Shuttle snarls mar Pemberton Festival opening

The first act at the Pemberton Music Festival hit the stage Friday afternoon but thousands of concert-goers who showed up Thursday night to pitch their tents spent the night stranded on an airport runway being used as a makeshift parking lot.

More than 40,000 people were expected to pack the village of Pemberton, B.C., about a 25-minute drive north of Whistler, B.C., on the weekend for one of North America's biggest music festivals of the summer.

Lana Fraser and Adrienne Baycroft were two of the concert-goers who were trying to camp at the festival campgrounds.

They said they arrived at the site Thursday night along with thousands of others, hoping to set up camp a full day before the festival opened.

Instead, they said they were directed to four different parking lots, where a shuttle bus was supposed to take them to the grounds.

But the promised shuttle never came, they said, and they spent the night stranded on the runway of the Pemberton airport, with thousands of others.

Some campers want compensation

Now they want organizers to compensate them.

"I think they should pay some sort of compensation. People pay a lot of money and now it is the next day and they still haven't got into the festival," said Fraser on Friday morning, still waiting for a shuttle to the festival grounds.

Festival organizers said the problem lies with the campers themselves, who arrived well after the time they were supposed to.

But the unhappy campers said it was the festival organizers who were not organized enough.

"I checked the website before I even got here, and I was still so confused," said Baycroft.

The organizers acknowledged the shuttle bus system needed some work, and said they would review the process as the weekend goes on.

Tickets for the three-day music festival featuring dozens of acts on three stages — including British superstars Coldplay and Canadian rockers The Tragically Hip — cost $260 for the weekend.