Vegandale 2024 at Citi Field Caused Confusion and Angered Ticket Holders

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.