Hundreds of festival-goers were left stranded in London yesterday after chaotic scenes at the end of the Citadel Festival, held in Gunnersbury Park in London. Suffering from poor organisation and improper planning, massive queues developed once the final act, Australian psych rockers Tame Impala, left the stage at 10.20 pm.
After leaving the festival, huge crowds soon converged on the local tube station.
Another long hot shift for our team, and its not over yet. Keeping you safe as you travel back from #Citadel18 #Actontown pic.twitter.com/DFtf14kWVU
— BTPUnderground (@BTPUnderground) July 15, 2018
But amidst delayed exits and the station’s early Sunday closure, many missed the last train and were left with no cost-effective way of getting home.
Loved Tame Impala but #Citadel18 needs to answer for the fact we’ve queued over hour and a half like cattle for tube and now been told it’s closed for the night. Total total fuck up and now stuck across the other side of London with no route home — Megan Sheraton (@megansheraton) July 15, 2018
And they keep us waiting and said ‘we’re just making you wait for the next train it’ll only be a few minutes’ and then they shut off the station and told us to leave. I kept asking staff ‘what can we do to get home’ and got told ‘it’s not our headache to deal with’
— Fiji Fan (@chxnk182) July 16, 2018
Some fans are demanding compensation after being forced to take expensive alternate routes, with some taking Ubers across the capital and one fan even spending £300 on a journey back to Bristol.
Without a way to get home, these two were left homeless for the night:
Despite the chaos at the end, the festival seems otherwise to have been a resounding success. Citadel was headlined by Tame Impala, the musical project of Aussie psych virtuoso Kevin Parker. Their last LP, 2015’s RnB-influenced Currents, received an update late last year with the B-Sides And Remixes EP, which featured three previously-unreleased tracks – ‘Powerlines‘, ‘Taxi’s Here‘ and ‘List of People (To Try And Forget About)‘. The festival also saw appearances from Scottish band Churches, soul crooner Leon Bridges and Swedish experimental rockers Goat.
