An Informal Flurry Info Page
For the official Flurry FAQ Page, visit flurryfestival.org/about/faq.
There are plenty of things about Flurry that many attendees don’t know! We try to keep you in the loop on all the important stuff, but there are always things that slip through the cracks that we notice when we read your survey comments. So we’ve started this page to share tidbits that we think you should know, but maybe don’t. If you have suggestions for items to add to this list – or questions we might be able to answer here – send them to admin@flurryfestival.org.
In no particular order:
❄️ Why can’t the Hilton reservations process be a lottery? We’ve explored that option, but the only way to make it happen would be for Flurry to buy out the entire hotel and then conduct the booking process itself. That would require a no-cancellation policy, separate reservations and possible room changes required for Thursday and Sunday (for which the hotel doesn’t sell out), and Flurry staff handling room assignments, special needs, customer service… a massive infrastructure operation which our mostly volunteer Flurry crew simply cannot support. We’ve also considered charging a premium for access to Hilton rooms, but the “pay to stay” model is contrary to the community spirit Flurry thrives on, and so our best option remains a very imperfect system. Quick fingers and autofill are your friends when trying to snag a reservation, and remember that if you don’t get in you’re in very good company: we have over 500 people all trying to reserve 178 rooms exactly at noon, and you can do the math.
❄️ How many people attended in 2026? Not a straightforward number, as we have many types of attendees as well as partial-festival sessions… But here are some quick numbers: 2337 total festival tickets were purchased, of which 1446 were full-festival. That’s a little higher total than last year, but with a much larger percentage of single-session tickets. 352 people also did a pre-festival Intensive on Friday. We had 316 volunteers and around 350 performers. Add in around 200 guests and other staff, account for folks who bought tickets but didn’t make it, and you might estimate around 3100 people who attended at some point during the weekend, but only 2300 who were there for the whole weekend. A rough guess.
❄️ Our online schedule listings and descriptions ARE searchable by title! (But on the mobile version you need to switch to desktop site view first.) When the schedule page is active (before and during the festival), first set any filters you want for day or session code, and then click on the little filter icon at the top right of the table. So okay, our platform doesn’t allow for the most elegant design, but it works!
❄️ Flurry does have a “quiet room.” It’s called Phila, and it’s located in the Hilton hallway on the left across from Broadway 4. It’s a space to get away from the bustle and enjoy a bit of peace during the weekend.
❄️ Food vendor limitations: We would truly love to invite your favorite vendor, but Flurry is limited to the businesses that contract with the City Center to provide catering on site. Our current caterers, Seasons, 9 Miles East, and Ben & Jerry’s, do a wonderful job of providing a range of options to accommodate a variety of needs, and are always open to menu suggestions. Vendors are not allowed to set up in the Hilton spaces, and the city does not allow food trucks.
❄️ On the subject of food, yes, the hotel restaurant service is slow. They acknowledge that will be the case, as they set aside only a small portion of the restaurant for table service. To speed things up, they offer chef-attended stations for a subset of menu items, and recommend you go that route. You can find this disclaimer, along with other info on food offerings, on our festival food page.
❄️ Why we can’t add XYZ to the schedule… We have completely maxed out all the available space in our venues with all the diverse programming we are committed to providing each year. For every new program we bring in, something else has to go. We wish we could take all of your wonderful suggestions for new sessions to try, but we have to be very selective in order to retain the core program of dance and music genres Flurry is known for.
❄️ On a related topic, we can’t actually make any of the rooms bigger. How we wish we could! We known some sessions become overcrowded, and we do our best to match the session to the room best suited for it. But sometimes a session is higher-demand than we expected, or we’re just out of space, and we need to close a room off.
❄️ But could you just make a space for…? If only! There are lots of neat things we’d love to add to the festival if there was a corner left somewhere to fit them. But nooks and crannies (including stairwells) are off-limits to us, and all our permitted spaces are already filled.
❄️ The schedule DOES change. No matter how many times we say this, folks are always surprised that the early versions we put out often don’t match the final program. That’s because things go down: people get sick, travel plans change, life happens. Always refer to the most recent version of the schedule at www.flurryfestival.org/schedule, not the one you printed a week ago. We never make schedule changes just to frustrate you, even if it can feel that way!
