From a water park to a stadium

Insomniac's Pasquale Rotella held the first Electric Daisy Carnival at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles in June 1997, drawing about 4,000 people. The festival's second run, in 1999, was at Lake Dolores Waterpark, out past the desert two hours south of what would eventually become its permanent home. EDC moved into the LA Memorial Coliseum in 2007, a jump in scale the festival's own history treats as a turning point for American dance music production.

Why it left Los Angeles

The 2010 Coliseum edition drew about 185,000 people, and it ended badly: a crowd stampede sent more than 100 people to hospitals, and 15-year-old attendee Sasha Rodriguez died after taking MDMA. Los Angeles suspended the venue's events pending new safety rules, and Insomniac moved EDC to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 2011. The first Vegas edition sold out at more than 230,000 people over three days, and the festival has run there every year since.

Built for the desert, run on PLUR

EDC Las Vegas runs on Insomniac's PLUR ethos, peace, love, unity, respect, a phrase that traces back to a 1993 Frankie Bones party in Brooklyn and predates both Insomniac and EDC by years. The mainstage, kineticFIELD, anchors a lineup of themed stages, including cosmicMEADOW, circuitGROUNDS, and neonGARDEN, spread with roaming art cars across the speedway grounds. Attendees camp on-site through Camp EDC, and the 2013 edition became the subject of Under the Electric Sky, a Sundance-premiered documentary that gave the festival's now-standard tagline its name.