This past weekend, the inaugural Okeechobee Music and Arts Festival took place with over 40 artist performing. It was a huge opening weekend as the festival sold out of tickets and the festival has already begun plans for 2017. But like with any festival, it had its pros and cons. There are definitely some improvements that could be made next year.

For one, the camping sites were a serious walk away from the performers. Outside of a select few, the walk there and back could be as long as a mile and a half. Also, the festival seemed to have a severe shortage of soap, so if you’re planning on going bring hand sanitizer with you. There were a few issues with the actual set up of the festival as well.

The festival was divided into three sections: the stages, the “city” (where food trucks and art vendors were set up), and camping. The issue with this was that the entrance to the stages was extremely small and large masses of crowds had to be filled into lines only four people wide. This was for security purposes, but it was still quite the inconvenience to have to wait in such a large line. Someone would have to show up for a show a half hour early just to make it to the stage on time.

Outside of these issues, the festival was extremely well put together. The artists were phenomenal with Miguel, Hall & Oats, Future, and Kendrick Lamar all putting on historic performances that were 100% unique to the festival. Mac Miller came out for a surprise appearance during Miguel’s performance to play their hit single “Weekend.” Miller also came on stage for Kendrick Lamar’s performance of his song “Alright.” Skrillex came out for the Powow (Miguel and John Oates performing together) to play a guitar solo. The festival was full of surprises and surely put itself on the map as a premier music festival to attend.