Lookalikefestival Reviews 

I went to the Newark Showground Lookalike event on August 18th 2024.
Pre-booked parking wasn’t an issue at all, I parked near the entrance and there were plenty of stewards and guidance.
Entry was quick and easy and included thorough bag searches - the ‘no food, no drink’ rule was adhered to whether festival goers liked it or not!
This is where it all goes downhill. The stage was in, what I can only describe as, a giant aircraft hangar. It was huge, grey and miserable with people sat around all over the place on folding chairs. The acoustics were awful and there was no atmosphere at all.
Still, we had VIP tickets so things were about to look up. Er, no.
The VIP area was at the front, where, admittedly, the sound was better, but was still dire. The VIP folding seating area was outside, in a car park. Yes, a car park. It truly was awful. I’d imagined the stage would be outside, on the grass, with festival goers also sitting on the grass, as is the case normally. The weather was very pleasant so no need for it to be indoors.
The choice of food and drink was also poor. I was driving but was at least expecting to be able to drink 0% beer or cider but the only alcohol free drinks were water, coke or lemonade. Not much choice if you’re there from midday to 10pm.
The food outlets were standard, two burgers and chips were £32.
Lastly, the bands. I missed David Bowie so obviously can’t comment. Elton John was entertaining, looked the part and sounded pretty good.
Oaces (yes, really) were okay, very loud but no mistaking who they were.
Spice Girls looked the part but did not sound the part. Their off-key singing was wince making.
The last band we saw was The Beatles. Oh dear. Having seen a different Beatles tribute a few weeks ago (who were excellent), I had high hopes but this lot were not good. Again, off-key with poor harmonising.
Enough was enough at this point. We decided to cut our losses and not stay for Abba or Queen. They may have been brilliant, I’ll never know.
I certainly wouldn’t go to this event again, I’ve been to similar festivals elsewhere and had a great time but this was extremely poor and disappointing.

This is the worst thing I have ever attended.

They're not bands, there's morr talent in the local drunk dad karaoke.

Zero communication. Do hot respond to emails.
Line up released the day before the event and 50% of the bands were not there on the actual day.

Absoulte scam.

How can you advertise Newark as an “outdoor” festival when it was in a “hanger”. We came last year and had an amazing day “outside” next door on the grass! Last year the sound was amazing, the best we’d heard at any festival for years. This year the bands were good but the sound was terrible away from the stage at the other end of the “hanger”. Come on don’t belittle us again and get it outside next year! No excuses!

An absolute joke!
If you want to spend all day in a scummy, filthy, soulless hangar eating extrotionately-priced poor quality burgers, drinking instant coffee, with a choice of just 2 different over-priced beers, listening to muffled karaoke, breathing in other people's vape smoke while kids kick footballs around then this is the event for you!
Definitely wasn't the event for us. Never again. What an absolute rip-off!

Would give zero if I could. Dirty dusty car park with a few food trucks and 1 ride.
One indoor stage. Gross toilets, honesty don’t know how that can anything for a ticket. Acts are not even that good to make up for the poor organisation…

WARNING: Scammers: DO NOT USE:
Do not buy tickets from Skiddle or these event organisers. Regular rescheduled events last minute with no refunds issued. Skiddle used as booking platform do not issue refunds either. Refunds processed and approved, but you WILL NOT receive your refund. Do not use. Fake. FRAUD. Scammers.
Direct contact made and still no refund.
Will be taking this matter further.

Recently attended the Look a Like festival at Earlham park, Norwich.
This event is a disgrace. It is advertised as a family friendly event however you cannot take in any food or drink except unopened water.
The first tribute was playing before we even got bin and as the queues we huge had finished before we got in!!
There were only 3 food stalls catering for many thousands of people!!! Queues for 3 hrs for cheesy chips! No healthy options nor catering for children.
Only non alcohol drink we were offered was coke or lemonade poured from a bottle into a small cup for £3 and flat! No juices, nothing. Coffee machine had packed up so they were boiling a kettle (for the whole festival) and told there was an hour wait for it.. laughable.
Bands and acts were ok but huge gaps in between and no idea who was on next until they turned up! No line-up list published. (Perhaps they had realised this was crap and didn't want to commit?). Between and during there were two fairground rides next to the stage and were oftenmlouded than the music on stage. Oh.. Spice Girls were a shambles and awful. Oasis, Queen and Abba were tollerable . However many had left before the end.
Just an expensive gathering of nice people in a field chatting with occasional.music in the background for most of the day until the evening. How families with children or anyone with dietary needs coped, who knows..
We attend numerous festivals and gigs and have done so for 50 years plus... this makes and probably the worst due to poor catering, facilities, line upland excessive costs. Avoid...
Never never never again...

