Disasterous Conventions and Great conventions.

What was your least fun convention that you've ever had the displeasure of being at?

either badly run, or just bad experiences?


For me, Slanted Fedora, former star trek king pins, went from great, to worst pretty quickly. I remember one particular sad time where they did
'scotty's last tour'. they dragged out poor James Doohan, who took about 10 minutes to answer even a simple question right. I was happy to get the chance to see him, but i felt so sorry for the guy, i can't help but wonder if he wanted to be there, or if the con and his family dragged him out there.


New York Comic Con also went from great, to worse VERY fast. the first three years where perfect. a decent sized con, good comic and media guests....
but then, they got too big for the ir britches. the last year i went, I BARELY got into the one panel i really wanted to see, and i got there early. I waited 2 hours to get stuck in the b ack of the room, and i barely got to see anything. everything else had a rediculous ticketing system you had to figure out if you wanted to get in, and most people couldn't do it.


The one and only convention I would dare say was perfect, was a Star Trek convention that was a one and Done near Cherry Hill NJ sometime around 2004 I think. it was basically an autograph session....but also allowed for photo ops and had a small panel area setup too. I remember michael dorn browsing the merchandise aisle and largely left alone by the fans so he could enjoy his time doing so. And Jonahton Frakes coming out of his talk surrounded by yes men saying 'you where great!' after he asked how it was ;o).... it was a perfect, small little con that had practically EVERY member of TNG there minus wheaton and stewart. it also had the gorgeous terry farrel as well, who i was too nervous to meet ;o). I still remember marina going over to gates to talk about some tv show as her line emptied out, they where so happy to be there. that was also where i learned that gates had her Jim Henson working experience too.


so, what where your favorites and least favorites?

I've been to hundreds of conventions in my life, the most recent bad one was last year's Wondercon when they were at the Los Angeles Convention Center. That place is so absurdly awful, it's badly designed, everything is ridiculously far away, all of the big panels were in a place that you couldn't take costume weapons, period, it was just awful. So bad, in fact, that on the very first day we decided that if they ever went back to the LA Convention Center, we wouldn't go.

Luckily, they're going back to Anaheim next year. LA sucks donkey dicks.

Cephus said:

I've been to hundreds of conventions in my life, the most recent bad one was last year's Wondercon when they were at the Los Angeles Convention Center. That place is so absurdly awful, it's badly designed, everything is ridiculously far away, all of the big panels were in a place that you couldn't take costume weapons, period, it was just awful. So bad, in fact, that on the very first day we decided that if they ever went back to the LA Convention Center, we wouldn't go.

Luckily, they're going back to Anaheim next year. LA sucks donkey dicks.

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Agreed, I normally love Wondercon but I hated it at the LA Convention Center this year, it really is a lousy venue for a comic book con and it makes me glad that I stopped going to Anime Expo once they moved to there. It's fine for shows like car shows, SigGraph, E3 and the like where it's mostly about what's on display but for a con with lots of panels and time in between them, it's really a lousy design. You're also pretty much forced into eating at their horribly crowded food court since there are no eateries within easy walking distance, at least none at a reasonable price and/or good for a quick meal. Then there's the whole Microsoft Theater with their BS no replica weapons policy, pretty stupid that they have a different policy from the con itself, that's really annoying when prop weapons are often a part of people's costumes.

I used to go to the Pittsburgh Comicon all the time and never really had a bad experience. I went to the Tekko anime con downtown pittsburgh and it was bad and from what i heard it was the first time it was that bad. Autographs weren't happening until 7pm since the guests were running the panels all day and it was just generally bad. I don't think there was enough there to keep people entertained until 7pm honestly as the vendor hall was the busiest place and everything was marked up 30 percent over internet prices. Not to mention they rented out an entire floor of the convention center and didn't have enough guests or panels to fill it up. From the last i heard the yearly Furry convention brings in more people and money to the city than the anime con does these days. They had a really crappy prop weapon rule setup too and it seemed it depended on the mood of the person inspecting the stuff. My friends went a few years later and it was better with some game companies having setup but i don't know if i would want to risk the cash it costs to get there and in again.

rhode island comic con 2014... they over sold tickets. the fire marshal stepped in and locked the doors to people coming in.. people stood in lines for HOURS in the cold rain hoping to get back in. some people were separated from their family. people who had venders booths would go to lunch outside the convention and weren't allowed back in!! none of us knew what was going on, because once you left you weren't allowed back in

it was a total nightmare...

halliwax said:

rhode island comic con 2014... they over sold tickets. the fire marshal stepped in and locked the doors to people coming in.. people stood in lines for HOURS in the cold rain hoping to get back in. some people were separated from their family. people who had venders booths would go to lunch outside the convention and weren't allowed back in!! none of us knew what was going on, because once you left you weren't allowed back in

it was a total nightmare...

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huh... even though it's far away, i was thinking of going to that one once. thinking it was a smaller con.


sounds just like NYCC's shadiness

NeilT said:

huh... even though it's far away, i was thinking of going to that one once. thinking it was a smaller con.


sounds just like NYCC's shadiness

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if you come this year we can meet up ill give ya the tour. its attached to the mall so you can leave and eat at the mall. last year was the best year for organization. they had a lot of star wars guests too, i was in my glory. they also have cards you must wear around your neck, when u leave the card is scanned so it keeps track of the capacity. the main thing is they sold the right amount of tickets last year. RICC is the biggest event for the state, with them being in such poverty they look forward to it every year

this year they are hurting on star wars quests. I'm not a walking dead fan, but they get a huge amount of those guys. 2014 was a living nightmare, it even made the news... my brother cuts the hair of the owner of the event, and he was being sued left and right, i still think theres cases going on because of families being split apart. he lost so much money on that event..

he explained theres no way on proving who was locked out so all you do is email saying you were locked out and you got your ticket reimbursed. luckily i was inside the event all day so i wasn't locked out

the max capacity i believe was 19,000. and they hand over 24,000 on saturday. fire marshal was going nuts!! the lines to get it were blocking the city streets... it wasn't good at all

I don't think I can honestly say I've ever had a bad time at a convention. But then, I don't really judge them by how well or not well the con went off, I pretty much just judge them by how much fun I had.

