Line up looked really good, so we thought it would be very good value considering other festivals were 20-30 dollars more expensive. So got some tickets and off we went.. here we go!

Stereosonic Festival Sydney 2010 @ Sydney Showgrounds: Saturday 27th November
Assessment Time: 02:00PM – 11:00PM
Opening Hours: 12:00PM – 11:00PM
Lockout: Entry at anytime.
Passouts: No passouts at all.
Address: Sydney Showgrounds, Olympic Park. Basically walk out of Olympic Park station, walk down to the road and turn right.
Venue Website: http://www.sydneyshowground.com.au
Promoter Website: http://www.stereosonic.com.au
Occurrence: Once a year.
Outside Line: It probably took longer to queue in the train station to get out rather than queuing to get scanned to get in – aka there was plenty of people to scan you in. There was only one person in front of me when I was going in.
Dress Code / Door Policy: There is no dresscode, you can pretty much wear anything. Most people wore causal gear and every person here also wears sunnies. It’s a necessity. Taking your shirt off is frowned upon especially in the moshpit areas. Police were ordered to refuse entry to anybody not wearing a shirt upon entry. It didn’t matter as heaps of guys were walking around inside with their shirts off, albeit they almost all had shirts tucked away somewhere just in case they were asked to put them back on. In terms of costumes – there were the Mario brothers, a dude in a a full body red spandex suit thing, a dude walking around with a twister board around his neck, and Lil Jon. It was either me or there wasn’t much creativity in terms of dressing up. I was forced to take my outfit off before entering the venue. See more for details below.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $120 1st release, $125/130 second, $135 3rd and final release.
Inside: Basically if you have been to the Easter show here at Homebush, its all the areas converted to DJ areas. There were 7 stages including the main Stereosonic stadium itself. 2 of the rooms were enclosed, and the other 5 were in open plan areas. Needless to say all had large capacities. Thank god the weather held up today. There was surprisingly no silent disco area, despite some other cities having it. Complete setup at the website PDF map
Cloak Room: $3. This is probably the only fairly priced thing here today

Bar Prices / Line: Bar lines went very quickly if you went to the right ones. Some bars had massive long lines eg the ones outside Creamm stage, but other ones barely had anybody lining up, and you could just walk straight to the bar eg the bar outside Carl Cox stage near the DJ Hero playing area. Pricing was $9 for a Middie of Smirnoff. A total blatant rip off!!! Previous festivals had them at $10.50 for full strength Smirnoff black and we are hit with Middies. Stupid angry alcoholics who ruin it for everyone. Even so, its still a rort and a half – I didn’t feel the effects at all from the drinks. 
DJs: Tiesto, Calvin harris, Sebastian Ingrosslo, Benny Benassi, Wiley, Ricardo Villalobos, Luciano, Andy Murphy, Carl Cox, TV Rock and more. Complete line up found on the PDF map .. with about 50 acts listed
Music Style: Mostly Soft/Uplifting Trance, Dance, Electronic, various different House styles of music here. 
Crowd & Ratio: Mostly Anglo-Saxon crowd. Pretty much an even ratio here all around. 
Entertainment: Besides the main stages, there was a DJ Hero play area, a riding bull, human ten pin bowling (you are strapped inside a huge inflatable bowling ball) a passion pop photography area, food stalls, water cool down areas. There were also some amusement rides. 
Atmosphere: Pretty good/vibrant everywhere. Early on before 6PM most stages were at about half capacity or less. Browntown, OneLove and Sneakerpeeps stages experienced it the worst, where no more than 30 or 40 people would be dancing there at the same time. Of course, these were the smallest stages. I’m not into the Carl Cox style of funky house, but the people there who were into that really enjoyed themselves, and there were plenty of them. Main arena was atrociously packed near the mosh pit, and I never got a chance to go inside (they actually have a sealed off moshpit area here, quite generous in size). Outrage was openly busy throughout the day thanks to its location right next to the entry gate. Also Cream(field) stage was also full of patrons throughout the day and night, you couldn’t go wrong here. Tiesto atmosphere fizzled after a stage power blackout near the beginning of the set. Very unfortunate.

Video: Ten pin bowling
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Stereosonic main stage during Calvin Harris set – just before Tiesto
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