Roots N Blues continues free shuttle service

The Roots N Blues N BBQ festival will continue its free shuttle service, taking people between the city’s downtown parking garages to the festival in Stephen’s Lake Park. Parking in the garages will be free throughout the weekend.

“We encourage people that are driving to the Roots N Blues festival, since there’s hardly any parking — in fact, there’s no parking — we’re suggesting people park their cars in the parking garages that are free and take our free shuttles that are constantly running from the parking garages to the festival,” Richard King, Thumper Entertainment President said. Thumper Entertainment organizes the festival.

There are also other ways to get the park.

“The other thing we encourage is bicycles,” King said. “We have a huge bike valet and we’ll babysit your bicycle the entire weekend.”

King said the shuttle service, which costs the festival at least five-figures, according to King, is a must-have for the festival-goers.

“I think the most important thing with this event, at least to us, is we want to offer the best customer service we can,” King said. “We actually battled for a while convincing the city allowing the shuttles to come all the way to the front door of the festival.”

Handicapped parking is also available at the park for those with a window tag allowing them to park in designated spaces.

“Not everybody can walk and not everybody can bike so we have to take that into consideration,” King said.

This is the first year the festival has gone cashless and festival goers will need a wristband to conduct transactions with vendors.

King is encouraging those with a ticket to trade it in for the wristband as soon as they can.

“We’re suggesting people go to Academy Sports today and swap their ticket for the wristband,” King said. “Once you have the wristband, you don’t have to mess with will call or anything like that. You can just walk right into the festival.”

You can also swap a ticket for a wristband at the ticket office which opens at 10 a.m. every day of the festival.