❄️ Scholarship tickets: They are available for anyone who needs a reduced-price ticket to be able to attend, and we sold around 80 in 2026. There’s a link on the ticket page that will get you there, and you don’t need to apply; you just purchase on the honor system. We really want everyone who wants to attend Flurry to be able to!
❄️ Hotels are expensive,we know. Saratoga is a destination town. Even in the middle of winter, prices are high, and we don’t have any control over hotel pricing. We partner with many hotels that offer Flurry-specific discounts, and for those that don’t you will get the best rates by booking early – think six months in advance. Roomsharing is also a great option for reducing costs.
❄️ EMTs are very close by. We don’t have them on site, because the hospital is under a mile away, and emergency personnel are very familiar with our venues. For minor first aid needs, visit the Info Table. They can also connect you with a volunteer physician who’s on call for informal advice on whether a non-emergency injury requires urgent care. We can’t treat you on site, but we’ll help you figure out what to do.
❄️ What to do when a floor screw comes up: With this much flooring and this much dancing, it’s bound to happen sometimes. If you encounter a screw sticking up, note the exact location and share it with a Site Services volunteer at the door. They’ll relay the message to their shift leader, who will get the info to the flooring team that’s always on standby to address things like that.
❄️ Related PSA: don’t dance barefoot on our wood floors. Because screws can come up, and your feet will not thank you if you put them out of commission for the rest of the weekend.
❄️ All-gender bathrooms: they’re there, but we haven’t always done a great job of advertising them. The bathrooms next to the Hilton restaurant (which were closed for repair in 2026) are both all-gender, as is the bathroom outside Davis Hall (Meeting Room 1) that has a men’s sign. (We accidentally missed posting the all-gender signage for it this year, but we’ll get it back.) There’s also a family restroom in the City Center lobby for anyone to use, which has a changing table.
❄️ Jamming is NOT an afterthought! We LOVE to hear jamming at Flurry, and always want more. Every year we rack our brains trying to figure out where we can add jam spaces in places where they don’t interfere with access or safety, or conflict with other music. The hotel doesn’t allow jams in the upper lobby because it prevents their desk staff from hearing their customers. And some spots, like outside Meeting Room 2, are just too close to programming to work. In 2025 we added jamming spots across from Instrument Check and in the eating area next to 9 Miles East – do use them. If you have an idea for a new jam location we should consider, please share! And if a space is labeled “no jamming,” please respect that too.
❄️ A number of folks have asked about organized community-building options like groups for singles or first-timers to do activities together. We love these ideas, but rather than trying to organize that ourselves, we’d like to provide structures for attendees to build this kind of community. We now have a dedicated meetup space outside Meeting Room 2, with a board for signing up for special-interest meeting slots. You can connect around this before the festival too, at www.flurryfestival.org/meetups/. If you have a community-building idea you’d like to implement at the next festival, let us know and we’ll help you advertise and build momentum for it. We do have a dedicated email group for families to connect through, and would be happy to add you to it if desired.
❄️ It would be so amazing to provide childcare on site. Unfortunately, the red tape and liability issues there are significant, not to mention the lack of space for it. We do want to encourage families to get together and pool resources for child supervision, and we have kids’ programming running throughout most daytime festival hours. Beyond that, many non-kid-specific sessions are actually wonderful for kids if they have a group to hang out with, which is a great reason to use the email group mentioned above to coordinate.
❄️ What’s with that blue floor in Broadway? In the summer of 2025, the Lincoln Center gave away some flooring they were no longer using, and DFO trucked some of it up for use at Adirondack Dance Weekend and Flurry. Our regular supplier has limiting flooring available and we’re using all of it, so it became a way to make Broadway 1/2/3 into a dance space. Not our favorite floor, but: more dancing!
❄️ It’s in the program. Most of the time, if there’s a piece of information you need, you’ll find it there!
❄️ We’re pretty sure you know this already, but we love to talk with you about Flurry! Get your questions and comments to the right person by getting in touch at flurryfestival.org/about/contact-us/. (And we ask you about the spelling of “Flurry” on that page not because we’re pedantic, but because an awful lot of bots like to contact us that way too, and that one seems to stump them.)