Welcome to Rockville, Day 2: Fest dodges clouds to roar into weekend at Daytona
DAYTONA BEACH — Welcome to Rockville fans offered positive reviews of the event as gates opened on Friday at Daytona International Speedway, despite a storm-related delay that knocked three bands off the schedule on Thursday and the potential for more weather complications.
Jeff Wilfong, who traveled from Orlando for the four-day event, was disappointed that one of the bands he especially wanted to see, Orlando hometown favorite Trivium, was scratched from the Thursday lineup in the wake of a roughly two-hour storm delay on the festival’s opening day.
Nevertheless, Wilfong, 42, praised the event’s promoter, Los Angeles-based Danny Wimmer Presents, for handling Thursday’s weather-related evacuation of the Speedway’s infield more smoothly than at last year’s storm-plagued Rockville, which he also attended.
In case you missed it: Daytona storms force temporary evacuation of Welcome to Rockville infield
“Last year was a mess,” said Wilfong, who has noticed more prominent notifications of potential weather disruptions on the festival’s jumbo video screens. “The big ones (video screens), I don’t think they had those last year. The signage is better this year, for sure.”
There were no weather-related delays by late afternoon Friday, despite threatening skies.
Storms disrupted Rockville schedule on opening day
On Thursday, however, a storm caused a temporary evacuation of the Speedway’s infield on the event’s opening day. The festival was temporarily halted a few minutes after 5 p.m. due to severe weather approaching.
Fans were advised through social media and on the festival’s jumbo video screens to “proceed calmly to the nearest exit to seek shelter.” Options included returning to a vehicle, the Turn 1 Speedway grandstand or to an infield campsite.
A little less than an hour later, fans were advised that the bad weather was "starting to break up and we should be in the clear shortly," according to a post on Rockville's Facebook page. "Please remain sheltered in place until we get the green light. You will have plenty of time to reenter the venue before the music starts back up."
The announcement that gates were reopened was posted at roughly 6:30 p.m.
As the band lineup was reshuffled due to the delay, scheduled sets by Trivium and English metal outfit Malevolence were eliminated and a performance by Swedish band Avatar was cut short, according to Selena Fragassi, a festival spokeswoman.
Some fans complained, others ignored, evacuation advisory
On Facebook, hundreds of fans offered comments critical of the delay, stating that lines to re-enter the festival site were so long that it was impossible to return in time to catch the re-scheduled 7:10 p.m. performance by the popular Bullet For My Valentine.
Other fans, as it turns out, managed to disregard the evacuation advisory.
“We’re rebels,” said Fabian Loso, 46, who traveled to the festival from Salt Lake City with his wife, Traci. “We just walked around from tent to tent. It was probably a mile walk back to our car and we didn’t want to walk two miles and miss the next group.”
The Losos on Friday praised the event’s storm procedure as orderly, even if they didn’t participate.
By counting the time between lightning flashes and thunder, the couple estimated the distance of the strikes from the infield. “I understand the reason for it,” Loso said of the evacuation. “If we felt like we were in danger, we would have left.”
There’s a 30% chance of daytime showers through the weekend, according to the National Weather Service in Melbourne. At night, that dips to 10% on Friday and Saturday, increasing to 20% on Sunday.
Zach Benjo, who traveled with his friend Angelina Hudson from Deltona on Friday to celebrate his upcoming 18th birthday at Rockville, wasn’t too concerned about the forecast.
“It’s Florida,” he said. “There’s not a lot you can do about the weather.”
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Daytona's Welcome to Rockville 2023 dodges clouds to roar into weekend
