Camp Bisco: The Experience (2019)

For the first time ever, I went to a camping music festival and did not camp. In fact, I made a pretty last minute decision to go to the final day of Bisco, so I got a bus up in the morning, crashed at a hotel, and took the bus home the next day. So while I only got to experience one day of the event, I still have some thoughts about how it all went down. I think Camp Bisco is now my most blogged about music festival, and it’s interesting for me to reflect upon how it has changed since 2015, 2017, and 2018.

Check-In/Security
Non-campers use a separate entrance into the festival, so this was my first time going that route. It was super quick AND as a little bonus, they were handing out free bottles of water at the info booth right before the ticket scanners. Hugely important for a 90+ degree day.

The Crowd
I arrived to Bisco on Saturday, and Bassnectar had played the night before. Which means, I think, that a lot of Nectar fans had peaced on out after their man was done. Bassnectar die-hards are just…not always the best people to have around at a festival so it was nice to have a sort of less intense crowd.

Fun Stuff
Still a water park there, but didn’t utilize it this year. Every year I say, “Next year I’m going on the zipline!” and never make it on the zipline. So…next year I’m going on the zipline!

Water
The free water situation continues to improve. I refilled my bottle multiple times at the same water station and it never really had a line. They’ve come a long way from the first year at this location (2015) when the water stations were completely unmarked and one even had a giant “BEER” sign near it that was a remnant from Montage Mountain’s other life as a resort.

Layout
Man, there is one hill on those grounds that’s killer (aside from whatever hills others may have had to navigate to get to their campsites). I did not remember this hill being particularly bad but I wrote about it in last year’s recap so I guess I had blocked it out of my memory. Only going to the festival for one day though meant I only tackled that hill once, and…once was enough, in that heat.

One dumb thing I will happily point out is that one of the stages at Camp Bisco is called the Office stage. It took me until this year to put 2 and 2 together and realize that this stage is called the Office stage because Bisco takes place in Scranton, PA, where the Office TV show takes place. It wasn’t that I didn’t know that the Office took place there, I just…never made that connection.

Relatedly, only one artist that I saw yesterday used the Office theme song in their set. This is pretty much a Camp Bisco staple (in 2015 I think I heard it…4 times?) so I was glad that I got to experience it at least once.

Transportation
For the first time this year I took a Greyhound to Scranton and Ubers after that. It was remarkably easy. Even leaving the festival in an Uber was really organized.

Price
My single day pass was $125 which is standard but still pretty nice. A lot of other festivals are closer to the $150-$160 range for a single day pass so…this is AOK with me. Especially because I had a really fun and full day. I got to Bisco a little later than I was originally intending but was still there for about 10 hours.

Bathrooms
In 2015 I discovered the indoor bathrooms. In 2017 I discovered more indoor bathrooms, and in 2018 I discovered yet ANOTHER set of indoor bathrooms. I am sad to report that I did not discover any new indoor bathrooms this year, but who cares because I did not have to use a port-a-potty even once. 3 huge sets of indoor bathrooms is a magical festival treat that you can really only appreciate when you’ve spent multiple festivals just trying to find the one port-a-potty that isn’t overflowing with poop.

Misc.
Honestly, as much as I love camping at festivals because there’s this wonderful community element to it, doing the hotel thing was really nice. My post-event shower was just heavenly. Even just walking into the air conditioning of the hotel was heavenly.

Stuff I Sacrificed to the Festival Gods
This is a recap feature I’ve been forgetting to add to my posts but it appeared in last year’s Bisco recap because I mentioned how I broke my [thankfully cheap] sunglasses and had to replace them with another [thankfully cheap] pair from the festival general store. Well, those sunglasses have been with me for an entire year, but did not make it out of Bisco 2019. I had them hooked onto my shirt collar once the sun went down and at some point they probably just fell off. I hope someone else finds them and loves them. They were a $5 well spent.

I also sacrificed my water bottle to the festival gods. I had brought with me a smallish collapsible water bottle with a carabiner attached to it so I could hook it on to my fanny pack. The carabiner mechanism broke and the water bottle itself was not worth saving (it’s small and it was free) so I just left it in the grass somewhere. It had a good life.

I’m a little (a lot) sad that I didn’t go to Bisco for more days, but doing 1 day over 3 really enables you to pack super light and generally cuts down your pre-festival stress and prep, so it was a nice, easy, and quick trip. While it doesn’t look like I’m going to get to do any proper camping at festivals this summer, next month I am going to a brand new festival for me – Outside Lands in San Francisco! Cannot wait.