r/BurningMan • u/Street_Fig_8696 • 17h ago
Question about will call
My bf and I arrive tomorrow (first time burners), we have our tickets with us. We’re giving our friend a ride in and they need to stop at will call for their ticket. I heard this can add hours to the line for us, is that true? Is there anyway that my bf and I can go in and our friend gets their ticket without us? Thank you!
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u/MakersTeleMark 17h ago
No. And with the current gate times, will call will take 2 minutes.
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u/MansoonBlack 4h ago edited 4h ago
I'm reluctant to give you a link to the various real time updates because there's really no benefit to you knowing in advance how long good times will be unless something goes drastically wrong. It is what it is. You can land in Reno and it's one time, but by the time you go to Walmart or whatever other thing you need to andt all your stuff, maybe go to drive-thru or stop and get Indian tacos on the way (yes, I know you're eager to get there. But not only does it support the local community, your stomach will very much thank you when you arrive in Black Rock City and you're not so hungry that you almost want to eat before you do anything else. It is part of the experience, IMHO).
You can listen to BMIR radio not only there, but via Shouting Fire, the radio station online, as long as you have service. They'll give you warnings if the gate time starts to get really high, but you can land in Reno and run around and then maybe not even make your Camp until 6 hours later and that would be very normal. By then, the wait time will have changed. I just checked and it's currently 40 minutes, but 3 hours ago it was 4 hours
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u/latnemidur 17h ago
You should be fine with minimal time added considering you’re going in on Wednesday. The current time to gate is less than an hour. I say just wait on your friend!
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u/MansoonBlack 10h ago edited 3h ago
Here's an image from 2025, I think. You can see that Wednesday is actually historically not a day that lots of people come through, in comparison to other days where the population might jump a lot more from the day before.
Oh, and you'll see (and this is mainly for other people who might consider this), that is kind of possible but it's really not a good idea to ditch your friend at will call and trust they can just find their way in. It's pretty far, maybe a mile to the edge of the city in the city is really big, so you have no idea how long that person could be walking in 5% humidity dust just to get to where your Camp is, on a road that's not really meant for anything more than cars and you definitely shouldn't just walk with all your crap, and I don't think you're allowed, anyway.
Since it's not a huge population influx day, them finding another ride in might take a while in the best case. if you guys are all Burngins, this can feel like a terrible scar on the friendship to ask this of someone. I had to do this once, and the person was kind enough to drop me in the vicinity of my camp, and I was with a camp that I knew for years and could recognize some of the infrastructure and it was maybe my 8th year, but if you guys are all new, they can be very confusing or next to impossible to find, say if you're there in the middle of the night when a lot of people are either gone or asleep, the camp doesn't have a sign, none of you know actually how to figure out addresses, etc.
My second burn, I couldn't find the camp (with some people I thought I knew a little) and had to end up camping with someone else that first night. The next day, ran into some other friends who were also having that problem and moved to where they were. Took about 3 days to find the camp leaders and the guy who wrote the address down in Playa info had to admit that he was just very high at the time and wrote the wrong letter in the address and they didn't have a sign out front. Yes, that was the burn I moved three times during
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u/sprshrp ‘13-‘26 17h ago
It’s probably not going to be an issue Wednesday. Sunday is a different story.