Was The New ‘Zenless’ Stage At Creamfields A Success?

Creamfields has always had an amazing array of stages that provide a diverse experience everywhere you go, but this year they looked to step up their game even more with the introduction of the ‘Zenless Zone Zero’ stage. When ‘Zenless’ was first announced it was already grabbing people’s attention with its incredible 30,000 capacity making it the largest indoor festival superstructure in the world. The early projections of what the stage was going to look like were impressive and the names set to play in there such as Martin Garrix, Tiesto, Armin Van Buuren, and Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike only heightened the excitement to see this new stage. But did it live up to expectations after all the hype?

Without a doubt one of the biggest positives of the ‘Zenless’ stage was the insane lighting rig that was able to handle the crazy visuals you expect from the likes of Martin Garrix and surpassed expectations. From the powerful room filling lasers to the spinning beams of light coming from all over the place, there was no lack of entertainment from a visual standpoint with the lighting even improving upon what you could find at the ‘Arc’ stage in some respects. With it being an indoor stage, you wouldn’t expect anything crazy in terms of pyrotechnics but the flames being thrown from the stage and the pillars above the crowd were sensational and certainly gave you that mainstage feel.

Every act that performed on the stage was able to put on incredible sets with a sound system that filled the structure and could be felt all the way at the back. Unfortunately for a lot of people they would only get to hear some of these sets from the very back or even outside. Despite its impressive 30,000 capacity when it came to the sets of Martin Garrix and Tiesto, the stage quickly filled up with a lot of the entrances having to be shut to avoid overcrowding. It was of course the right decision to do this to keep people safe, but a lot of people were left disappointed as they arrived at the stage to see their favourite artists and were instantly turned away as there simply wasn’t enough space.

Though you could say that these acts simply should have been put on a bigger stage, this year posed some unusual problems with the likes of Hardwell and Timmy Trumpet struggling to pull big crowds at the ‘Arc’ stage. Even Alesso who closed the ‘Arc’ stage on the final day didn’t receive the type of crowd you would expect for a mainstage closing set. It’s when you look at what sets were clashing that you realise where some of the problems spawned from. As Tiesto was performing at 1am, he wasn’t clashing with many artists of the same calibre as him meaning that nearly everyone tried to get into ‘Zenless’ to see him. Martin Garrix was following on from Third Party on the ‘Zenless’ stage who had already drawn in a massive crowd and have a similar fanbase so very few people cleared out of the tent leaving it still packed out. The unpredictability of how many people are going to go to each set is something that is very hard to deal with and this year the struggle was quite apparent.

When you look at the problems at the ‘Zenless’ stage a lot of it came down to organisation of the acts but that is certainly not an easy task to take on and even the best laid plans can go wrong. This is of course only the first year that the ‘Zenless’ stage has been used so there are lots of things that can be learnt from this to carry into next year. Despite these problems its fair to say that ‘Zenless’ is an amazing addition to the roster of fantastic stages at Creamfields and that the organisers put on yet another amazing festival that everyone enjoyed. Once you got right in the thick of it with the amazing lighting filling the room, fire pumping out right above you and beautiful music pouring into your ears it was undeniably a brilliant experience that everyone will be looking forward to having more of.