Inside Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas 2018

Thousands of music lovers gathered once again under the "electric sky" this past weekend for the 22nd annual Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas (EDC Vegas). The festival—hosted by Insomniac Events at Las Vegas Motor Speedway—combines electronic music, carnival rides, performers, art and camping for three days of whimsical fun for attendees—also known as Headliners. Although the festival got off to a rocky start with the first night of camping, the rest of the weekend went off without a hitch.

This was the first year EDC Vegas featured camping. However, Insomniac Events is no stranger to camping: the company regularly hosts camping festivals such as Electric Forest and Nocturnal Wonderland. EDC Vegas camping featured air-conditioned shelter to help battle the Las Vegas heat, a pool, exclusive parties, art cars and installations, yoga and more. Camping sold out with a 30,000-person capacity, but Insomniac Events was not prepared for the number of people arriving to Camp EDC on Thursday, despite their experience handling camping festivals before. Many waited in line for hours, but despite the setback, most of the camping attendees I spoke with were happy with their experience the rest of the weekend.

EDC Vegas has previously had issues with traffic and soaring temperatures, but they were fixed this year—the festival moved from June to May, causing temperatures to drop about 10 degrees, and the addition of camping alleviated the heavy congestion typically seen when driving to the festival. EDC Vegas also began three hours earlier this year for opening ceremonies at cosmicMEADOW, which also helped traffic issues. The festival also wasn’t as crowded this year, which may be attributed to more people relaxing in their camping tents during the festival.

As usual, Insomniac Events outdid themselves with production: the stages were creatively designed, fireworks lit up the sky every night, performers dazzled the audience with gravity-defying acrobatics and more. This year’s event saw the first redesign of bassPOD in three years. Although it was similar to the previous three years, the stage was moved to a larger area, allowing for more space at the increasingly popular stage. The roof was removed from neonGARDEN this year, which created an open-air dancing space. This new design was an improvement, however, there were only four spaces to enter or exit through. This caused security to limit the amount of people allowed in at once—possibly for fire safety issues—so more exits and entrances would solve this.