Welcome to Rockville 2025 Breaks Records and Sets Daytona Ablaze

Heather Vandemark
Jun 8
6 min read

Welcome to Rockville 2025, with over 150 bands on 5 stages, broke a record with 230,000 fans in attendance. The lineup this year was absolutely insane, with headlining performances from Shinedown, Green Day, Linkin Park, and Korn. Of course, with a lineup this stacked, there's going to be some special, one of a kind performances you can only catch at a festival! Florida natives Shinedown invited Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Johnny Van Zant and Rickey Medlocke to join them for a performance of Skynyrd’s “Simple Man”, Social Distortion joined the lineup as a special addition, Seven Hours After Violet, the new project from System of a Down bassist Shavo Odadjian, had there East Coast Debut, Good Charlotte covered the Wheatus hit “Teenage Dirtbag” with Wheatus singer Brendan Brown; this was the band’s exclusive Southeast U.S. performance and only their second show since 2019, Pierce The Veil and Kellin Quinn of Sleeping With Sirens banded together for their collaboration track “King For A Day”, Crossfade marking one of their first performances in 13 years, Body Count performing their first Florida show since 2004, it was Dry Kill Logic’s first show in 19 years, and one of Acid Bath’s first shows in 28 years. This year was iconic, to say the least.

One of the things we love about festivals is that it’s the perfect way to get together with friends. We live in California, and our friends came over from the UK, so we split a hotel suite right across the street from Daytona Speedway. Of course, we don’t all want to see all the same bands, so with the WTR app, it was easy to coordinate our schedules to meet up at what stage and time.

Our Welcome to Rockville weekend kicked off at the Official Pre-Party. We thought it would be a funny idea if we did a stupid shirt exchange, but PG edition. Before the festival, we got randomly assigned to someone in our group, and we had to buy the most ridiculous shirt for the person to wear. It’s not only a silly little game, but a great conversation piece. We met a bunch of people just laughing at our stupid shirts. The Pre Party included performances by Breed, Deadly Apples, Josey Scott (original voice of Saliva), NonPoint, and Pop Evil. It was the perfect way to get us all pumped and excited for the weekend!

We know Florida is hot AF, and the heat is not to be taken lightly. You can get really sick, really fast. We start the prep and hydration process a week ahead of the festival and bring lots of electrolytes to add to our water all day. This weekend was a rough one, though. Danny Wimmer and his whole team do a great job of trying to provide as much relief as possible. There were big tents for shade, cooling buses, and big misting fans by stages and random spots for a quick cool down. All the stages had someone with a water hose, spraying fans down. It felt amazing, especially when you think you can’t stand there in the sun one more minute. Midway through Day 2, we got a notification through the app that bottled water was dropped to just $2 and re-entry was now allowed for all fans, so they could leave and cool down if needed. At the end of Day 2, Danny Wimmer posted on social media that they were bringing in semi trucks full of more shade for us. I bought one of those mister bottles, and that was a game changer for us and those around us. There was one guy coming out of the pit, looking like he was ready to go down, I sprayed him (with permission) and he perked back up. Highly recommend grabbing one of them; they make a huge difference.

Our goal going to any festival is to see as many bands as we can, especially bands we’ve never seen live before. There are bands that I’ve heard on the radio that didn’t really hit me, but seeing them live completely changed my mind, and I became a fan.

Now, at VTU, we have rules as to what qualifies as seeing a band live:

Jumbotrons do not count; we must see them on the stage with our very own eyes.
We must listen to at least one song, preferably 3, but with overlaps, it’s not always possible.

With that said, I saw 54 bands (25 were bands I’ve never seen live before), and Kaiya saw 63. We walked a lot of miles, even in that heat!

Obviously, the draw is the music, but there’s so much happening at the festival that we tried to see and experience as much as possible, even if it was only a few minutes.

The Dive Bar - A nice, enclosed, air-conditioned Karaoke bar where you never know who might pop in there and jump on the mic. Everyone in there was so supportive and loud, cheering and singing that even Kaiya jumped up there and sang “American Idiot”. She crushed it!
The Grandstand Hideout - The heat was brutal, and this was a great spot for shade, water, and you could still see three of the stages from there. We got cold water, snacks, laid down on the concrete, and listened to We Came As Romans from up there. The view was amazing!
Sirius XM Octane Tent - Jose “Metal Ambassador” Mangin, Caity Babs, and Shannon Gunz were doing live interviews with different artists throughout the day. On the last day, it was really nice in there with the AC in there. We got to catch an interview with Chris Motionless of Motionless in White and Shavo Odadjian and Michael Montoya of Seven Hours After Violet. There was also Vintage Rockville merch on the other side of the tent.
The Ferris Wheel in the middle of the festival is a great view! You could see all 5 stages from up there and have a sick birds-eye view of all the people. It was fun!

A lot of people ask if VIP is worth it. I say a million times over YES! The AC flushable restrooms, the bars with shade, couches, fans, the bleachers to watch the show when you’re tired and just want to chill, the short lines to refill water, and a merch booth with limited items, but no lines are worth every dime. There’s also a free carnival ride, and this year it was a swinging pirate ship. We went on it during Korn, and that was definitely an experience.

We could write a 10-page article on all the bands, but we’ll add a few of our personal highlights.

Heather’s

Return to Dust played on a main stage! We’ve been following them for two years, seeing them perform with just 20 people on a stormy night in Garden Grove to WTR on a main stage. It has been amazing to watch their journey.
Liliac - In 2017, we saw a band of all kids on the Santa Monica Pier performing covers of Dio, Ozzy, and we were blown away by their incredible talent. Now, they are all grown up and playing on the main stage at a major festival, literally had me in tears like a proud mom.
Green Day had a Welcome to Rockville record-breaking audience. They always put on a spectacular show.
Three Days Grace with Matt Walsh and Adam Gontier are so great together. I’ve only seen Three Days with Matt Walsh and was a little nervous to see how that would work out. It was absolutely beautiful how they have come together.
Sublime with Jakob Nowell (son of original singer Brad Nowell) was so fun! He was amazing, and we loved all his little jokes.

A lot of bands paid respect and/or tribute to Three Doors Down lead singer Brad Arnold, who is battling Stage 4 kidney cancer and had to unfortunately cancel all future performances.

This was one of the most memorable festivals. I drank more water than wine, maybe that’s why. I met so many amazing people this weekend from different parts of the country and the world. I don’t know if it’s because the world is a bit crazy right now or what, but it seemed like everyone was just more kind, more patient, more friendly, more helpful to each other. Being there helps our mental state for months after; it is important to go have fun with like-minded people and escape the real world for a while. DWP and even airlines now have made it easier to afford with payment plans that you can pay even AFTER the festival. It’s so worth it!

We are planning on attending more DWP festivals this year. Coming up is Inkcarceration in Ohio, Louder Than Life in Kentucky, and Aftershock in California. Tell us your favorite thing about Welcome to Rockville 2025!