Victorious Festival – VIP Experience review

The Victorious Festival is one of the South Coast’s largest and most adored family friendly festivals. The site takes over Southsea Common and Castle Field for 3 days (Friday night, Saturday & Sunday) on the August bank holiday weekend and promises something for everyone. Victorious is primarily a premium act music festival, but offers an entire area for kids to enjoy acts, bouncy castles, art workshops and so much more.

This year we were luckily enough to be invited along to enjoy the VIP experience, which is limited to press, guests and premium passes only. Sadly, we couldn’t make the Friday night and therefore missed Madness and The Charlatans, but our experience on Saturday made up for it. We made an afternoon of it and arrived around lunchtime. For a fee, you can pre-book parking right next to the site, which is super handy, especially if you want to come and go as you please. The VIP area is right next to the main, Common Stage, where most of the biggest music acts perform. It’s a tightly guarded area with a very cool, relaxed vibe about it. You have access to a complimentary flower headdress making experience, amazing face painting, relaxing games area, hammocks, bar (avoiding the queues), footstalls, covered chill out area, not forgetting the raised platform that allows you to look right across to the main stage.

Our passes allowed us to easily access the rest of the festival, free to roam around the 16 music stages and see hundreds of acts playing every genre of music all throughout the day. With our two young girls (aged 4 & 6) we had to go and see the Mr Bloom and Story Time with Peppa Pig. But what we loved so much about this festival is that within just a few hundred metres you can see some of the biggest bands on the planet, as well as keep the kids happy with some acts designed for them.

Another attribute to Victorious is that you don’t have to wait till too late to see the best acts, probably because the location is quite residential and therefore will have strict sound rules. This meant that we got to see Jake Bugg as well as half The Stereophonics set, who were just incredible. Deciding that we’d best get the kids back to bed to conserve their energies for the next day, we headed off to recoup our energy for an early start on Sunday.

Living just 45 minutes away has ensured that Victorious is firmly on our agenda for the foreseeable future. Getting there is simple and traffic is incredibly well managed for such a mammoth festival. The festival opens at 10am, so we even had time for a lay in on Sunday morning, preparing us for the fun-packed day ahead.

We arrived at 9.30am to ensure we skipped all the queues to get an amazing face paint and we were first in line to make a real flower headdress each. Job done, we were ready for the exciting day ahead.

We didn’t necessarily plan our day, although we had noted some key acts we were desperate to see. So, we ended up mooching around all day, kicking back in the VIP area for a few hours, then heading out to discover the amazing array of street foods at almost every turn. One thing is guaranteed, you’ll eat well – but be prepared to pay a handsome sum for a snack – festival prices are in full effect. On that note, whilst there are cashpoints available within the festival grounds (at a fee), we’d recommend taking a wad of cash to see you through the day. Many places do take card, but cash is quicker.

We saw a number of amazing acts throughout the day, but some worth a mention were Rhythm Of The 90’s, who lifted the crowd with their array of live music, uplifting dance anthems from the 90’s (our era!), Turin Brakes, The Slaves, Franz Ferdinand and Elbow, who if you are going to see one band live in your lifetime, make it these guys.

The energy was electric throughout the day and wherever you roamed across the site, it truly is a very cool festival with so much on offer for every age and taste. We loved it and will be back in 2018 for sure.

Thank you Victorious, you made our summer!