I think my best cons were actually in the early-mid 80s. All the best movies were being made then, I was young and the whole con experience was relatively new to me. Just the wonder of it all overwhelmed me. Now it seems like I go just because, well, it's what I do.

Back then the whole experience was different. There was no internet or whatnot. We might see an advertisement for a con in Starlog or something and then save for months and months, it was like waiting on Christmas. Then we would take a long road trip (or in some cases, actually fly) to the con and just gorge ourselves on sci-fi for three days. Once we drove ten and half hours to one. We didn't have a video camera or anything but we took a little cassette recorder and tons of blank tapes and recorded the whole event. Every entry starting with "Captain's log..." I still have those old tapes. Sometimes I pull them out and listen to them. Ah, youth!

Laspector said:

I don't think I can honestly say I've ever had a bad time at a convention. But then, I don't really judge them by how well or not well the con went off, I pretty much just judge them by how much fun I had.

I think my best cons were actually in the early-mid 80s. All the best movies were being made then, I was young and the whole con experience was relatively new to me. Just the wonder of it all overwhelmed me. Now it seems like I go just because, well, it's what I do.

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Oh, I agree that the best cons were in the late 70s and early 80s. Primarily that's because it wasn't so security conscious. You had celebrities just walking the floor, talking to people, they didn't have an entourage, there weren't many crazy fans that made them feel in danger and you could just hang out. That just doesn't exist anymore. These aren't fan-run conventions, they are pro-cons that exist to make money. It's just too structured today.

Celebration 1 was horribly managed. Granted, they didn't make it rain, but they could've done something, ANYTHING, to minimize its effects.

The mid 90s was good too but I agree teh cons have all gone commercial, look at the SDCC and it's nothing but the major studios and tv stations flapping their gums. I haven't been to the con in Pittsburgh in 20 years but I think it's still being run by the family of the guy who started it. If you can still find cons like that they can be fun even if you have no clue who the artists are these days.

Treadwell said:

Celebration 1 was horribly managed. Granted, they didn't make it rain, but they could've done something, ANYTHING, to minimize its effects.

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Oh, the first year that Wondercon came to Southern California, they had parking at Anaheim Stadium. People just stood there out in the open waiting for busses to come by. Well, it rained really, really, really hard, with a strong wind. The rain was literally going horizontal. And as people were standing in this torrent, there were probably 5 busses just parked there, with their drivers taking breaks, watching people get soaked. They could have let people on the bus, but no... everyone got soaked, except for the ****** drivers. It wasn't the convention's fault, of course, these were private bus companies, but come on.

here's some old reads

http://m.slashdot.org/story/209287

https://m.reddit.com/r/providence/comments/2l2zxq/more_news_coverage_of_the_rhode_island_comic_con/


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There was a 1982 Houston Star Trek convention that was such a disaster than it's come to be known as "The Con of Wrath". Larry Nemecek is making a documentary about it.

Treadwell said:

There was a 1982 Houston Star Trek convention that was such a disaster than it's come to be known as "The Con of Wrath". Larry Nemecek is making a documentary about it.

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that i'd like to see..

Treadwell said:

There was a 1982 Houston Star Trek convention that was such a disaster than it's come to be known as "The Con of Wrath". Larry Nemecek is making a documentary about it.

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NeilT said:

that i'd like to see..

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me too

:lol Still sends chills up my spine! :lol

I was not there but heard all of the storys from Jimmy, Walter, and George, what a cluster.....

Treadwell said:

There was a 1982 Houston Star Trek convention that was such a disaster than it's come to be known as "The Con of Wrath". Larry Nemecek is making a documentary about it.

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I'm still not sure what the actual problem was.

was it over sold, or under sold? one of the video's i saw showed that the seats where empty..

1. The con had sold vacation packages that included tickets and hotel rooms, but somehow the hotel wasn't paid (or the hotel thought they weren't due to poor bookkeeping), so guests arrived to the hotel to find they had no reservations and no tickets....and the hotel was full. Some guests who did manage to check in under their expected reservations had notes slipped under their doors asking them to vacate.
2. the hotel was pocketing all of the onsite ticket sales due to this perceived non-payment, and was about to shut the entire con down when the organizers appeased them by passing the hat among dealers and guests alike--- they handed over a big garbage bag full of cash.
3. as part of the con, but at a different venue, was an elaborate stage show with the entire cast...that no one went to. Partly because the convention was not using the local unioned event planning company (which had an almost "protection racket" sense of entitlement for a piece of every event in town) for anything but ticket sales for the show, so they did underhanded things to thwart attendance, like telling people who called to buy tickets that it was sold out (when thousands of seats were available).
4. there was also no one actually running that show, so Walter Koenig took the lead and made it as good as it was. There were also audio problems and a firework or something went off in the audience.
5. and THAT show was almost shut down, too, the venue saying THEY hadn't been paid, either.

it just goes on and on....