Awful. The organisers (if you can call them that) provided zero information until a couple of hours before the event started and didn’t reply to any questions via email or social media channels. There was no parking, no info about the line up and set times, no information about what food outlets were on site so not sure if they were able to deal with dietary requirements - but you couldn’t take you own! I had so little faith in their ability to run a safe and enjoyable event that I didn’t attend and forfeited my ticket. Having read the other reviews I believe I made a sensible decision. Not surprisingly there’s no-where on their website where you can lodge a complaint. Please steer clear of anything being run by these people.

Not impressed with the advertised "Food Trucks" which resulted in 1 truck, 1 catering trailer and a pop-up tent! Pizza, burgers or noodles. I have food allergies and nothing was catered for gluten free/yeast free/diary free and other allergies. Extremely poor. Son qued for 2.5hrs for a pizza which was pretty poor quality. Caterers food handling could be so much better and basically more staff was needed to help serve! Was ridiculous! Parking ticket cancelled within 24hrs with no explanation and on arrival to Norwich, to signs to venue or which carpark venue parking was permitted! Nearly parked in sports centre carpark which was £5phr! If you do not allow food on entry, you MUST cater for all and have more food trucks to cut down waiting times which were a joke!!! We go to many festivals and concerts and this really was the worse. Definitely won't be going again and would not recommend. Only a couple of acts were good, others were rubbish. Basically don't waste your time. Refund please would be appreciated.

GREAT bands who gave it their all but what a shame the rest of the festival let them down & when you read bad reviews it’s NOT about the bands!
It’s the hideously long queues for food & not enough stalls, the over priced drinks and for a family event only 2 rides for the kids & nothing else for them to do.
VIP was a joke, it was worse than having a normal ticket.
Shame on you Norwich Council for allowing this kind of event to be so badly executed.
I would rather have paid more for my ticket and had better facilities or been able to bring own food and drink.

I booked 4 early bird tickets (2 standard and 2 VIP) plus a parking permit for this event. A day before the festival I received an email to say the parking was no longer available and I would receive a refund (I am still waiting and will be chasing this up!). Thankfully one of our party lived fairly close so we parked at her house and got someone to drop us off at the venue.

The queue to get in was longer for the VIP ('Queue jump') than for the Standard ticket holders so we all went in as Standard. This doesn't seem fair to those that paid for a VIP experience.

On arrival we noticed there was only one stall selling hot drinks and I panicked that this will cause an issue later as it was the same queue for the draught beer. This was not an issue later (see below).

The toilets were clean and serviced regularly - better than some I have experienced at other festivals. However there was a foul stench of urine in front of the stage area so maybe people at the Save The Rave event the night before (organised by the same company) didn't bother to make it to the portaloos!

There was no list of acts or timeline for the day - the first act (David Bowie) was excellent but I felt sorry for him as he didn't have much of an audience with people still making their way onto the site. Other highlights were Elton John and Oasis.

The food was the main issue. It was made clear that no food or drink was allowed (just an empty bottle to fill with water on site). However, when we got to the festival we were told in the queue we could take in a full sealed bottle of water. The water on site was disgusting and had a nasty chemical after taste. There were only 3 food vendors (BBQ, Noodles or Pizza). Luckily we got some food not long after we arrived as before long the queues had become out of control with some people having to queue for over 2hrs for food! I am amazed there were no sweet options that are normally very popular at festivals (doughnuts, churros or even an ice-cream van!) By 7pm we had to leave as I am diabetic and need to eat regularly and I could not stand and queue for 2+hrs for food.

