LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — The pre-sale for When We Were Young 2024 ended with the show being completely sold out. A prompt from the festival for a waitlist for a second day left fans with a lot of questions.
Earlier this week, the popular music festival announced the lineup for the Oct. 19, 2024, show, including headliners Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance. A “pre-sale” was set to begin on Friday, Nov. 17 at 10 a.m. The announcement said that “layaway” payment plans started at $19.99 down.
The entire festival sold out less than an hour after the pre-sale went live.
On Friday, along with an announcement that it was sold out, the festival encouraged fans who didn’t get tickets to sign up for a waitlist to “add a day 2.” Two hours later, the festival added a second date, due to “overwhelming demand.”
“Why do you guys never have a second show ready at the beginning of this? This happens every year,” a fan said in response to the announcement.
The second show will be held on Sunday, Oct. 20. According to a release from the festival, the general public on-sale will begin on Tuesday, Nov. 21, but fans can sign up for the waitlist for “guaranteed access to tickets.”
As fans found out, those who requested to join the waitlist are “subject to a $10.00 Processing Fee,” the festival site said.
Those who jumped on the waitlist before the second-day announcement have already seen their waitlist request being approved and their cards charged by the ticketing site, Front Gate Tickets.
The kicker? There are no layaway plans for those on the waitlist.
Fans quickly took to social media to bombard When We Were Young with questions involving the waitlist.
“No payment plans for waitlist?” A fan asked in an X post to the festival. “Waited since the second you texted the presale code and never got in.”
“A waitlist fee? Seriously?” said another fan. “As if it’s not expensive enough for tickets that start at $405 a piece”
The waitlist fee wasn’t the only problem that fans brought up to the festival on social media. Many took issue with the fact the pre-sale used “tiered” ticketing, with no added benefits.
The festival’s website claimed general admission tickets “started at $325 with no hidden fees.” There were similar claims for starting prices for general admission +, VIP, and VIP cabana tickets.
However, when fans logged in Friday morning to purchase tickets, they saw that only “Tier 1” general admission tickets were listed at $325, with prices increasing through four tiers, with the highest ticket price being listed at $425.
But no additional benefits were given to those who found themselves with the higher priced tickets after the $325 tickets were listed as “unavailable” less than a minute after the sale began.
“All tiers are the same ticket type. Please select the lowest tier for the best available price,” the festival’s website said.
“Just set one price for each ticket level please, the different priced tiers for the same ticket is nonsense,” a fan wrote, asking why the only GA ticket option available at 10:01 a.m. was Tier 4.
“Why r there tiers if theyre all the same ticket I’m so confused,” another said.
Officials from the When We Were Young festival did not immediately respond to request for comment. Should a statement be provided, it will be added to this article.
