2024 Experience

[Papa Eric]

I have been attending since 1991, and still going so must enjoy it. However, I have found the experience from booking to campsites and facilities progressively getting worse.
Despite being online in the first hour of each members presale days, I found the grandstand I wanted to be sold out, and pretty much all of the campsites. Am assuming that ACO are bulk selling best stuff to agencies first.
We stayed on Beausejour again this year by default, not choice and felt the facilities were inadequate. Probably wouldn't be allowed by Health and Safety over here. One loos and shower block for a large camping field with hundreds of pitches. No drinking water standpipes, so everyone using the showers. Nowhere to wash stuff and no rubbish collection all week, leaving growing piles of trash.
With another record attendance, 329,000, ACO must be raking it in so it should be feasible to provide standards we've had in the past. My impression is that emphasis has shifted from providing a good experience for fans, to making as much cash as possible, so everything is stretched beyond limits.
Thats my whinge over, though interested in other's experience/opinions.

Anyway, object of this post really, is how are others booking and getting what/where they want. Agencies? Good/bad experiences with agencies, etc.

[Lazy B'stard]

Prairie was appalling. The bottom field had no toilets, water or showers so everyone just pissed and shat wherever they could. The access road was already like the Somme when we arrived on Thursday and led to chaos getting out after the overnight rains. There were two poor young kids trying to deal with testosterone fuelled gammon who were making it worse by trying to get out of the mud revving the bollocks off their campers and digging ever bigger holes everywhere.

I'm affraid that if we can't get onto Houx or Eppinettes next year its going to be another stay at home and watch it in the garden year.

[Kev_mk3]

Prairie was appalling. The bottom field had no toilets, water or showers so everyone just pissed and shat wherever they could. The access road was already like the Somme when we arrived on Thursday and led to chaos getting out after the overnight rains. There were two poor young kids trying to deal with testosterone fuelled gammon who were making it worse by trying to get out of the mud revving the bollocks off their campers and digging ever bigger holes everywhere.

I'm affraid that if we can't get onto Houx or Eppinettes next year its going to be another stay at home and watch it in the garden year.

Thats the site the c63 went up in smoke and they pushed it over to some poor sods car that melted as well

[enzo]

Even if you get epinettes you might be sent to beasejour.  We got in in the end but saw many people being told it was oversold. And no food outlet in epinettes this year as advertised promised as part ot ticket price rise.

[Lazy B'stard]

Were there fewer Brits there this year?
Port on the way out (thursday, Pompy, evening) was quieter than usual and we saw less stickered up cars heading to the ports too. There were fewer Brits on our campsite by the looks of things. Ferry back from C'bourg on sunday night was so empty we thought we had missed the boat when we arrived and we were eventually joined by less than a dozen cars and vans.

Maybe difficulty getting tickets, cost of living or just a preference to go to Germany to watch millionaires kicking a sack of air around a field for 90 minutes?

Thoughts?

[Rhino]

We have booked through an agency for years now. Fortunately we are top of the list so Terte Rouge it is.
The campsite was fine, toilets and showers were clean. The rubbish did pile up. What is the point of having separate bins for cans, bottles etc if they aren't emptied. Security good. Even getting in and out on our  bikes for daily provisions was easy.
I did have a good wander all the way up to Porche curves during the night and was glad to see they have made more area's to view from.
Things have improved from my first trip in 1983 but I do wonder about there announcement about having even more spectators. Talking of over 400,000! When I first came there were hardly any toilets and the circuit was probably a bio hazard by the time the race finished. Over the years the toilets have got better and more numerous but this year there were more queues. Where are the extra 100,000 people going to watch from? Talk of opening up the interior of the circuit to have a viewing area at 1st chicane are fine but people will always head for the pit straight. Had a friend who said as he was heading past Ford chicane to Terte Rouge where there is a pinch point a van was trying to get up through the crowd and it was such a crush he feared for peoples lives, he is not going again.
Think the ACO have to have a think about extra people. And we talk every year of Terte Rouge, it is prime ground for hospitality. If it goes we would probably swap to Spa 24hr or classic.

[Aysedasi]

I had a great time with my son, his partner and a friend of many years in our group.  Tickets were bought direct from the ACO (both I and my son's partner are members).  We don't camp and have stayed in the same location now for 15 years.  It was particularly good because due to some health issues, I was very close to not making it and had to cancel my plans to drive over as the solo advance party, so we went in my son's Shogun instead, which caused some last minute hiccups with the ferry booking!  I didn't find it any busier than last year but then again we had GS seats in Durand with it's associated facilities.  The toilets alone were worth the price of my membership this year.  All being well ((((fingers crossed) we'll be back again next June. 

