Jodrell Bank Observatory Macclesfield reviews by real event-goers

Review of Bluedot Festival 2017

Family friendly festival which lots of interesting science-y things going on as well as music. Very relaxed and friendly. Sound from main stage not fantastic but the setting is great with the Lovell telescope lit up above you. Camp sites were good, toilets did not get as bad as they could have! SIte is a nice size, not too big but enough to keep you occupied. Orbital were absolutely awesome - so good to have them back. I would recommend this festival for families or for your first festival.

Review of Club Class Luxury Pass at Bluedot

Showers nice & hot . No sinks in the shower rooms ; no where to clean teeth , remove makeup etc ! Could do with maybe a bit more privacy around entrance to showers . Overall , good ; if you have a family you'll need a second mortgage to all use this !!!! ( they have the monopoly on keeping clean !)

Review of Bluedot Festival

Fantastic, friendly atmosphere, great acts, tickets great value

Review of Bluedot Festival

Beautuful , spacious venue but very poor signage and information on the day. Programmes containing all this were extra at £10 ! Online site/app equally difficult to manage day activities by. Very much a family day out kind of festival , not like anything I've been to before but Hay literary festival earlier this year quite similar We went for the day solely to see Leftfield perform Leftism - Amazing ! Was quite looking forward to catching some of the science and other events mentioned when we booked , but happy to leave afterwards as couldn't find a lot and see myself there for a whole weekend. Would really have loved to caught the celestials audio visual slot 11-3am after dark on the observatory though. Is that ever done as a one off thing . Would definitely attend and know quite a few other who would too.

Review of Bluedot Festival

Great, definitely be coming back

Review of Bluedot Festival

Great festival with a good variety of artists and science, all the bands seemed to fit so well with the 'theme' of the festival, the atmosphere was chilled and friendly. Had an awesome time, providing they can do as good a job with the line up next year, I'll be back.

Review of Bluedot Festival

A perfect mix of science for geeks and kids plus music for parents or non parents. Lovely friendly atmosphere - not enough crazies to worry the straights/kids. Quiet enough to sleep even when camped near Oatopia!
More drainage and toilets please, (though could have been worse).
Not enough equipment led to too much queueing for scheduled things inside the festival plus poor queue management (though this did improve).
Better traffic management needed for arrival, especially with the flower show nearby. Signage on the roads for example could start as far away as Preston.
Had a blast though, as did the 11yr old son with me, will rave about it to friends. Thank you.

Bluedot Festival - out of this world!

What an amazing venue, and the satellite as a backdrop made this a unique experience. The choice of artists went well with the place, and it didn't feel like a variation on a theme, as many festivals do now. I went without my kids, but will take them next time as it seemed very family orientated. The staff throughout the event were all really friendly, which is rare!

Review of Bluedot Festival

Went for the Saturday, first impressions really good. Took my boy and met with friends and their kids...loved the educational stuff and looked forward to the music. Liked the way the mud was negated with boards. Food was okay but queues were long (and for the bar) and prices were too high.
The cup idea was badly communicated and everyone felt a bit ripped off, but I guess it saves on litter so fair play.
Music was good but the tents were so close together you got a bad sound clash...DJ Shadow basically ruined Air's live set which was very disappointing (although I'm sure he didn't realise)!
Also the main stage wasn't well set out for kids/short people so they couldn't see the stage when it got busy.
They all noticed the smell of smoke (was actually w**d) all afternoon and especially at night.
Jean Michel Jarre was great and I'm glad they finally turned up the main stage volume for his show...was a shame the telescope didn't move while he was on for some great photos but it was still great.
Not sure about the other tent though, the 'special guest' seemed to be Will Tramp playing for a bit longer? Maybe they should have swapped tents with the one DJ Shadow was in, as that was dangerously mobbed and sweaty with big queues to get in/out, where as the other one was dead every time I looked in!
The BIG disappointment however was the car park/queue/coach fiasco! I'm sure everyone has already moaned by now but it was the worst I've ever seen...kids having to queue for over an hour at midnight in the dark with no info, no food/drink/toilet and people just pushing in all over the place...total chaos and definitely ruined the whole thing. We'll never go back on the strength of that experience!
All in all took us just over 90 minutes to get from running out of the venue (and missing Jarre's last tune to try and beat the crowd) to getting out of the car park via the coach, completely unacceptable at that time of night. God only knows what would have happened if the weather was bad, there would have been pandemonium!

Review of Bluedot Festival

The festival was good prices were ridiculous the main event for us was Jean Michel Jarre who was brill but there was other things going on in other tents which spoilt the show then when leaving venue we had a 2 hour wait in a very long queue to get a mini bus back to the car park this was very bad organisation don't think we will be attending any more events there in the future

Review of Bluedot Festival

A beautiful festival set in an amazing location right beneath Jodrell Bank Telescope, with a diverse selection of music ranging from Jean Michel Jarre and Underworld through to Steve Davis DJ'ing and a solo performance from Stone Rose guitarist Aziz Ibrahim. With many creative displays and imaginative productions based up science, nature and space. The Be One performance was a truly lovely highlight. Good music and good people.

