Pepsi Gulf Coast Jam — Local services in Panama City Beach

This year was my first year and I’m hooked. I’m coming here because I’m seeing a lot of negative review elsewhere and want to share my take. This is a FESTIVAL, not tickets to go see your favorite major article like Morgan wallen on his own personal tour. It seems a lot of people can’t understand the difference. Festival think Woodstock, Coachella, electric Daisy etc… it’s a free for all there are going to be movers and shakers and those having a really good time. General admission in my opinion is great (as is VIP if you want to pay that much) but that does not mean guaranteed seats. People seem to think getting there early and leaving chairs out guarantees you a spot and no one can go in front of you? No this is not how a festival works. The many suggestions about setting up lanes seems a bit hard to do, because poodle are also complaining about security… well without them who would enforce those lanes? Again this is people looking for a concert venue and this is not it. People complaining about food prices… yea.. good prices are high. And they are totally in line with any other festival or fair food anywhere, and there was a deep variety ranging from fair food to Asian food and Italian… for some that is not enough variety? I love the big screens in the middle, please don’t change that. One good suggestion I did see would be adding screens towards the back and I agree that would be good but you may not in fear people would congregate there and in reality that would really clog up all the waiting areas for everything else. Now that I have addressed some of the complaints others are making I just want to say as someone who understands a festival Vs a concert this was well done. Yes you were packed but I felt everything ran smoothly and all your staff and vendors did their very best which was excellent. You have an amazing line up of huge artists (please bring Miranda back next year with Morgan), your location is great and parking was not as hard as people made it seem. I parked offsite at pier park or at my Airbnb a mile away and I enjoyed the bit of a walk, police were helpful in getting us across the main intersections. Wrist bands were convenient, entry ran smooth. Is a great time and we are already looking forward...

The good:

-The music is AWESOME, the band is fantastic and the artists put on great shows.

The bad:

-Overworked and unfriendly staff

-There’s supposed to be “water stations” where you can fill up an empty water bottle to hydrate after baking in the sun all day. I was told about the location of just one which was clear across the festival grounds from where I sat.

-There really should be a third row of speakers because the music gets very difficult to hear from the back of the festival grounds.

-Aside from the fact that I didn’t think there were enough restrooms. The only way to get to them was to exit the venue and then to come back you have to wait in line and go through security again.

-The seating situation is a disorganized mess and needs to be regulated better. People are allowed to take up as much space as they want. Whether they have their belongings there or not.

This is definitely the most poorly coordinated event I’ve ever been to and I don’t have much of a desire to come back. I’ve left out other comments like food prices, parking, traffic, all things you can expect from a...

Terrible terrible organization and a huge lack of attentive/caring security especially on the FINAL NIGHT OF THE SHOW. On the final night, with the largest headliner of the show, there were little to no police on foot around the event grounds. additionally, the amount of people I watched hop over an unguarded area and sneak in without wristbands was insane. For a festival with 30 thousand plus people per night you would at least expect the safety and standards to be held a lot higher. Not to mention the amount of people trying to tip over the toilets while people were in them. As well as absolutely no cell signal at all. I understand with such a high number of people having an adequate amount of security and making everyone happy is not be as easy as it normally would be, but with the way the world is today the safety especially should be the #1 priority ALWAYS. I will not be back. If you want a very well organized/fun country festival in the state checkout Country Thunder in Kissimmee. What an...