MOST PEOPLE ARE not on the fence about festivals.

Dancing in a field and subsisting on chips and warm cans for three days is generally either your idea of the good life, or your idea of hell. To each her own.

One of the haters’ most frequent criticisms is how expensive the whole shebang is – ridiculously expensive, in their view.

For festival lovers (I’m one of them), it’s all about joy and freedom – great music, hanging out with friends, the temporary suspension of everyday life to be outdoors and have fun. At a festival as large and labyrinthine as Electric Picnic, there is the added frisson of chance encounters and discoveries – an incredible gig by a band you’ve never heard of, raving in the woods etc.

Which is all by way of saying, I get that it’s a bit basic to home in on price. But unfortunately, with the cost of living as high as it is now, how much things cost is always at the back of most people’s minds (if this isn’t you – happy for you).

There’s often a bit of mental discipline involved in enjoying anything fun that’s also expensive in Ireland – you learn to park thinking about the money involved and just get on with having a good time. And there’s no question that tens of thousands of people are having a blast in Stradbally this weekend.

Tickets

Standard weekend tickets this year cost €245-325 depending on factors including whether you have been before (there’s a loyalty scheme). First-time attendees will have been paying at the upper end of that range. 

Crunching the numbers, that’s not a million miles from what the festival cost 10 or even 20 years ago. Way back in 2006 (Massive Attack, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Basement Jaxx), a weekend ticket cost €175 – but adjusted for inflation that would be €250 today.

In 2016 (LCD Soundsystem, Chemical Brothers, Lana Del Rey), weekend tickets started at €234 – that would be €303 today.

Festival goers will make their own mind up on whether today’s ticket offers the same value. Inevitably, elderly millenials such as myself will always look back on EP’s early years as a smaller festival packed with big bands as a golden era.

The 2011 line-up.

It’s certainly the case that there are fewer major international acts on the line-up this year than in some more recent years – but perhaps that is as much to do with a more self-confident and self-sufficient Irish music scene as anything else. All the main stages have had blistering performances this weekend by Irish bands and artists.

When I asked festival promoter Melvin Benn about this earlier today, he said the lineup simply reflects what’s popular on radio stations and Spotify and so on.

“It’s got a very heavy Irish emphasis this year because that’s appropriate. The Irish acts at the moment are dominating the UK and Ireland, there’s no question about that.

“The Picnic always reflects what the huge popularity of the current time is. 

“If that continues to be Irish, then that will continue to be what’s on the stages,” Benn said.

Ultimately, for music fans who might spend €90 for tickets to any of the individual headliners at Electric Picnic, getting to see three days of top acts is likely to mean the ticket price itself makes sense. 

Benn also said today that tickets will be the same price for next year as they were this year. Capacity at the festival will also remain the same at 80,000.

Camping (if you dare)

If you want to bring a campervan that’s an extra €140.

If you want to come down and pitch your tent on the Thursday before the festival gets into full swing on Friday, that’s an extra €30-40. Many Picnic veterans consider the early entry fee essential, for the sake of having a better choice of where to pitch your tent.

If you’re too posh to pitch, there are various glamping options. You can almost €1,000 if you are so inclined for a massive tent with a double bed in it.

You can also pay an extra €285 to pitch your own tent in a fancier campsite away from the hoi polloi, and with nicer toilets and showers, free phone charging and so on.

Is that worth it? Maybe. There was a long, long queue of grim-faced campers at the Hendrix (standard) campsite this morning waiting for a shower.

As for actually getting to Stradbally, a return coach from Dublin is €50, from other parts of the country it may be less or up to €80.

Stuff

Tent, sleeping bag, ground-mat, rucksack, wellies or Docs, optional camping chair, maybe a little trolley (very jealous of the little trolleys) – if you don’t have any of these, they have to be bought.

You will always end up having to buy something before going to a festival.

My two-year-old raincoat was no longer waterproof, so I bought a new one in M&S for €125, which I thought was very expensive. It looks like a bin bag but, to be fair, does the job.

Food and essentials

I threw some soda bread, marmalade and apples in my rucksack to eat for breakfasts, because that was what I had in the house. It worked out grand. You can bring in as much food as you can carry, but as to how well it will keep in a tent, that’s another story.

