A good festival reveals itself long before the first bass drop. You feel it at the gate, where somebody knows where to send you. You see it in the signage, the bathroom placement, the route back to camp, and the places built for people who need to sit down, regroup, or find their friends.
Those details rarely make the lineup poster, but they shape the entire weekend. Anyone can book artists and point speakers at a field. Building an environment that still makes sense when people are exhausted, overstimulated, altered, or wandering around at 4 a.m. requires another level of attention.
That thinking runs through Submersion Festival, the independent electronic music and arts gathering returning to Paradise Lakes in Hammonton, New Jersey, Oct. 1–3, 2026. It also explains why the new High Times Smoke Village is being built in the middle of the action, between the Beach and Woods stages, rather than parked at the edge of the grounds like another sponsor booth.
Submersion Festival Starts at the Gate
Submersion began six years ago as a single-day Philadelphia event at the 23rd Street Armory. Co-founders Jesse Boyer and Ryan Karolyi had already spent years producing parties together, learning what worked inside clubs and what became possible once they had an entire campground to shape.
The move to Paradise Lakes turned a one-night event into a long weekend with two stages, camping, visual art, workshops, food, vendors, and music stretching toward sunrise. The property sits in the Pine Barrens, close enough to draw from Philadelphia and New York while feeling far removed from either city.
For Boyer and Karolyi, building a festival meant thinking beyond the lineup. They had attended enough events to know the frustrations: volunteers who cannot answer basic questions, confusing grounds, inadequate bathrooms, poorly placed vendors, and security teams that …
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Author: Holly Crawford / High Times