[Barry]

My 21st Le Mans will, I think, probably be my last. Camping getting a bit challenging due to age and mobility problems.
Hated the weather this year, especially the 5 days of 6 degrees overnight temperatures from the Friday before Test. And the rain later in the week.
I had no issues getting the tickets I wanted, but just found everywhere to crowded.
Found the race tricky to follow now there is so much competition in all the classes, much easier to do so watching on TV.

The best bit for me was meeting up with old friends prior to race day.
Perhaps Smokie was the trailblazer, go down for the social and leave before the race starts and watch it on TV.

[smokie]

Why thank you for the shout-out Barry :-)

It's fair to say that Le Mans for me was largely about the social and I still miss it and think of you lot every year, and once in a while I still bore new acquaintances with LM memories. I also watch a fair bit of the racing on telly, more than I ever used to see when there.

I do just one other camping weekend in a year now, a blues (long) weekend based around a pub, which I've been to without fail for I think around 14 years now (even when the event moved about 100+ miles away with the publican). I met Mr Toad from Beermountain there once or twice in the early days. I think it used to be about 300 people but now it is more like 500 in the same area, and to me it's feeling crowded, and the camping is fairly basic which I'm finding less appealing as time moves on. This could be my last year for that. :-(

I guess I'm just getting old!!

[Werner]

My 38th visit there – but I’m not sure if many more will follow. Camping at Houx was great this year, nice company with DfH, Julian and his group and Tom and Peaky were also close by. However, the crowd was immense. In the past we took off 2 hours before the start to reach our usual viewing spot at Chapelle, but this year you had problems to find space already at noon. Everything was extremely crowded, passing through the various pedestrian tunnel was sometimes a nightmare and the village was so crowded that you could hardly move.

Enough complaints now, the race itself was great! The Hypercar and GT3 regs have made Le Mans amazing to watch with 9 cars still on the same lap at the end of the race. The racing has become much more attractive and this comes at a price – overcrowded spectator areas!

During practice I visited Barry and Rhys who camped at Arnage/Indianapolis, IMHO currently the best viewing spots. I might give this a try next year, camping there directly trackside reminded me a little on the old days at Maison Blanche or Karting Nord, when you could walk with your morning coffee from the tent to the track within minutes. Need to find out how to get Arnage campsite passes...

[Aysedasi]

This was my 37th Le Mans.  Every year since 1986 except 2020 and 2021.  I'm one of those who doesn't camp - in fact, I've never camped and I suppose that being the case I don't miss it and certainly don't want to do it at 67 years of age and in the weather we experienced at LM this year.  I had a great time, primarily because for quite a while it didn't look as though I would make it.  I've had some serious health issues over the last two and a half months and if dates for meetings and procedures had fallen differently, I simply wouldn't have got there.  In the end I had to adjust my plans, travel over with my son and his partner.  It was a shorter trip but nonetheless an enjoyable one.  It also made me realise just how crucial it was (for me) to have seats in the right grandstand (T17) with the available facilities.  Will I be there in 2025? - health permitting, you betcha!  

PS  Werner, Arnage camping was cropping up on the ACO resale site fairly regularly even in the few weeks before the event.  I bought Mulsanne camping for a friend when I bought my own tickets way back last year. 

[JDS]

Hated the weather this year, especially the 5 days of 6 degrees overnight temperatures from the Friday before Test. And the rain later in the week.

The weather was absolutely rude this year (and has continued to be for us in France ever since!) - there wasn't a single 'reliable' day (where one could know the weather would be fixed; either sunny all day or raining all day) and of course, the rain made BSJ (our 'not by choice' new home) a swamp.

This year could be the one that sees me putting the marquees up in the garden and spending the week 3 hours south of La Sarthe in 2025 .....

[JDS]

... camping there directly trackside reminded me a little on the old days at Maison Blanche or Karting Nord, when you could walk with your morning coffee from the tent to the track within minutes.

I miss those days ....

[nopanic - neil]

... camping there directly trackside reminded me a little on the old days at Maison Blanche or Karting Nord, when you could walk with your morning coffee from the tent to the track within minutes.

I miss those days ....

Me too!

[JDS]

... camping there directly trackside reminded me a little on the old days at Maison Blanche or Karting Nord, when you could walk with your morning coffee from the tent to the track within minutes.

I miss those days ....

Me too!

Blimey, Neil, you're alive !!! How nice to hear from you, hope all is well.