All The Questions We Still Have After Watching The Fyre Festival Documentary

"Fyre"

So we have finished watching Fyre Festival: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, but we’re not sure if we will ever be done talking about it. Here are 5 questions we have after watching the documentary, which revealed just how much of a fail Fyre Festival really was.

Did the poor fools who paid thousands for tickets ever get their money back?

The short answer is… no. Although there was an online form for ticketholders to request a refund, no one received any money back from the festival organizers. Obviously this is because there was no money to give. Some people managed to get money back from their banks, but generally speaking, everyone is still waiting to get their money back.

Where did the money come from to begin with?

At the start of the documentary, the organizers seem to have endless amounts of money to throw at the festival. First, they buy an island. Next, they invite some of the biggest international supermodels to the island to promote the festival. There were yachts, an open bar, jet skis and one hell of a promotional video. Later on, McFarland allegedly paid Kendal Jenner $250,000 for one promotional post on Instagram. So where did the money come from?

Most of the money came from McFarland’s start-up credit card money, Magnises. After that ran out, he exchanged promises of money and started selling imaginary add-ons to unsuspecting ticket-holders.

Why was there so much footage?

Surely if a festival is going that wrong, you’d want to keep it under wraps not shoot the disaster for all to see? It turns out they wanted to document the evolution of the festival, not realizing they’d instead be documenting its extinction.

Did the local workers ever get paid?

The documentary would have almost been hilarious if it was only a handful of uppity Instagrammers that got screwed over. When restaurant owner Maryann Rolle shed tears in front of the camera, admitting she handed out $50,000 from her own pocket to pay her workers, our hearts broke. Luckily, the Netflix documentary resulted in a Go Fund Me page which reimbursed her and the rest of the workers.

At what point did it all go wrong?

This is difficult to answer because things seemed to go wrong at every single stage. A big fail was when they lost the paradise island, but it was McFarland’s consistent over-promising and misuse of the budget which ultimately lead the festival’s failure.

You can watch the documentary on Netflix now.