Big RESISTANCE Changes Coming
Ultra Music Festival finally dropped its Phase 1 lineup for 2019. It’s a huge year for Ultra, full of changes across the board. Obviously we have a brand new venue at Virginia Key. Actually it’s two venues hosting Ultra this year, but that’s only the beginning of the changes. We have longer sets, later closing hours, and a blank slate.
The lineup came out to great fan reception, but buried in the lineup announcement were a set of huge changes that went almost unnoticed. Firstly, Ultra’s lineup announcement mentioned the following:
This year RESISTANCE will be hosted on its very own island in the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park, as it takes on a larger role than ever within the festival.
So with this, we now know that Ultra’s techno sub-brand will be taking over the Virginia Key Beach venue. It sounds an awful lot like they will be the only ones there, meaning that UMF Radio, Ultra Worldwide, Live Arena, and Mainstage will all be located at the Miami Marine Stadium part of the venue. You might recall that during the Miami council meeting, Ultra said they could fit 4 stages in that space. This almost gives Ultra the feel of 2 distinct festivals, since you can imagine many of the RESISTANCE fans will just skip the long hike over to other stages.
Ultra Spider Exterminated
The other perhaps bigger change is what’s missing from the announcement. At the bottom of the lineup poster the various stages and partners are listed. We all know RESISTANCE gets the Megastructure, but it also got the epic Arcadia Spider stage. Arcadia is the company that builds the Spider and the Afterburner that came before. Guess what? No mention of Arcadia or the Spider Stage in any of the announcement press. At the bottom where stages are listed, the only branded stages are ASOT which we all know, Martin Garrix’ STMPD Records, Odesza’s Foreign Family Collective, and Richie Hawtin’s PLAYdifferently.
Look at the 2018 Phase 1 lineup and the poster includes 6 stages. As of right now it appears there are only 5 stages for 2019. We hate to be the bearers of bad news, but every indication is that Arcadia and the beloved Spider Stage are not returning. However even once you get over that sadness there are even more questions.
Is Resistance only getting 1 stage now or is there another unannounced new stage? If only 1, is it taking over the megastructure all 3 days? Might ASOT be the one getting a new stage? You can be sure we won’t be getting the answers to any of these questions any time soon. We’ll be the first to let you know when we learn more. As of this writing we have reached out to Ultra for comment.