festival, sent the initial urgent email about the cost of shipping bathrooms, Fyre president Arora asked how many they planned to secure for the festival. Villanueva estimated that 125 stalls, or approximately 18 to 20 bathroom trailers, would be required to accommodate the number of people on the island.
"If we cut it in half, we would just have double the line wait? I'm seeing some sites that say we could get away with 75 toilets," Arora responded, sending multiple links to external sites to back up his calculations.
"Please keep in mind those are calculations are for events lasting 8-10 hours with portapotties in grassy fields," she wrote. "This is a 'luxury' campsite where people will be using this as [their] only source of relief for 5 consecutive days."
Arora continued to press. "It sounds like we can save a lot of money if we sub in port a potties," he wrote. "Anyway could we get an idea of a nicer way to do this and how much we could save?"
In another email sent out one week before the festival's first weekend, consultant Marc Weinstein warned organizers that 593 people would be without housing. He proposed renting a cruise ship for $530,000 to house as many as 225 people.
Read Mic's full report here.
