The 2012 Vans Warped Tour Will Be Held In Redmond Washington Instead Of The Gorge Ampitheater And Moves From Hillsboro Oregon To Downtown Portland

For over a decade the annual traveling music festival, The Vans Warped Tour, has made a stop at The Gorge Ampitheater, but this year the tour will not be at the Gorge, but instead at Marymoor Park in Redmond. Also, instead of being at Washington County Fairgrounds in Hillsboro, Oregon the tour will be in downtown Portland, across from the Rose Garden, near the waterfront.

'Rumors' started a few weeks ago that the tour was not going to be at The Gorge, but nothing official was posted or announced, save for a few tweets from tour organizer Kevin Lyman:

Besides these few lines on Twitter, there really hasn't been an explanation as to why the tour was moved away from arguably the top outdoor venue in America to a city park in Redmond.

Rumors span from The Warped Tour being kicked out of the Gorge due to the antics that happen especially at the camping area, there was another show already scheduled at The Gorge, it just needed to be closer to Seattle...Lyman sheds some light on the real reason below, and the move was confirmed by a post on the Warped Tour dates page.

Also posted on the Warped Tour event page is that the stop in Oregon will now be across from the Rose Garden in actual downtown Portland instead of at the Washington County Fairgrounds in Hillsboro, Oregon.

I've been to Marymoor before and it was a cool spot to see a show and there is definitely plenty of open grass/space for multiple stages. I don't know that I can say the same for the Portland show. It looks like the stages will be setup along the river in a huge gravel parking lot. That is really just a guess as I haven't seen a show, or even heard of one, setup in this area before, but you will definitely want to ride The Max or find some other sort of transportation to the actual 'venue'.

The Vans Warped Tour will be at the Rose Quarter Riverfront on Friday August 3rd and Marymoor Ampitheater in Redmond on Saturday August 4th. Presale tickets will be available beginning March 30th.