What to Expect From Daytime Clubbing If You Have Not Been Out Since 2005
The music and the crowd are much as you left them; the tickets, the payments and the finish time are the parts that moved on.
Most of it is exactly as you left it. The same records, the same moment when a tune drops and the floor fills, the same easy chat at the bar with someone you will never see again. What has moved on is the admin: your ticket lives on your phone, the bar takes a card, and it all finishes in the evening rather than the small hours. Give it twenty minutes and you will have caught up.
The real difference is the shape of the day. At Dreamworx you start in the afternoon, you are on your feet from early on, and you walk out while it is still a normal evening. That changes what you wear, what you eat and how you get home far more than anything about clubbing itself.
How a Dreamworx Day Actually Runs
The room fills faster than a night out does. There is no slow build from eleven until one, because there is no point turning up late to something that ends in the evening. People arrive close to the start, so the floor is busy early and stays busy.
Plan around that. If you roll in two hours late expecting a warm-up, you have missed a third of it.
What It Costs
Think of the day as four separate costs rather than one, because that is how it leaves your account.
- Getting there and back. Metro, bus or a shared taxi, twice. This is the one people forget to budget for and then resent at the taxi rank.
- Drinks. City centre prices, and six hours is a lot of rounds in a big group. A kitty beats counting.
- Food. Something proper before you go, and something on the way home.
- The odds and ends. Cloakroom, and a bit of cash in case your phone dies.
Set yourself a number before you leave the house. A day out you can comfortably afford is a day out you actually enjoy.
What Has Genuinely Changed
Cash is optional almost everywhere now, and a lot of bars prefer you tap. Take a card and a phone that is charged, and keep twenty pounds in your pocket as a backstop rather than as the plan.
Your ticket will be a barcode on your phone. Screenshot it or add it to your wallet before you leave, because a busy room is not the place to be hunting through an email inbox on one bar of signal.
Expect to be asked for ID on the door regardless of how old you are. It is not a comment on you. Doors check everybody now, so put a driving licence or a passport card in your pocket and forget about it.
Phones are the other change. People film the big moments, and that is normal rather than rude. If you would rather not be in it, stand slightly off the middle of the floor and nobody will mind.
What Has Not Changed at All
The bit that matters is untouched. A room of people who know the words, a DJ who can read a floor, and the noise that goes up when a flashback lands. A flashback is what we call a proper oldskool tune, the kind that draws everyone on to the dancefloor, and it still works exactly the way it did.
You will also find the same unspoken etiquette. You still make room for people coming through, you still nod at someone who has been dancing near you for an hour, and someone will still start a conversation in the smoking area that lasts longer than they meant it to.
Getting Ready for an Afternoon Start
Work backwards rather than forwards. An afternoon start means getting ready in daylight, which is quicker and calmer than the usual ten o'clock scramble, and it means eating a real meal beforehand instead of on the way home.
Dress for six hours on your feet in a warm room, not for a photograph in a cold street. Shoes you have already worn for a full day. Layers you can take off, because the room will be hotter than the walk in.
Leave the big coat at home if you can. Cloakroom queues are the one universal truth of clubbing and they have not improved.
Sort your bag out as well. Something small with a strap you can wear across you, because you will be holding it for six hours and a clutch turns into a job. Phone, card, keys, and a small charger if you own one. Everything else stays at home or goes in the cloakroom with the coat.
How It Ends
This is the part that surprises people the most. You come out into an ordinary evening, still with the whole night in front of you, and you get to choose what happens next. Some go for food and a last drink somewhere quieter. Plenty go straight home, and there is nothing sheepish about that.
Sort your way home before you go in, while you are still thinking clearly and the group is still in one place. Agree roughly when you are leaving and who is with whom, and the end of the day looks after itself.