Never Heard of the Electric Daisy Carnival? That Will Change May 24

You may not have heard of the Electric Daisy Carnival, but chances are you'll know it's in town come Memorial Day weekend.

In something of a coup for Chicagoland Speedway, the three-day electronic music festival will take over the Joliet racetrack with five live music stages, huge electric art installations, "immersion" art, carnival rides and circus-style performers.

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About 30,000 people will attend daily, 5,000 of whom will camp on the racetrack grounds at Route 53 and Laraway Road.

That's about a third the size of race weekend crowds, but enough to pump as much as $134 million into the Joliet economy based on the numbers generated by a similar-sized Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas a few years ago. That event has since grown and now attracts a daily crowd of 115,000 and produces about $207 million for the city.

The multifaceted entertainment aspect of the "carnival" is as much of a draw as the music, said Simon Rust Lamb, chief operating officer for producer Insomniac Inc.

"Our fans go and they hear music, but at our events there are also large-scale art installations, there are costumed performers, kind of like you would see at Disneyland, there are carnival rides," Lamb said. "It's a much more immersive experience."

The Joliet City Council gave its blessing to the event Tuesday, after being briefed by Lamb and assured by city police and fire officials that the security in place was solid.

"(The money that will be generated) is certainly one of the attractions for us," City Manager Tom Thanas told the council. "It's a nice opportunity for us with the sales tax, hotel tax, the restaurants (that will get more customers)."

Insomniac produced its first Electric Daisy Carnival in Los Angeles in 1996, and now holds them in more than a half-dozen cities annually. This year they will be doing shows in Las Vegas, New York, London, Puerto Rico, Orlando, Fla., and elsewhere.

If Joliet's debut weekend is a success, they will return annually and grow in size, Lamb said.

"Our goal here is to build a festival that will return for years," he said. "We're not looking at this as a single year project. In fact, for us, festivals take time to build."

Only people 18 and older are allowed in, and wristbands assigned to those over 21 who want to drink. Gates open at 5 p.m. May 23 and close at 5 p.m. May 27, with only campers allowed to come and go from the site.

Chicago-area residents who want to attend will have the option of taking a shuttle to the festival site instead of driving, Lamb said.

The centerpiece of the festival grounds will be an 80-foot electric daisy, but there are many other huge visual attractions, including an 80-foot rattlesnake made of bicycles, an 71-foot steel-and-mosaic-glass cherry blossom tree and the "Roxbus," a bus converted into "boom box" that features DJ-spun music.  

Water will be provided free to all concert-goers, and roving teams of paramedics and "peer" employees will keep an eye out for people who may be getting dehydrated or need help, Lamb said. That is in addition to the 200 security guards, many of whom will be off-duty Joliet police officers, and a large crew of on-site doctors, nurse practitioners and paramedics, he said.

Joliet Police Chief Mike Trafton, who sent two officers to Las Vegas to get first-hand knowledge on Insominiac and the carnival there, said he was "confident" everything was in place for a safe event.

"(Las Vegas) said it's the best staff they work with, and you're talking about the Las Vegas Police Department, which does this on a weekly basis," Trafton said. "We didn't reinvent the wheel. We copied their plan, just on a smaller scale."