How to Hack Colossal Clusterfest
Colossal Clusterfest for Free?
If you didn’t pay the $99.50 single day price tag for a ticket to Colossal Clusterfest, but still want to get in on the fun, you should be able to hear the live bands on both the Colossal Stage and the Piazza del Cluster Stage if you’re around Civic Center. Our Funcheap team was able to hear Lil Dicky and Ice Cube all the way in the Castro on Friday. We highly doubt you’d be able to see the acts on stage as there’s a large perimeter around Civic Center Plaza, but there are large screens set up, so it is possible from the right vantage point (your friend’s office building?) that you’d be able to see the screens. If you do just want to chill out and listen, you should be able to hear the bands clearly if you’re in the vicinity. Unfortunately, we highly doubt you could hear the comedians as their voices get muffled from a distance. Even within the festival grounds, it was not easy to hear the comedians on stage if you were too far away from the stage.
If you’ve decided the awesome lineup of comedians, musicians, and unique activities are well worth the cost of admission, we have some hacks to make the most of your time, wallet, and fun.
Getting In
There’s two entrances into the festival. Head over to the Polk Street entrance, which is further away from the Civic Center BART station where most of the crowds are arriving from; the line for this entrance seemed much seemed shorter on Friday and we anticipate that it’ll be similar for Saturday and Sunday. Once inside, pop into the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium and snap a photo of the giant schedule for the day for easy access for later.
Bathrooms
Yes, there’s porta potties all over the festival grounds, but one extra nice feature of this festival is that there’s real bathrooms too! Head inside the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium and you’ll find restrooms located in the basement and on the second and fourth floors. Skip the basement restrooms which tended to have long lines and head straight up to the fourth floor where there’s usually no wait!
How to Get Close to the Stage
Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
Inside the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, we recommend entering on ground floor and immediately head to far right. Please note, this probably works on the left side too, but we haven’t personally tried. Weasel your way past the bar, and you’ll see the main auditorium seating area. You can walk the entire right side of the auditorium, so be on the look out for an empty seat. Seating is first come, first serve. In our experience, we’ve been able to snag an empty seat or two within the first few rows! This won’t work for a larger party who wants to sit together, but if you don’t mind separating, you can usually find an empty seat or two somewhere.
Colossal Stage
It’s bit tricky to get close to the Colossal Stage. Most people approach this stage from the center, walking past the South Park land. One tactic to get closer to the stage is to approach the stage from the far right hand side (looping past the Corkscrew Wine Tent); this is also where the VIP seating entrance is. Ignore that area. Just behind the VIP entrance is a fairly empty area. You can get pretty close to the stage from this side and it’s much less crowded than watching from dead center (where you’ll likely be much further back). We could clearly see the stage and had a good view of the screens as well. Plus, during the Chromeo set, this section had a super fun, spacious dance party with plenty of room to get down and fantastic views.
Another tactic is to approach from the center of the stage and hug the left of the fence. Keep following this fence. Yes, it will be crowded, but if you can make it past the middle section, it widens back up. If you’re fighting your way through the crowds, keep heading towards the porta potties at the far left corner. Once you get past the thick of the crowd and head left, it will be virtually empty! There’s another VIP section, but behind it is a wide open area with a fantastic view of the stage and the screens. We were here last night for Bill Burr with plenty of space and a fantastic view. It’s worth the small struggle to make it to this section.
Eating & Drinking
One cool aspect and budget-saving option is that you can bring your own food into the festival. We checked and double checked the FAQs, and sure enough you can, so pack yourself some snacks or even an entire lunch.
In fact, you can also bring in two factory-sealed water bottles up to one liter each. If you don’t want to lug water bottles into the festival with you, bring an empty water bottle and fill up for free inside. The water refill stations are located next to the Seinfeld attraction, by Monk’s Café.
Alcohol
Of course, you cannot bring alcohol into the festival, so you’ll have to pony up big bucks to drink inside. Miller Lite beers are the cheapest alcoholic drink you can buy for $9. Wine, cider, and other beers are $11. Mixed cocktails are $15.
Cheap Bites
If you do want to purchase food inside, be prepared because prices are steep. We found a handful of items that you can get for under $7.
- Tacolicious Tacos (Achiote Chicken, Seasonal Veggie Taco, Traditional Carnitas Taco) from “Casa Bonita” – $6
- Cup of Clam Chowder from Woodhouse Fish Co. – $6
- Japanese “Hot” Fries – $6
- Parmesan Garlic Fries from Earthly Delights – $6
- Mister Jiu’s Fermented Sichuan Cabbage from “Raisins”- $6
- “Foldie” (Bean & Cheese, Carnitas, Beef Machaca, BBQ Turkey, Vegan – Bean) – $5
- Dill Pickle from Paddy’s Pub – $5
- Bao Chips from Chairman Bao – $5
- Guacamole, Beans or Rice from Sage Vegan Truck – $3 each
- La Palma Tortilla Chips & Roasted Tomato Mint Salsa from “Casa Bonita” – $2 – Get out! A snack for $2 at a festival? This seems likes the best deal of the festival for a quick snack.