I will not be booking tickets in future unless the festival is run by an experienced firm that know what they are doing and all details regarding line-ups, parking what you can take in is made clear from the outset.

OK, the good. The acts, that we saw, were very good, no issues there. We left after 'The Beatles' though, for starvation reasons, see later! The area round the stage stank of urine though...maybe from the Rave event the day before.

The toilets were also good, having been to a few such festivals, were being cleaned throughout, no issues there.

Now the bad.

We had parking tickets, which were cancelled the day before, with no explanation, yet there were cars in the main car park. So that was a bad start, must have caused chaos in the local roads.

When we arrived before the event, the queuing was chaotic with many people not in VIP (which it wasn't from what I could see) in that queue.

We read the rules before and therefore bought in an empty water bottle, to be told that actually, you were allowed a sealed water bottle in, all this while you were queuing, all quite aggressively by a security man marching up the line of people. The water when we did find at the event was chemical tasting, not very nice.

The food and drink were a joke. The worst I have seen ever. A MASSIVE bar area, that had almost no queues all day, probably because people were in much larger food ones...this must have cost the bar takings a lot, unheard of at a festival to have no bar queues. However, just 3 food stalls, pizza (takes ages), noodles and a burger place but only one place that sold coffee and tea And (I still can't believe this, but true), absolutely zero 'sweet' options on that site - no churro's, donuts, ice cream, the stuff that always sells well at festivals, in the summer in the case of ice cream. Zero. Crazy. There was a WK Bar, with almost no custom, they shut early, and easily space for more vendors.

We did eat quite early and so had a short queue then, but then the problems started. Massive hundred or more long queues snaking all round, some into the places where people were trying to watch acts, causing some people to move seats, no organisation of queues at all, never mind making sure there are enough food vendors, if you do 'ban' people bringing in food.

I estimate the queues at each food stall were at least 1.5 hours and maybe more. The burger and chips we had were good though and the price reasonable. But just not enough choices.

We left early from hunger, reckoning we would have zero chance of getting any more food.

The queues were just as bad when we left. Never again will I go to a festival run by these jokers, this is a replacement for Lets Rock? Having recently been to Latitude and Audley End, those places were well run and properly staffed. A million miles from these folk. go at your peril in 2025 if you dare...

This is the worst organised festival that I have ever attended. Prior to the event accessibility information was released only hours before entry. My husband had tried to organise the facilities that I required (blue badge parking, PA ticket, information on accessible entry) but was passed between companies, none of which could help or bothered to respond.
We arrive at the entrance to a huge queue, with no signage for accessible entry. I asked a member of the security staff for help with this, he pointed me in the direction I needed to go in. On my way to the accessible entrance I had to hobble past many tutting, red faced, balding and bitter men who thought it would be helpful to comment that if they “had brought their stick, they could cut the queue too.” It felt incredibly degrading.

The security staff did not allow anyone to bring food in (which is ridiculous and feels rather discriminatory if you have special dietary requirements!) A lady I was chatting to amongst the hoards of people leaving this s**tshow early told me that she had tried to bring in some snacks as she is diabetic and the security guard looked her up and down and commented that she “didn’t look diabetic”

We then found a nice patch of grass to sit down on, but had to move around a lot as then came the boomer brigade with camping chairs setting them up on our laps. No consideration to anyone else or their view.

1 disabled toilet for the whole event, which had no staff manning it or even a radar key so that was pretty pointless for disabled people needing urgent use of the facilities.

I need to time food with my medications, which was impossible with a 2 hour queue for any food. I nearly fainted in the queue, and once at the noodle place was disgusted to see the young man working there fondling the food with his bare hands. The food was cold, expensive and made me feel quite queasy. A rather angry boomer complained that the noodles were “s**t” and “not worth 15 quid”, to which the young man working the stall shouted back at him “you shouldn’t have bought them if you didn’t like them!” he then called the customer a c**t, which in my opinion the customer obviously was a c**t but as staff you should keep those opinions to yourself. The young man working the stall then left for a cigarette break, whilst the queue was over 2hrs long at this point.

I had to leave shortly after this. As a disabled attendant I felt so overwhelmingly saddened that it was just so inaccessible by design and the people there were just so rude.

