ORLANDO, Fla. — Electronic Dance Music (EDM) fans who flocked to a Universal-area hotel over Labor Day weekend are now demanding refunds after they were caught in a payment battle between a festival organizer and the hotel.
The “DirtyBird CampINN,” which has been held since 2021, bought out the entire DoubleTree by Hilton resort near the theme park. The hotel buy-out features a lengthy list of DJs playing sets in almost every corner of the resort, from the pool to conference rooms to the rooms themselves.
Tickets, paid directly to the organizer, range from a few hundred dollars to attend the party to $1,800 or more to stay at the hotel. The resort can hold thousands of people.
“It goes like all day, all night, pretty much like for the entire weekend,” DeAnn Harris, who drove to town from Jacksonville, said.
Harris and other attendees said when they arrived at the hotel to begin the party, the check-in desk dropped a bomb on them: they would have to pay for their rooms again because the organizer never paid the hotel.
She said some people could not afford the $1,000 hold on their credit cards and slept in their cars, while the hotel promised to release the hold if the organizer, Music Festival Trips, paid in full.
Weeks later, Harris and others said they’re still waiting.
“It’s always a mixed story,” Harris said, “It’s coming, it’s coming. We’re fixing it.”
Another attendee, Anthony Ferreiro, shared emails from Music Festival Trips that initially claimed the organizer had paid the hotel and refunds would be on the way, which the hotel refuted in a now-deleted Facebook post. Another email sent on September 16 claimed Music Festival Trips was still waiting on an itemized bill from the resort.
“We are a dedicated community who want our story to be heard and the people who have wronged us to be held responsible,” Ferreiro said.
Both expressed concern that Music Festival trips continued to promote and sell tickets to its other Orlando event, Home Bass, which is similarly styled and held on the same weekend as Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) Orlando.
The event’s website said Home Bass would be held at the same hotel as CampINN, but hotel management said they would not be hosting the event.
Music Festival Trips did not respond to a request for comment.
“It’s just not fair to us,” Harris said. “It’s just very wrong that he’s doing this and leading people on and selling something that nobody got.”
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