Also, if you’re lucky, if there’s a food activity on, you might even score some free bites. On Friday, we caught the Chili Con Carnival, a chili competition hosted by comedians, and leftovers from the competitors’ dishes were passed out to the audience members in the front. We were lucky enough to try a very tasty chili-stuffed pizza bite made by Matthew Accarrino of Michelin-starred SPQR.
Free Activities
Themed Attractions
Once inside, of course, you’ll want to check out the exclusively themed attractions from your favorite shows such as the South Park, Seinfeld, and Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
South Park
Head on down to South Park, which is located in the center of the festival. This area is a large walk-through attraction with multiple entrances and exits, so there’s no wait times! There’s loads of staged scenes from the show for you to pose with and go Instagram-crazy. There’s also a large snowglobe-like ball pit which wasn’t operational on Friday, so we hope it’s working again on Saturday and Sunday.
This area also has some of the cheaper food options, which are also themed for South Park. Don’t miss Casa Bonita and Mister Jiu’s which features some of the cheap bites we mentioned earlier.
Seinfeld
Seinfeld fan? Cruise past Monk’s Cafe (located in front of the entrance to Bill Graham Civic Auditorium) and head next door to meet the iconic Soup Nazi from the show, Larry Thomas, who will be serving up soup in character! You can even spurlge and treat yourself to one of the memorable soups from the show like Mulligatawny for $9.
You can also make a grand entrance like Kramer and slide into Jerry’s apartment. The lines were long on Friday, so we didn’t get a chance to check it out for ourselves, but you better believe we’ll wait in line to check it out sometime this weekend. Wait times on Friday were about 45 minutes to get in. There’s sign at the entrance to the queue that estimates a 60 minute wait time, and thankfully, we never saw the crowd reach that sign.
Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Have a drink with the gang at Paddy’s Pub from Always Sunny in Philadelphia! This attraction is located within the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. The lines to get in were also long, but moved quickly. We stopped here first thing on Friday. There’s some events happening within Paddy’s Pub, so for those, we recommend arriving very early to get in. Inside, you can snap a photo in the infamously dirty bathroom. They have a free photographer set up to take that shot of you at the urinal or passed out on the floor, so think of your clever pose and leave the photography to an expert. The photo will be sent to you digitally. You are welcome to take as many of your own photos as well.
You can also order a drink or a bite to eat at the bar. The lines were long to order though. Here’s where you can get that $5 Dill Pickle I mentioned earlier.
If you’re a fan of Broad City, help paint the Broad City mural. This mural was finished early in the day though, so get there early if you want to participate. The line to participate was short.
Free Attractions & Activities
If you need to quench your thirst, there’s free samples of Mountain Dew’s Spiked Lemonade and Raspberry Lemonade. The samples flowed freely here with no lines and the staff were friendly. You can drink quite a few of these if there’s no wait.
You can also have your fortune read in the Get Knowing tent from Credit Karma. It’s a bit hokey, but there’s a live-action Zoltar that’s led by a comedian in the back. Unfortunately, it’s a bit hard to hear what he’s saying. There’s also a live tarot card reader who will do free readings and free green origami fortune tellers which you can plant later in your garden.
There’s a couple of free photobooths too around the festival, but unfortunately none of them print your photos out, but they will be sent digitally. The Cuervo tent has a fun photo booth that you choose two fun captions.
There’s even a Colossal Clusterfest video booth where you can record a short video while they throw confetti at you.
The next best thing to a VIP lounge was the Miller Lite booth which was free to get in, had no waits, comfortable seating and plenty of over-sized Jenga sets to play, including one set that was over 5 feet tall.
If you’re cruising around the festival, don’t miss the Mystery Pizza Box booth from Papa John’s. There’s usually a fairly short line and it moves very quickly. Just pick a box and win a prize. Everyone’s a winner! Prizes range from pizza socks to Colossal Clusterfest beanies, a pizza notepad or Pizza silly puddy, to a $15 Papa John’s gift card. On Saturday, they were giving out $5 meal voucher coupons good at any food or drink vendors. These vouchers are apparently even good at the bar! Best of all, they were slinging these out a plenty. Almost everyone got at least one of these vouchers in addition to another prize as well. Who knows what they have in store for Sunday, but we think it’s worth your time to wait in the fairly short line. The wait time is usually about 10-15 minutes.
Also, if you’re feeling feisty, stop by the Drunk History dunk tank to try your best to dunk a famous person from history, who will likely being taking shots at you too; they are comedians after all.
Also, if you want to feel pampered, lay yourself down on the posh sofas and pose with the male servants from Another Period who will act as your butler, at least for the photo opp. They’re in the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, and this attraction never had a wait.
