Splendour In The Grass has apologised for extended bus delays that affected punters leaving the festival on Saturday night, with some enduring queues of up to four hours.

Following Friday's cancellation, weather conditions improved on Saturday as big crowds turned up for acts such as The Jungle Giants, Violent Soho, Jack Harlow, and headliners The Strokes. But when home time rolled around, things got messy.

"It's 4am. We have have been waiting 4.5 hours for a bus out of Splendour in The Grass," complained one TikTok user. "Not to mention it’s a PREBOOKED bus ticket… like they knew how many people needed to go home."

"Not to mention the first 3 hours of the line was just a confused mass of people with no directions or instructions," they wrote in a follow-up.

Punters on social media criticised excessive wait times, lack of communication and direction. Others reported getting home as late as 6am, while rideshare costs skyrocketed between $100 - $250, according to Pedestrian.

"We waited 4 hours in line for a bus and moved 20 metres," posted another user. "We ended up just walking to our campsite that was an hour walk away."

Loading

Responding to the chaos in a statement Sunday morning, Splendour In The Grass wrote: "We hear you and we understand your frustration with our bus services last night."

"Our event site closes at 2am and 90% of our bus patrons were offsite by 3:30am, like it was in 2019," the post continued.

"Unfortunately, some of our Tweed routes experienced extended delays due to bus driver shortages. We estimate that approximately 1000 people were affected."

"We are doing everything we can to secure extra services for tonight's exit, which is challenging in the current climate."

Loading

The festival post has been criticised as "bullshit" and "gaslighting" from ticketholders in the comments:

• "Tweed only? Don't lie to us, I was trapped in that hellhole for nearly three hours trying to get to Ballina. No water, no toilets no crowd control people passing out."
• "This post is absolute bullshit. Getting on the bus at 3am to Byron and there was still 1000s still left waiting in lines in the cold and mud."
• "Unbelievably unprepared. I don’t know where this stat is collected from as bus drivers weren’t checking passes, and I only saw minimal volunteers doing their best to manage a shit situation. Negligible security or paid staff in sight."
• "How do you expect 1000 people were affected when there wasn’t even any staff there to count us …."
• "Not good enough. I left at 11:30pm and got on a bus at 3:00am. There were still about 10,000 people behind me at this point. People were collapsing in the lines…this is a serious downplay of what actually happened."

Loading

The three-day music festival has been beset with issues this weekend.

Campers arriving for the event Friday faced 12-hour queues to get on site before Splendour cancelled all main stage performances owing to safety concerns over the wild weather and flooding of the North Byron Parklands site.

"In the interest of patron safety and in consultation with all relevant emergency services, we have decided to err on the side of caution and cancel performances on the main stages today only," Splendour organisers wrote in a statement.

Unlucky ticketholders, who had braved ankle-high mud and miserable conditions, were promised refunds. Thousands of camping pass holders were turned away and redirected to an alternate site and offered free shuttle services to get people on-ground.

Splendour co-founder Jessica Ducrou says it's been the "worst weather" the festival has experienced in its 21-year history, on top of working against staff and transport shortages.

"We've had muddy events before, it's not new to us, but I think the amount of rain that the Northern Rivers has received over the past six months has made it very difficult," she told ABC News.

"Everyone's working as hard as they can to make this an experience they deserve, but it is very challenging conditions."

Splendour In The Grass continues today (24 July). Tyler, the Creator is scheduled to headline tonight following anticipated performances from Amyl & The Sniffers, Mura Masa, Duke Dumont, Genesis Owusu, G Flip, Holly Humberstone, King Stingray and Unearthed comp winner Elsy Wameyo.