Review of Bluedot Festival

Bluedot was a lot of fun and a lot of physical and mental effort. The program of music mixed with talks, science demos and other forms of entertainment kept me busy the whole time. The addition of the small Roots stage as a chill-out option was a good idea for when energy was running low. The food and drink offerings were excellent and not overpriced - I'd expect the same prices from any street-food vendors; the only thing that was missing was fruit. How did I live without the roast pork steamed dumplings from Dim Sun Su before this event? I'd also like to say that the pre-event magazine was a great idea but I only found mine completely by accident wandering around Manchester one afternoon - I would have liked to receive one automatically as a ticket holder but I suppose by then I was a captive audience. For the first time a festival of this size has been run everything seemed to go very smoothly indeed but there are a few things that could be finessed for next time.
1) the toilets and showers ( free and paid for) were simply not good enough. In particular the paid for showers and loos in the campsite ( advertised as 'luxury') were very below par compared to other festivals such as Latitude. The design was cramped and old fashioned leading to persistent uncleanliness and the staff were less than pro-active at keeping the facilities up to a basic standard. I was a campsite user from Friday to Monday morning and , despite paying for these 'luxuries', they were unavailable to me from 11 pm on the last night. This is just NOT ACCEPTABLE - people were still out clubbing until gone 2 am and if you stayed to the last note of the headline act you couldn't go to the loo with any form of confidence.
2) Post 11pm there needs to be more on offer than just DJs - there was a bit of comedy on Saturday night and it was very welcome.
3) It would have been nice if there had been an area in the campsite for people who wanted to sleep rather than bellow with their mates loudly for hours with a boombox. Full days at the festival paying attention to particle physics are exhausting enough and we needed some sleep.
4) They need to take a bit more care with the timing of various artists - the bass from the Orbit tent was seriously interfering with my enjoyment of Jean-Michel Jarre.
5) I thought the ban on camping chairs was silly and I also noticed it was relaxed as the weekend went on. Not everyone attending will be perfectly fit in their 20s and there really weren't enough seats for everyone who wanted one in the main arena. I am pretty fit but I have arthritic hips and need not to be sat on the floor - particularly a spongy field - for more than a few minutes.
6) the signage needed to be better when we left the festival in order to get to the car. I and my partner arrived pretty much as the festival gates opened and parked in the first open section of car park but when we left before 6 am on Monday morning our path back to that car park was obscured my a host of other parked cars and when we had wandered through these in the general direction of the first car park our path was blocked by fences - they need to split and sign each section of car park and put signs up to guide you back to where your car is so that you can get home.
7) The Orbit tent needs to ban smoking. It IS an enclosed space and it was immensely irritating to be in there with very many people smoking cigarettes, roll-ups, the full gamut of Vape stinks and w**d. I felt soiled by the experience.
But the festival was great - Girl Sweat Pleasure Temple Ritual certainly opened my eyes, Mercury Rev turn out to be more of a rock band than you would ever imagine and I'd gladly see Public Service Broadcasting every day of the week,

Review of Bluedot Festival

Great first festival at the site well organised with a good mix of music talks and environment. The arboretum was a real treat.

Review of Bluedot Festival

Fantastic

Review of Bluedot Festival

Overall the festival was enjoyable and well organised. The food outlets were excellent as were the beer tents. Maybe there could be additional installations to lessen the 1 hour 45 minutes we queued on Sunday for admission to the Luminarium. The entrance fee of £49.50 should include a programme without the additional expense of £10. however, my main issue was the ticket for the carpark: I bought 2 tickets online for my partner (who lives elsewhere) and myself and my partner took care of the tickets. A friend informed me that her tickets had arrived in the post , which included a carpark ticket. My partner said there were only 2 festival tickets but no carpark ticket and so I bought a carpark ticket online from Skiddle. However, we realised almost immediately that the blue shaped card was the carpark ticket and I quickly informed Skiddle of my mistake- a refund is a long time materialising. There is NO INDICATION on the blue shaped card that it is the carpark ticket.

Review of Bluedot Festival

Quite simply the best weekend of our lives - joe (12) Paul (48)

Review of Bluedot Festival

Most family friendly festival I've ever been to, clean, good food and excellent music.

Review of Bluedot Festival

Well organised. Secure camp it good food and coffee. Excellent variety of lectures by passionate experts. Brian Cox, Jean Michel Jarre ( pity the dish failed for the light show) but a good fix provided using Enos moving graphics. In all very very good. A lot of same sounding bands. Jodrell bank as a venue is an excellent !

Review of Bluedot Festival

Excellent family friendly festival. It's like music meets Star Trek convention. Hope it's on next year.

Review of Bluedot Festival

Fantastic family friendly new festival! Great atmosphere, plenty to see and do in the Star Field Science Festival away from the music stages. Arboretum was a beautiful space to relax in and room for kids to run around with a roots acoustic music stage to chill out to. Highly recommend for next time!