The musicians were great and deserved a much better audience than the copious amounts of angry red-faced balding berks and the Pinot pisshead Karens in camp chairs.

Despite leaving early, I could hear Queen playing from home which was confusing as I couldn’t hear the music over the Waltzers whilst I was there.

Badly organised. Staff young and having a great time. Families with crying children and everyone else STARVING . Only 3 food vendors for the amount of people there??????
Some of us never stopped queuing the whole time. No availability of any food, can’t leave, can’t take it in ( fair enough)Average queue time for any of the 3 vendors ( grill/ noodles/ pizza) 3 hours!!!! Staff wandering around eating their own brought in food . Weather was great should have been amazing festival. Been to many festivals, this was provisional and money making. No effort to make experience fun for kids. Waltzer £5 so we did it once then it was empty rest of the day .

I spent the day at Norwich Look- a-like festival yesterday having purchased 2 x VIP tickets lat December costing me £49 each!!
Here is my feedback.
All bands were great!!
VIP section was rubbish!!
Queue jump for VIP was non existent!! Friends without VIP tickets got in before us and we arrived together!!
Only a handful of deckchairs for 100s of people!!
Had to watch gig through a wire mesh fence!!
No red wine in any of the bars!
Bottle of Vodka on sale for £160!!
Just 3 food outlets for approx 5000 people!! Queues were massive , some people waited for 1 hour 40 mins for a pizza (crazy)
VIP ladies toilets were disgusting!!
I spoke to people who were upgraded to VIP on the gate for free!!
VERY Poor organisation
Will not be returning!!

Just home from the Norwich event. Absolutely awful! Complete disorganised disaster. If you want to que for 2 hours at one of the 3 food vans then this is for you. You aren’t allowed to take anything in not even water so your options are limited. 6 tribute acts spread out over 10 hours with each not doing more than an hour on stage. It ended with a Queen act where the Freddy Mercury hardly sang preferring to give it up to the crowd. I’m not sure if he had voice issues through illness but it wasn’t good! People were actually asleep! So many people walked out of the venue early on with a big exodus before and during the final act. Every time we turned around to look behind us there was more gone!
Literally everyone we spoke to saying how bad it was. I got speaking to a lady who had tried to get a pitch for her food stall and was turned down so they could have done so much more to cater but the event organisers clearly didn’t want to engage with other local caterers. It seems this is more of a travelling circus than an actual event. Expensive waste of money £10 a very small portion of dirty fries, £6 for a small wine no red wine available, £25 for a bottle of wine and £5 for a bottle of coke. They ran out of wine anyway!

Absolute waste of money - average bands - long gaps in between acts - not allowed to bring food in but only 3 food stalls! Ridiculous queues for food. No handwashing facilities at the toilets - we left early and will not book again.
Also this is similar feedback to what they received last year but obviously they have not taken any notice as things are as bad as they were last year apparently!

2 hour queue for food - only 3 food trucks and SO expensive. Drinks really expensive too - £3 for water. VIP queue to get in was much longer than standard entry tickets. VIP area was on the side, behind a wire fence - couldn't see all of the stage. Early acts sang better but they all looked the part. Won't bother again.

Disgusting really even food stalls should be shut down. 3 food stalls in norwich event, everyone is queueing for nearly 2 hours just for overpriced dirty food. Got to the front of the oriental noodles stall to see the servers handling the food with there bare hands and one of the women even licked her fingers after it dipped in someones pot of sauce and then continued serving. No gloves in sight or even of them washing there hands. Just a scummy event robbing people of money and not even allowing people in with there own booze let alone food!!. Acts are average and really long intervalls in between. VIP is a waste of time cant even see the main stage.

Bought 2 tickets at cost of £52. Tickets came with no information about parking, order of acts, or what attendees can and cannot bring onto event grounds. The event goes on for 10 hours so we brought picnic with 6-pack of sealed soft drinks but were told at entrance we could not bring either food or drinks in. Disgraceful to ask people to pay for food and drinks for a full-day event, especially those with conditions such as diabetes or allergies. Through the fences we could see the queues for food stalls were massive. Hardly any people there and I understand why. This event is nothing but a scam.