At the festival itself, there is no foodstuff that can be fried in grease that cannot be obtained in return for your hard-earned cash (but not literal cash – it’s card only, because the festival levies a fee on food trucks’ takings).

The food is very expensive for what it is, but not unexpectedly so. Prepare to spend about €15 for a meal. Let’s say you bring your own stuff for breakfast al fresco, that’s the guts of €100 for your remaining lunches and dinners. Maybe a bit less if you’re not that hungry. have chips for lunch one day, for €6. Maybe a bit more if you go for fancier options.

Add in a few coffees (about €4 is standard for an Americano, more for more elaborate options) and bottles of water (typically about €3.50) and the grand total obviously climbs a bit further.

The festival organisers tell me there are just under 600 main meals available across the festival site for between €12 and €16. They point out that a 10-inch pizza from Supermacs would serve two and costs only €16.50.

Wandering through the main arena on Saturday night, Supermacs is noticeably one of the few food trucks with a long queue, even though at €6 for chips and €12 for a bacon and cheese burger (€19 for a meal) it’s not cheap. But look, the drunken Irish heart wants what it wants.

I have a nice, although not very big, halloumi wrap thing from Greek Food for €15. 

At the campsites, the longest queues in the morning are for places serving açai bowls for €12. 

For the purposes of this article, I want to check out the prices in the campsite Londis, where was the subject of some controversy last year over a €3.35 can of Coke. However, when I went past this morning there was a crazily long queue, and nothing a Londis can sell could induce me to queue for a Londis.

There’s no queue for the campsite Boots, however. It’s a very efficient system with a little form to fill out, and seats to wait on while they get your order ready. I buy dry shampoo for €2.49 for the sheer novelty, and now my hair smells really nice.

Phone charging at the campsites is done through very efficient powerbank vending machines. It costs €20 for unlimited powerbanks over the weekend, plus a €15 deposit.

Drink and whatever you are having yourself

Obviously step one if you are drinking is to bring your own into the campsite. There’s a 48-can limit per person in theory. Glass is banned so you would have to decant spirits into plastic if you were worried about that.

Going by Tesco prices on a beer picked at random (Carlsberg), 48 cans, if you wanted that many, would cost €84. Forty-eight cans is kind of a lot. And you would definitely also need to buy the aforementioned little trolley.

Rockshore (deep sigh), Carlsberg and Guinness are the main beers available at the bars and €7.50 is the price you will pay for lager. I live in Dublin, so I actually think this is pretty reasonable, presumably through some sort of economic inflation form of Stockholm syndrome.

Spirits and mixers will cost €10.50-€12. A can of Red Bull for the non-drinkers among us is €4.

I meet my friend who takes drugs. He says a bag of MDMA will set you back €50-60. Pills are a tenner. How long a bag of MDMA will last you depends, he says, on how young and hardy a partier you are and, of course, on whether you share.

Whether what you bought thinking it was MDMA is actually MDMA is also moot – several samples the HSE’s harm reduction team tested this weekend turned out to be synthetic stimulant 3-CMC.

The Journal does not endorse taking drugs. I meet on my travels one festival-goer whose bag had an unfortunate encounter with a garda on the way in, and we can only assume there were many more like him over the course of the weekend.

Random stuff to do

In the kid-friendly section of the festival there is loads for children to do that’s free – a zine-making workshop, a trad concert and an acorn-planting workshop are in session when I visit.

But if your child does want to go on the teacups, that will be €4. Face paint is €10, something called a “long bubble hair bobbin” is €20.

Over in the main arena there are also plenty of fairground rides for adults.

The grand total 

Assuming you pay €310 for a ticket plus €35 for early access but no fancy campsite upgrades; €140 on food and non-alcoholic drinks; €20 for phone charging; €50 for travel; and a cushion of €150 for sundry other items that may have had to be purchased in advance or over the course of the weekend, you’re looking at a bare minimum of just over €700.

Add in booze and fancier camping options, or needing to buy more stuff for camping before you set off, and obviously that total can quickly climb over €1,000.

Is it worth it? You either love festivals or you don’t – so you’ll have to decide for yourself.