We are now only one week away from early entry, and as a celebration we are releasing the 2013 Pickathon Map which is loaded with new and exciting features we can’t wait for you to experience first hand.

If you have not been to Pickathon before we recommend you start by getting acquainted with the layout of Pendarvis Farm, but don’t worry too much as there will be several large versions of this exact map spread out across the farm that you can always reference in person onsite.

OK

Drum roll please…

Here are just a few of the new features to pay attention to on the 2013 map.

There is a new Pickathon Cafe stage that is part of expanded Pickathon Cafe area that now includes multiple food booths, a beer/wine/cider/coffee garden, the Pickathon camp host, a beautiful entry portal designed by the PSU Architecture department, boutique showers, massage, acupuncture, and water refilling.

The main bowl was redesigned with several noteworthy improvements. We are debuting the new Pickathon Windmill Hill kids mega area which will offer a whole summer worth of kids activities in one weekend. You will find a newly marked boundary for where blankets can be placed all weekend and where they can’t (We’ll talk more about this in a future post to explain the grand compromise). We added entry gates into the main bowl venue to allow us to make the whole space an open beer garden that also connects to the Galaxy Barn. There is a new hand pump water station under the windmill at the top of the hill. The audience fence is being moved as close as possible to the front of the stages to improve the intimacy and experience for both the audience and musicians (from 15 feet down to 4 feet). Finally, as you might have already noticed from our beautiful photos, we are building a new artistic shade sculpture over the whole main bowl to provide over twice as much shade as last year (We ask because of the expanded shade that zero personal shade structures put up this year as it is hard to control and not fair to pick only a couple people to be able to do this).

In addition to studying new features on our map there are several other noticeable improvements to expect, which includes solutions to much of the feedback we received last year.

We are implementing an extensive plan to reduce dust in key venue areas.

We are implementing a bathroom swat team to locate bathrooms going bad and isolate/fix them immediately.

Beer/Wine/Cider/Drink lines should move much quicker at all locations with more selections than ever.

We have created a richer food and drink experience with new locations and amazing vendors all at reasonable prices to help entice you to let us treat you to a weekend culinary paradise.

In general the whole site got a tuneup in all areas.

So, instead of going on and on with the improvements, we’ll save some surprises that you’ll just have to experience first hand when you arrive.

Hope you are as excited as we are, and you haven’t bought tickets your window is closing fast.

Let us know what you think, and we’ll see you in a week.