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

Stereosonic main stage during Calvin Harris set – just before Tiesto
Creamfields stage in the afternoon

Riding the bull for 21 seconds (fail):

Timeline

What did you wear James?
I hear you ask, my dearest reader. CAN I SAY I CREATED A REALLY AWESOME BUBBLE WRAP SUIT!?? Hell yes. I was inspired by this guy who walked into a bar just wrapped in bubble suit a few weeks ago, but he really didn’t make an effort. He just wrapped bubble wrap all around his limbs and torso and looked like a giant ROLL of bubble werap, which was fair enough. So I set to make my own. Imagine 3/4 length shorts, a blazer constructed from individual pieces of bubble wrap complete with hood and velcro buttons. Imagine a 4 piece overlaying skirt to flow over my delicious legs. Imagine your shoes entirely wrapped in bubble wrap. THIS WAS MY SUIT.

wearing the bubble suit after the festival

Did I also mention that this amazing suit was rejected by security?

Huh? A costume rejected at the gates… .At a festival?

Yes.

Rejection I: Security Talk
“Are you serious? What are you meant to be – bubble boy?”  – The first words out of his mouth.
How do you answer that question – what am I supposed to say? “No, I’m superman/Ironman but I couldn’t afford spandex/Iron so I got bubble wrap”. Of course I said yes, I was bubble boy.
Fun Nazi Security: “NO. YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED INSIDE WEARING THAT. TAKE IT OFF AND GET CHANGED.”
James: “What do you mean? it’s a festival. You can wear whatever you want”… (Security guard is now being a real asshole)
Fun Nazi Security: “I don’t like people dressing up because I was raised in a world where costumes were only for the circus freaks, and because i was such a freak I wanted to join the circus, but I was rejected and now I am taking out my anger on other random people.”. Well, he didn’t say that but he might as well have – but he repeated to me that I wasn’t allowed in.

Rejection II: Police talk
Police officers: “That’s a pretty cool outfit. why are you taking it off?”
James: “Blah blah… fun nazi security is mean blah blah blah”
Police officers: “That sucks. There were three guys painted in blue body point. They were sent home as well”
James: “Oh Rly?”
Police officers: “They were coming in as smurfs”

How can you deny smurfs entry into a festival????? SO COLD

Rejection III: Security Talk II
I’ve walked back to the same security guy.
Fun Nazi Security: (Shaking his head in disapproval at me) “Seriously, bubble boy? what were you thinking??”
James: “I dont know” 
Fun Nazi Security: “Unbelievable. Get in.”

It’s one thing to politely tell someone they aren’t allowed in, but to actually question and look down upon me based on my outfit is bloody outrageous. You f*cking ASSHOLE!! Really fucking frustrated at his attitude.

Post mortem I was told the next day that the Smurfs got in later. This suggests that it was more of a security guard being a fucking asshole issue rather than a Stereosonic being a party pooper and not telling anyone issue.

Rock, Scissors, Paper
I’m wearing an attractive PINK LEI around my neck and some boys I walk by want a piece of it! Oh really do they. They wanted it. I refused. Why should I give it to them? They challenged me to a ROCK SCISSCORS PAPER duel. The winner would get to keep the LEI.

My Pink Lei with a t-shirtless dude.

Well, being the man of honour, I had to oblige to his challenge – and so the gauntlet was thrown down.
Challenger: “Before we start, which one are you going to be?”. A strange question to ask someone. Was it a trick?
James: “I’m going to be ROCK”
Challenger: “Ok, ok!”
Rock…… Scissors…… Paper!!
James uses ROCK, as promised.
Challenger has thrown out SCISSORS.
ROCK smashes SCISSORS !
James is confused to why Challenger didn’t use paper.
James wins. James keeps the LEI. +55 HP
James earned the UNDEFEATABLE award.

So anyway, if there’s a lesson to be learned in all of this, its the most obvious one – and that lesson is that ROCK. ALWAYS. WINS. I mean really – do you think you can beat a rock? HELLOOO.. It’s a freaking rock!!!

All the asians are at the cream stage, lol
OK this isn’t really true, but all my Asian friends who I bumped into or tried to catch up all were at the Creamfields stagge at one extended point in time. It’s the music they were playing – I don’t know how to describe it – classic uplifting trance I suppose is the best way to put it. I certainly had a good 1 or 2 hours here dancing to Aly and Fila, Sied van Riel.

My starjumps moment
Also, at the Cream stage, I did starjumps on top of the overhanging walkway above the DJ stage.. and lots of people did starjumps as well below. It was awesome.

Cream stage just before I did some star jumps to the crowd below

Toiletries are upstairs too
Don’t we all hate lining up for the bathroom! So all day we avoided queues. Queue at a bar? We walked the 5 minutes to the other bar on the otherside of town with no line and got our drinks right away. Queue at the toilet? We hated the portaloos that were setup as you risk walking into a smelly one. So we went in the stadium, walked up some flights of stairs and found that the in-built stadium toilets were readily available for use. Since not many a people came up here, not only were there no lines at all here, but also they were pretty clean throughout the day. Pretty cool!

Showing the DJ love
Met up with a friend at one of the dying stages. There are less than 10 people in this room. After some stupid dancing, we realised nobody was up at the front dancing – it was decided to show the DJ some love!! Ran right up and jumped around for a good 10 seconds until the DJ realised he had some fans. An acknowledgement and that was it. It was really loud as well, I had the earplugs on but my whole body was shaking here, and I ended up getting a serious headache for the next half hour after we left the area. It was that bad – I don’t think I’ve ever had a headache from dancing too close to the front before – or its just been a really long time since I remember.
Where’s Wally?
I found him.

Tiesto fail
Tiesto – what the majority of people came here for, and it was my first time to see him. I didn’t know what to expect – I got familiar with his classic tracks and songs from his latest album, but only a lot of trance was being played instead of the classic tracks. It left some parts of the set a bit .. i dunno.. stale. I’m sure it was going off near the front. Anyway maybe about 30 minutes into the 2 hour set, the power cuts off!!! Holy crap. Silence for a minute and then the music is back up, but the video clips that were playing behind Tiesto were replaced with default clips that were being played in previous acts – BORING! Also for a good total of 30 minutes at least, tiesto stepped offstage to let the music play. He was probably upset that Stereosonic’s Audio Video system monumentally screwed up. That, or he was playing from a CD.

Arrivederci
Left at closing of Tiesto – some of my friends had already left only an hour into set – they were disappointed in Tiesto. 

Recommendation
A strong lineup, very good weather make it a good day out. Of course, only for house/trance lovers of music. Very disappointed in the Tiesto set – I had really high hopes for it. Also some of the smaller stages could have done with more people.

Also, the security guard who gave me attitude for wearing my bubble outfit and then not letting me in was such an asshole. Major points lost. Whenever someone asks me about Stereosonic you are the first thing that comes to my mind. Also stereosonic need to tell security what the dress code is. Total fail.

Stereosonic @ Sydney Showgrounds – It would have been 7.5/10 but due to the dress code incident, only 6.0/10. I really had tinge of bitterness throughout the day after that.

Gallery: