9 Things to Prepare for Moonrise Festival

Moonrise Festival is back at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore for its 2017 edition, running August 12th and 13th, and if you’ve never been, it’s grown into one of the bigger stops on the East Coast festival circuit. Insomniac took over as the lead promoter alongside local partners Club Glow and Steez Promo, and the lineup this year is stacked top to bottom with Afrojack, Porter Robinson, Zeds Dead, Madeon, Carnage, Run The Jewels and a ton more across the weekend. Whether this is your first Moonrise or your fifth, here are 9 things you need to prepare for before you head out.

1. First and foremost, we all need to be sure to have purchased all of the essentials: tickets, hotel (or Airbnb), parking pass, etc.

2. Always stay hydrated!

3. Check out the set times, research the undercards and enjoy the afternoon artists before the night’s headliners.

4. Understand that Chet Porter is neither Chet Faker, nor Porter Robinson.

5. You would not believe your eyes, Said The Sky‘s at Moonrise.

[Editor’s note: the original SoundCloud embed here relied on a widget format our current platform silently strips, and we weren’t able to confirm the exact track it pointed to in order to swap in a working link, so we’ve pulled the broken embed rather than guess.]

6. Have our “Road to Moonrise” playlist downloaded for your car ride to the festival.

7. Mentally prepare your feelings for the emotional roller coaster as Porter Robinson’s live show. (I’m ready!!)

8. Physically prepare for two Carnage sets. Yes, your body needs to be ready for not only one state of Carnage, but two: Saturday and Sunday. (Is this .gif the right Carnage?)

9. And lastly, (likely more important than anything else) remember to avoid social media on Sunday night to assure you don’t accidentally read any Game of Thrones spoilers…

We hope to see you there!

For a little more context heading in: Moonrise almost didn’t happen at all. Back in 2013 the original permits for the festival’s planned Port Covington site fell through and the event got cancelled outright before it ever happened. It regrouped in 2014 at Pimlico Race Course with a crowd north of 30,000, and it’s grown into a Baltimore summer tradition every year since. So if this year’s production feels a little more dialed in than you’d expect, that’s a few years of the promoters figuring out exactly what a Baltimore EDM weekend should look like.

Cover Photo: Moonrise Festival