Electric Daisy Carnival Brings 100,000 Dance Fans to L.A.

Coachella and Bonnaroo are widely and deservedly considered the biggest festivals in the U.S. But neither one did what the Electric Daisy Carnival in Los Angeles achieved this year: a single-day attendance of 100,000 fans. That's right -- in a slumping economy and a slow summer for concert tickets, a dance music festival built around a ridiculously talented roster of DJs that runs the gamut from newcomers Swedish House Mafia to icons such as Roger Sanchez, Armin Van Buuren and Sasha, drew 100,000 in its first day and nearly double that over two days.

The event also included mainstream names such as Moby, pictured, and the Black Eyed Peas' Will.I.Am -- a devout lover of dance -- mixed in with special live performances from Infected Mushroom and BT.

EDC promoter Pasquale Rotella was not surprised. "There are dance music lovers all over the world," he told Spinner in his trailer backstage. But he acknowledged to get to this point was a long haul. "We pushed really hard. This didn't happen overnight. My first Electric Daisy Carnival had 5,000 people. But I saw this and my team saw this, we had a vision."

That vision was spectacularly realized all over the grounds of the L.A. Coliseum, where five different stages were set up. Laser lights, costumed fans and a full carnival with rides, games and fare like corn dogs and cotton candy, turned the hallowed L.A. venue into a futuristic Mardi Gras. Nowhere was it more special than in the Coliseum itself, where the Kinetic Field main stage looked the same as it did in the '80s when the likes of the Who and the Rolling Stones played the venue. Tens of thousands of fans jammed the floor as DJs like Benny Benassi pumped up the audience by imploring them to make some noise. They responded with whistles and screams to familiar tunes by the likes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

EDC has become a destination event for its followers: the type of festival that fans plan for. "Dance music fans, they're traveling from all over," Rotella says. And he says he's seeing fans start to look at the event in the same way as the biggest U.S. festivals. "At Coachella, they were chanting 'EDC' in the dance test," he recalls proudly. "In the concert world I don't think people say, Bonnaroo, Coachella, Electric Daisy. But I am getting the sense that they're starting to say it right now." They certainly are. You can't ignore 185,000 fans.

Watch Swedish House Mafia play to this year's massive EDC L.A. crowd below: