As far as music festivals go, I'd say Bonanza Campout is about 85% percent "there."
The venue was really the determining factor for the entire thing--though it appears small on the map, overall there was an acceptable amount of room for the amount of people that attended. There weren't many, and hearing from other people's experiences, it seems that buying a ticket last minute for this was the way to go because the festival seemed to be giving them away as the date came closer: schools, radio stations, other concerts, and certain businesses had either free tickets or generous discounts.
On the first day after opening, the population of the whole place was probably about 90. Over the weekend, more people seemed to show up despite bad weather. There were not many places to escape the rain on the second day, and being told that we could not return to our cars after 6 pm did not really help. The tables used for the RV spots were moved into the middle of the park so there were some places to sit, and water was very easily accessible...even though the website states that everyone is allowed "water up to 20 oz if it's factory sealed or in a reusable bottle" they wanted any outside liquids thrown away. There was a surprisingly great selection of food, from trucks to stands, and the prices were decent. Portapotties were definitely available. I don't know if I would call this a very family-friendly environment, with such a small area, all of the smoking and drinking kind of converges at once.
Parking was horrible if you didn't arrive early. By the end of the night, there were cars literally parked a mile from the site. It is a two lane road and the only parking is on the very weedy side--and due to the lack of space, they were telling people to double park.
They were charging $5 for parking, but I would definitely argue that once the cars are extending past the RV park property, the can no longer ask for a fee...it's not their property to charge for.
Music, Art, Camping:
The price overall was justified by some key (and quite impressive) performances. Other than Cold War Kids, Jamie N Commons, Secret Weapons, Doe, Milo Greene, and Jr. Jr. seemed to really give a good balance to some of the more electronically-based bands. On that note, the festival had numerous music quality issues: the audio was at least partially lost on quite a few performances, and on the second day the music was cranked up so loudly it become almost unbearable. This was especially annoying as the close proximity of the Shade Stage and the Bonanza Stage become a lot more obvious with all of the sound bleed. For the most part, the organizers were great at staying on schedule so there wasn't a whole lot of music-less time.
This festival was not really art-centric at all--the main art attractions were a few (very impressive) vendors, a tree full of umbrellas (?), and an art piece sponsored by Skullcandy. This was slightly disappointing, because the entire area has a lot of potential as far as space and involvement with festival goers.
We did not elect to do the camping, and I'm glad we didn't--a lot of the claims the festival made as far as amenities ("bathrooms" = portapotties, despite actual bathrooms in the main building... "fenced in area for campers only" = listing to a crazy amount of people and cars try to exit in the night because they are parked right next to you...) were stretches, and if you really wanted to camp, you could do it down the road, without paying a thing.
The last 15% this festival is missing might include a better parking situation, more space, increased vendors, better sound quality, more art, and, likely, better hype. The lack of people was blaringly obvious, but overall, everybody in my group had a good time. And most importantly, despite all of the issues, Bonanza did pretty well by compensating with an impressively large variety of music. read more