Phoenix Comicon Rant

GWC Meetups and Events
#1

Maybe someone can explain this to me because no one at the event could:

I took two of my daughters to the con Saturday afternoon following my oldest finishing her SATs. Upon arrival I was told there were no more Saturday tickets for sale but I could purchase a full pass for Saturday and Sunday. I wasn’t going to go Sunday. This simply seems like gouging and profiteering. Sort of like Disney telling you they have no daily tickets left but you buy a 3 day pass.

I bought a pass for my eldest daughter who was dying to go but I left with my other daughter, disappointed and pissed off.

Meh…

#2

That is absoluely not cool. I worked with Ohayocon (the midwest anime con here in Columbus) and that situation should never happen.

It is possible that they only had a certain number of “Saturday only” passes printed, but one thing that can kill a con is bad press. Someone should have stepped up and fixed this.

I always remember a certain law of human dynamics… “Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence”. I believe that is in play here.

#3

Yeah, I’m thinking they got a surge on Saturday that they weren’t expecting, and whomever was working the table was flumuxed by the fact that they ran out of physical tickets for that day.

#4

Exactly. Remember that most cons are staffed entirely by volunteers with little to no knowledge or experience on how to make cons work.

When in doubt, ask to speak to the department head. They are more experienced and have the authority to make things happen.

#5

Some of the larger cons hire temp workers to work the booths, but they don’t have much more experience then the volunteers.

#6

I asked in two different locations. One person said it was fire marshall regs which didn’t make sense at all. When I asked to speak with a super, they didn’t know where they were or how to contact one–or just weren’t going to do it.

Then I was told to go ask at a booth down the hall. They sent me back to the start…

At least my oldsest daughter had a blast dress as the Joker in Nurse garb.

#7

It may be that they planned the mix of tickets to have a max number of people each day, but were not flexible enough to deal with the actual mix of people that were coming in. It would have ment that a supervisor would have to take a two day ticket and turn it into two one day tickets to keep the number right.
Lack of flexibility is a sign of poor planning on the part of the organizers.

#8

From how I understand it talking to volunteers that were working the event this is how it is:

Each day has X tickets which are going to be sold just for that day, then there are Y of the Full Event tickets which cover all three days. So, X+Y=Total allowed in for that day. It seems to be more of a rule of the convention center than anything else. Probably part of the reason why it’s moving to the Phoenix Convention Center next year.