There’s something particularly cruel about a festival selling “home.” That was the promise of Home Bass Orlando – it wasn’t supposed to be just another EDM weekend trip, but a safe after party for ravers after Orlando’s EDC festival happening November 7-9 2025. A hotel takeover. A family reunion. A place where PLUR wasn’t just a slogan, but the entire branding.

At Hard Launch, we got a tip from someone with direct ties to Brian Thomas, the head of operations at Home Bass on Tuesday, November 4th, 2025 stating “Home Bass went tits up…it’s a Hail Mary saving face.” Confused, we asked for clarification — especially since the event had already changed venues from the DoubleTree to Westgate Lakes. “He didn’t pay the venue” was blankly stated. So we were not surprised at all when we saw the statement put out by the official Home bass Instagram page:

And fans were not happy…

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Just days before the cancellation, Home Bass was still promoting sold-out room packages at Westgate Lakes, reassuring ravers that everything was on track like nothing behind the scenes was burning down.

The anonymous person then stated “Basically went Fyre Festival…if he throws it again next year it will be a miracle”. And boy is that the truth. The whole situation is starting to feel eerily familiar… the kind of familiar that still leaves a sour taste in the cultural memory.

Fyre Festival familiar.

Back in 2017, Fyre promised luxury villas, yacht parties, gourmet meals, and Instagram-worthy paradise. What guests got was a humanitarian crisis with soggy mattresses, FEMA tents, cold cheese sandwiches, and luggage thrown into a parking lot. Influencer-backed dreams turned to dust in real time.

Home Bass isn’t Fyre-level disaster — no storm-drenched disaster camps or private island logistics collapse — but it does echo the same core failure: A festival that wasn’t ready, didn’t have the infrastructure, and left real human beings to eat the consequences.

Because behind the memes and “ravers stranded in Orlando” tweets, there are stories of:

Fans traveling across the country with nowhere to stay
Credit cards maxed out from last-minute hotel replacements
Sponsors waiting to be refunded
Local workers left in limbo
Community spaces lost overnight

Festivals know that rave culture is built on community — on belonging. That’s why this hurts. Home Bass failed at the one thing they marketed the hardest: Home, a sanctuary, and a safe space.

What’s happening with Home Bass isn’t an isolated “oops, bad planning” moment. It’s part of the larger unraveling of the festival ecosystem, especially within EDM and rave culture. Here’s the truth most organizers won’t say out loud:

Rave culture grew out of community…

EDM festival culture now runs on extraction.

Over the last five years:

Ticket prices skyrocketed
VIP “experiences” replaced culture
Brand partnerships replaced local crews
Headliners got more expensive while openers got cheaper
And most importantly: festivals stopped being built for ravers — and started being built for Instagram

You can see the shift:

- Warehouse collectives, local DJs, $10 cover
- PLUR: peace, love, unity, respect
- Community-driven
- Safety + mutual care
- Built slowly, sustainably
- $400+ festival passes, hotel buyouts
- PLUR™ as an aesthetic, not a value
- Sponsor-driven
- Overcrowded, understaffed medical teams
- Built quickly, marketed aggressively

Home Bass marketed itself as the cure to this shift: No parking lots, no stadium bleachers, and a community hotel takeover curated by ravers for ravers. But the thing about branding your festival as family is you don’t get to treat your audience like customers when things go wrong... and of course that’s what happened. When events try to scale faster than their infrastructure, investors, or staff can sustain, the math collapses. And when the math collapses, organizers cut corners. And when corners get cut, safety, housing, and communication are always the first to go.

Not because the festivals intended to fail — they sold a dream they didn’t have the resources to deliver.