First Day of Roots Picnic Was an “Absolute Disaster,” Fans Say
Epically long waits and a total breakdown in communication and organization have people furious.
Scenes from the massive line outside the Roots Picnic
As somebody who writes about restaurants a fair amount, I like to say that you can have the most amazing James Beard Award-winning food ever, but if your hostess is nasty when I walk in or you seat me at 7:30 p.m. for my 7 p.m. reservation or it takes me 20 minutes to get my first drink (or, God forbid, all of the above — it’s happened), I couldn’t care less about your confit this or en croute that. And it sounds like the first day of the Roots Picnic in Philadelphia was the live concert version of this apocalyptic scenario.
“It was an absolute disaster,” says South Jersey mental health therapist Lauren Brown. “We had seen an announcement earlier in the day that they were postponing opening until 2 p.m., so we got there at 2 p.m. And we didn’t get into the venue until 7:01 p.m.”
Hey fam — due to the heavy storms that hit the Philly area over the last 24–48 hours, the festival grounds took on a lot of mud and flooding. It created some real safety hazards, and we couldn’t open the gates until we made sure everything was solid for y’all.
The good news: the schedule has been adjusted so you won’t miss a single act we promised. We’re just shifting things back to make sure everyone still gets the full experience.
Appreciate your patience and understanding while we do what we gotta do to keep it safe and unforgettable. We promise we’ll make up for it — welcome to the Picnic!
But Brown says there was no one outside communicating to the huge crowd of fans what was happening.
She took this video at 5:01 p.m.:
“We would see these staffers outside and ask them questions, but they would just say, ‘I have no idea,'” Brown recalls. “So I have no idea what their purpose was. We weren’t allowed to bring chairs, so there was nowhere to sit, and I have back and knee issues, and we didn’t see any bathrooms or trash cans, so everybody was just throwing their stuff on the ground while we were waiting out there for hours and hours.”
As Brown explains it, there was a massive, wide crowd of people standing around outside “in line” but then they all had to bottleneck through a relatively small number of metal detectors, and, as you would guess, some people who had only been there for an hour or two managed to get ahead of people, like Brown, who had been waiting all day.
“There was no organization of any kind,” Brown says. “Absolutely zero.”
Brown says she paid $400 per ticket plus fees for a two-day “general admission-plus” pass. I asked her what the “plus” was all about.
“You’re supposed to have some special privileges,” she says. “But I didn’t see nothing special about it. Quite the opposite.”
She’s already disputed the ticket charges with her credit card company.
“Oh, make no mistake,” Brown tells me. “I will be getting a refund. It’s good that I’m a therapist. I have good coping skills. Otherwise, I might have blown something up.”
Baltimore non-profit leader Val Jenkins drove up to Philadelphia with some of her organization’s volunteers to see what the Roots Picnic was all about.
“My daughter went two years in a row and said she would never go again because it was very poorly run,” says Jenkins. “But I thought to myself, how bad could it be? Now I know. Very poorly run is an understatement. The VIP line must have been three times longer than the general admission line. Explain that to me. How is your VIP line three times longer than general admission?”
Jenkins says she saw one woman who was waiting in line for hours pass out and fall on the ground.
“This is a picnic and one of the main things about a picnic is the blessing of food,” Jenkins says. “But there was no food for those of us waiting out there in line for hours and hours. Maybe that woman was diabetic and needed to eat. Who knows? It was just wrong.”
Jenkins bought a two-day general admission pass and insisted she wouldn’t be using the second day of her pass.
“Why would I go back for a second day of the same bullshit?” she told me.
Jenkins posted the following on TikTok on Sunday morning:
@valjenkins1 #rootspicnic #rootspicnic2025 #disability #ada #unorganized #roadtrip #Girlstrip ♬ original sound – Val Jenkins
Elementary schoolteacher Lanita Callahan also drove up from Maryland and says she is “furious” about the entire experience.
“It was ridiculous,” she says. “There was this gate that wasn’t wide enough for these people in wheelchairs to get through and nobody was doing anything about it. Eventually, we all started chanting, ‘Open the gate!’ But it took forever to get someone to actually do anything.”
Callahan didn’t arrive until 4 p.m. and says it took her about three hours to get to the metal detectors.
“Eventually, we came to realize that one reason the line was moving as much as it was was because people were cutting their losses and leaving,” she says. “I only went there to see Maxwell. On the updated setlist time that they put out on Saturday due to the problems, they said Maxwell would go on a little after 9. It was 11:30 by the time he went on. It was a very unpleasant day.”
One doctor from Delco who has been to more than a few Roots Picnics says this may be her last.
“My annual tradition of the Roots Picnic may have come to an end after this year,” she wrote on social media. “Took two hours to get in, I had to help a lady having a full on panic attack, but I was in good company and the crowd in line was breaking into song at times as we suffered together… I didn’t get to see Maxwell. The lineup next year will have to be fire. Otherwise, I am getting too old for this.”
Roots Picnic curator Questlove did his best to apologize to fans in an Instagram post.
Ed. Note: A previous version of this story stated that Questlove had yet to comment on the matter.
