VIDEO: Students camped out overnight to buy nightclub tickets
Around 400 Nottingham Trent University students camped outside for hours in wet weather to buy tickets to a nightclub event.
Tickets went on sale for the last ‘Ocean Wednesday’ of the academic year on Tuesday (June 6) morning at 10am.
The event is a popular student night at Ocean nightclub on Greyfriar Gate – and the most devoted students queued up for tickets around 6pm on Monday night (June 5).
Many slept in tents and brought televisions to watch films and play FIFA, the popular football video game, as they waited to buy tickets from the university’s student union box office on Shakespeare Street before they sold out.
Jake Hodgins is a second-year criminology student and a member of the Trent Cricket society, who described the event as ‘majestic’.
He goes to Ocean every week and was one of the first in line for tickets.
“I’m kind of questioning it with an hour to go. I’ve only missed one [Ocean Wednesday] this year because of exams,” he said.
“I’m going to buy two tickets and sell the other to someone from my society.
“I’ve been here for around 15 hours, you get sick of the sight of some people – it’s a long time. You get no sleep. We brought a TV which we had to pack away with two hours to go.
“We were playing FIFA all night, watched a couple of films and a couple of programmes.”
Sam Lange, a second-year student from Birmingham, queued from 7pm and said: “I’ve been playing FIFA all night – it’s been pretty fun.
“It’s gone quicker than I was expecting. It was hard sitting on the concrete all night; it’s the ground, not the temperature – the ground is solid. Your bum goes numb after a while.”
“You have to stand up and go for a few walks,” he added.
Rebecca Calderwood, a third-year print journalism student from Liverpool, said: “I love Ocean and I go now and again – but I wouldn’t say I’m an avid fan.
“Because it’s my last one [Ocean Wednesday] I think I’ve got to go.
“We were planning to come down at 12pm but then everyone said we should get down sooner and we got down at 8.30pm – we’ve been waiting 13 hours.”
Kristina Townsend, 22, from Manchester, queued from 8.30pm and is an ‘Ocean regular’.
She said: “Everyone gets together and gets drunk. We do a bar crawl [before arriving at Ocean] which is loads of fun and we all get to dress up in stupid outfits. Ocean is the definition of university.”
While Jamie Butt, 20, a first-year business student from Surrey, stood in line with Kristina even though he has an exam tomorrow.
He said: “I was planning on doing some revision during the night but I didn’t do any revision really. I did a little bit. A minute-and-a-half of revision.”
Jamie said he will dress up in ‘Trent Army’ attire and will queue up all night for tickets again next year.
Tickets cost £5 and students could only buy two at a time.
