Balaton Sound 2018 closes with a record No. of visitors – PHOTOS

Photo: www.balatonsound.com /Rockstar Photographers

Balaton Sound festival welcomed over 165,000 visitors this year, which is 8,000 visitors more than the last record No. of attendees established two years ago in 2016. Let’s review everything that happened at Balaton Sound 2018.

Every year, the small and quiet town of Zamárdi comes alive for a week when thousands of people come here to have a great time and see some of the most famous musicians from all over the world. This year, the weather was extremely good, the sun was shining, people were playing in the water, sunbathing on the beach, and there was no need for a cardigan even during the concerts at night.

Photo: www.balatonsound.com /Rockstar Photographers

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Statistics

More than 165,000 people visited Balaton Sound 2018 from nearly 60 different countries from all over the world. The festival hosted the highest No. of people on Saturday (7 July) with 40,000 people attending the event. Tickets were completely sold out on Saturday.

Photo: www.balatonsound.com /Rockstar Photographers

The Earth was literally moving

The enormous crowd at Balaton Sound caused a minor earthquake reported by the Tihany measuring station. There was a vibration similar to the one that occurred during the Mexican-German World Cup match when the Mexicans scored the winning goal.

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Safe and sound

While the festival closed with a record-breaking number of visitors, there were no serious accidents, or other problems reported. Balaton Sound 2018 was peaceful and safe.

Photo: www.balatonsound.com /Rockstar Photographers

New main stage

Veteran Balaton Sound attendees could notice that the main stage received a makeover. The well-known design with the colourful boxes disappeared, and it was replaced with this very dystopian, alien-looking style which immediately reminded me of the movie Mad Max.

Photo: www.balatonsound.com /Rockstar Photographers

Free makeover

The coolest booth, without a doubt, goes to Tampax, who basically established a beauty salon in the middle of the festival. Every day from 4 P.M. until late at night there were two make-up artists and two hairdressers working to make everyone (mostly girls, but boys were welcome too) look their best at the parties later on. Festival goers could get a makeover completely free if they were willing to stand in line. The most popular look was the one with braided hair and lots of glitter and gemstones on the face, the more colourful the better.

Photo: www.balatonsound.com /Rockstar Photographers

Drinks

Festivals are not known for their cheap prices. The cheapest drink you could purchase at the festival was probably the bottled water for HUF 430, and the most expensive drinks were the group cocktails and the quality champagnes. A new system was introduced mainly to try and reduce plastic waste: everybody had to purchase a reusable hard plastic cup for a few hundred forints (on top of the price of the drink), but this could be returned to any booth and be exchanged for a new one any time for free. It was nice to see some steps being made towards being more environment-friendly.

Photo: www.balatonsound.com /Rockstar Photographers

Music & Mood

All of the artists gave their best to entertain the huge crowd. To me personally, the biggest surprise was rapper Big Shaq (English actor and comedian Michael Dapaah) who basically has only one big hit on the internet, a song called Man’s Not Hot, so I was extremely curious about what he will do on stage for a whole hour.

Photo: www.balatonsound.com /Rockstar Photographers

He managed to entertain his crowd very well, and I thought that the concert was really enjoyable. Of course, the biggest headliners did not disappoint either such as David Guetta, Alesso or Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike. The Chainsmokers started a little late (40 minutes), and people started to get a little bit upset, but the boys ended up making a good show.