Summer Festivals

TIPS FOR SUMMER FESTIVALS

Tip #1: Know your festival

No two festivals are the same. Some allow you to bring your own food, drinks, and pets while others do not. Familiarizing yourself with the festival map is generally a smart move. Take note of where the first aid or medical tents are. You may also want to contact certain festival coordinators and ask about their accessibility amenities. (Asking about festival peak hours to avoid crowds is not a bad idea either.)

Tip #2: Pack your Summer Survival Kit

3 Gallon Zip Lock Top Plastic Bag
Water Bottle
Sunscreen
Small Towel
Hat
Map of Festival

Tip #3: Bring cash

Some vendors may accept credit or debit cards, but the large majority of them still rely on cash. So grab some Jacksons and treat yourself to some delicious (but overpriced) food and drink.

Tip #4: Stay Hydrated 

Take a water bottle with you and refill it often. If you can't bring it in with you, refer to Tip #3 and buy the overpriced lemonade and water... and the funnel cake. Your body will thank you for it... the lemonade and water, not so much the funnel cake... but it will be worth it. 

Tip #5: Medical Issues 

Do you have POTS or do you suffer from heat sensitivity? Watch our customer Chronically Salty talk about packing her Music Survival Kit and how she incorporates her ThermApparel Cooling Vest into it. 

Concerts And Dysautonomia: How To Survive With POTS

See the Transcript of Chronically Salty's video HERE!

Check out our #HeatIQ Cooling Plan Series for more info on how to understand heat and make your own cooling plan.

Video Transcript: 

Summer bucket list summer festivals, they're fun to go to, but they can be taxing and they can make
you hot. So here is your survival kit for wearing your ThermApparel UnderCool Cooling Vest at a
summer festival.

First thing, you need a backpack to carry the stuff you need. This is what we highly recommend. Get an insulated lunch sack. It doesn't have to be an expensive one, you can get one from the thrift store. You probably have one from a company picnic or something like that.

Next thing you need, make sure you take a hat. This keeps the sun off your face.

Take some sunscreen people, seriously sunscreen, use it, reapply it and sunglasses if you like them.

Get yourself a large 3 gallon plastic zip top bag. This is very important .

Take some water with you. If you don't want to carry a water bottle, that's totally cool. Go get the super large lemonade. They have those lemonade stands. It's $5  where they make the lemonade right there and its supper yummy. Either one is fine, because you'll need a container for water

A map of the festival. This one's for a music festival. It's always a good idea to go to their website ahead of time, figure out the lay of the land and figure out where the first aid tent is. This is important and  I'll tell you why in a minute.

Always make sure you have enough extra room in your backpack so that you can bring home your trinkets and treasures that you get at the art festival. things like this. Walking around the festival having a great time buying really fun stuff from local artists like this awesome mug that I got it for the most recent festival I went to.

Let's say your Cooling Packs and are starting to deplete. They're running out and you need to refresh them. The neat thing about our Cooling Packs is you can refreeze them in ice water.

All you need is ice and water. So hence that's where your large 3 gallon bag comes in, and knowledge of where the first aid tent is.

There are multiple places you can get ice, you can go to any vendor, ask them for some ice, they may give it to you, especially if you tell them why you need it. If they can't give it to you for free and say "Well, it's a $2 charge", give them the $2, they're just kids working their summer job, give them the $2

If you can't find anywhere to get ice, go to the medical tent, go to the first aid tent,  tell them what you're doing, they will help you out with ice.

See that lemonade cup? That's gonna come in really handy. You can either have them fill up the bag with ice, or if they won't do that and just charge you by the cup, have them fill up two or three of these.

You always go to a festival with people so borrow their cup too and you can get two cups of ice right away.

(filling the bag with ice) That's not even halfway full. But if you can get it halfway full, awesome. Third of the way a quarter of the way is fine too. You just need some ice.

Now for water. You can get water anywhere because it doesn't have to be potable water, you don't have to drink this water. Go to the bathroom. Fill up your water bottle that you brought with you from the sink, dump that into the bag.

If for some reason, you can't get to the bathroom, the lines too long or anything like that, you can go ahead and buy the Artesian bottles of water if you want, but this is a waste of money.

(pouring water into 3 gallon plastic bag) Remember that lemonade cup that you have, you can fill that up with water too.

Then take your Cooling Packs that have been depleted out of your vest. Put them in the ice water.

There's usually four Cooling Packs per vest. except, XXS has 3 and XXL has 6, and the other sizes all have four.

So I've got a combination of ExtendedCool and SlimCool in here. Just make sure you line them up a little bit so that they don't freeze in funny shapes.

But look, they're already starting to freeze up. And then only been in here like 30 seconds.  
Completely depleted vs starting to refreeze. Just in ice water.

This is where that insulated lunch sack comes in handy. Because this plastic bag is going to condensate, this is gonna get wet. So if you put it into your backpack it might make your backpack a little bit wet. But, if you get one of these insulated lunch sacks, you just put this whole thing in there. It's gonna stay insulated, it's gonna help it stay cold. And then just set your timer for 30 minutes. That's all you got to do.

Now you can sit down go back to that kid that gave you the ice and buy the lemonade, get the funnel cake, get the corndog, take a 30 minute break, and when you're done eating, and maybe after some Tumms Your cooling packs are going to be ready to go again.

Okay, it's been 30 minutes. My Cooling Packs have been sitting in this insulated lunch bag, in the plastic bag in the ice water. Let me pull them out for you... look, totally frozen.

They're ready to go back into your Cooling Vest and keep you cool so you can keep going enjoying summer fun.

One last thing. My hands are all wet. Take a towel with you. Dry your cooling pack off really quick. Slide  into your vest. Keep on going.

Stick around with us and we'll do more summer bucket list survival kits