Fyre Festival attendee complains, 'It was literally like 'The Hunger Games''

The festival "got really bad really fast," Brett Linkletter said.

ByABC News
May 1, 2017, 8:20 AM

— -- An attendee of the doomed Fyre Festival, which became a phenomenon on social media over the weekend after big-name acts withdrew and the event descended into chaos, said this morning that the experience was "literally like 'The Hunger Games.'"

"So I know everyone keeps saying online and the internet it was kind of crazy, but it was literally like ‘The Hunger Games,’" Brett Linkletter told “Good Morning America” today, a reference to the dystopian science fiction novels and movies. "People were sprinting, trying to find a place to sleep."

Billy McFarland, who co-founded Fyre Festival with rapper Ja Rule, blamed inclement weather for the festival's failure in an interview today with ABC News, and promised refunds and free tickets to next year's event for those who spent up to thousands of dollars on ticket packages to the festival in the Bahamas.

Still, it may take a significant amount of work to erase images of uninspired cheese sandwiches and abandoned DJ booths that went viral on social media over the weekend, spawning countless memes, or verbal descriptions like the ones provided by Linkletter.

"What we thought was cool got really bad really fast," Linkletter said of the early moments after arriving at the festival. "The drinks were room temp. There was absolutely no food. People had been there the entire day, drunk kind of crazy at this point and starving. So it was a total mess."

He described nighttime at the festival site, where tents were in low supply, and angry festival goers had overturned beds in anger at the conditions.

"There were no sheets. There was no way to lock up your things," Linkletter said. "It was a total mess. We didn’t know what to do."

Linkletter called the experience "insane" but added that the situation could have been worse.

"It was extremely unsafe," Linkletter said. "There was no medical attention, there was no security at all, so things could have gone a lot worse than they did."