How'd we get here?
The seeds of our party culture were sown amongst an elaborately themed flat party community formed in Auckland.
The rules back then were simple – dress silly, bring a mate, show up early and keen. Blessed with an agreeable and protective landlord, twelve editions brought groups of like-minded mutual friends together for unserious fun.
What’s changed since then? Mainly just the location, budget, and some legal requirements. Hopefully we’ve matured a bit too.
2024 brought a 350-person inaugural New Year’s event to life.
Through a private Instagram page, we invited our mates to a three-night shindig we called a festival. Tickets came via filling out a google form and sending a bank transfer. Scott checked the account and ticked your name off when paid. That was it. With aunty and uncle manning security at the gate and a 100% vouched-for crowd, the party basically ran itself. Oh how luxurious that seems now.
That year, we pretty much just figured out roughly how much money we had to work with from the amount of people we hoped Kaye (Scott’s Mum) could be convinced to let camp on her lawn, and the number we could convince to buy a $150 3-day ticket (camping included). We used that number to figure out what we had to spend on serious festival features, and how many other less conventional features we could squeeze in. It just made too much sense that a waterslide would be sick.
The vibe was so pure and ecstatic. And how couldn’t it have been? Just our favourite people, their favourite people, epic performances, and no rules.
We realised there’s GOT to be more people who would be keen for a freedom & fun focused affair without a constant threat of painful infringements to safety and wellbeing far too common in our festival landscape. We began planning for a 1,500 capacity round 2.
With some essential female assistance on the marketing side of things, we landed just 100 shy of our capacity in 2025!
From the beginning of that year, we backed the theory that we could attract the same quality of like-minded people with an open-door policy, but it still felt unrealistic down to the moment gates opened on the 29th. In the few spare moments we spent amongst the crowd, the proof was everywhere.
We’re naive newcomers navigating the big and scary world of festivals. We’ve learned everything from scratch on the go.
Now we continue on with an ever-evolving kaupapa inspired by those who’ve come before us.
PS: Part of 2026’s mission is to onboard you fellow youngins with passions and skillsets who can add to magic we can create together. Get involved.