Dallas

Concertgoers Pay Thousands for Fyre Festival That Wasn't Prepared

The Fyre Festival was supposed to be a music festival of luxury. But concertgoers arrived to the venue in The Bahamas to find tents and cheese sandwiches.

Promotions for the event promised a beautiful island with relaxing beaches and musical performances. Many of those attending spent thousands of dollars for the luxury music festival.

Entertainer Ja-Rule is even one of the promoters.

One Dallas woman says when she arrived, nothing was as it was promoted to be.

Farah Benghozi, a Dallas art student, saved up for the weekend festival in paradise with family and friends. She was promised a beach side lodge but says she was told to find a tent in a field. Inside was just a small mattress. There was no furniture, no power, not even bed sheets.

"Our blankets were our towels. They had an area with cheap furniture, and they're like, 'Take this and decorate your tent,'" Benghozi told NBC 5 Responds.

Word quickly started to circulate on social media from festival goers, saying that their expectations didn't meet reality.

The island is full of tents and boxes full of equipment not set up in time for the festival.

The all-inclusive meals provided to festival goers was simply bread, cheese and lettuce.

Those who made it to the island just wanted to leave, but even that was a pain.

Benghozi sat on a plane and then in an airport for 12 hours while the festival organizers tried to find a charter pilot to get them home. They got her to Miami, where she scraped up cash for a room of her own and will spend the weekend there before flying back to North Texas.

Now the Fyre Festival website is nothing more than a statement, part of which says the "physical infrastructure was not in place on time" and they're "working tirelessly to get flights scheduled to get everyone off" the island.

NBC 5 Responds reached out to the U.S. State Department, which said it is monitoring the situation and stands ready to provide appropriate services to any U.S. citizen in need.

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