darthnad

Can't believe you're not listing him as being a major character in The Expanse! It's only one of the best scifi shows on TV at the moment !!

Don't worry, the map really isn't to scale, and there is a heck of a lot of empty space where most of the Ferengi Bazaar (literally about 10 dealers stalls max) and the Klingon zone (a few tables and 2-3 screen/separators). Feels really barren an offering to be totally honest.

I think this was just for those with tickets for one of the packages, which appeared to be being manually crossed off a list with a highlighter. General weekend tickets were not being asked for ID

I was happy with the level of security. They didn't impact on my enjoyment of the event, and it gave me peace of mind to know that our safety and that of the guests was being looked after. We live in crazy times - e.g. my Trek group in Manchester couldn't have our phasers outside of our 'Beyond' Odeon promo area recently due to armed police around following a man trying to get on the metrolink with an axe - and so it would be absolutely negligent to have anything other than strict security. I'd rather get frisked at every shoot than have even a potential occurrence of trouble

Hey, I'm travelling down on the Thursday night to attend the Friday of the event. My husband isn't coming along this year, just me, so I was wondering if anyone else is going down for the day by themselves and whether a few want to meet up for lunch etc? My Facebook is http://bit.ly/29EqMbW

Bolton??? Don't get me wrong, I'm more than happy that this event is a 15 min drive away from me, but Film and Comic Con Manchester is just 3 weeks after this event, and it's about 20 minutes down the road (about 15 miles away)! Why two events so close to each other in both distance and time?

I bet all the people who'd booked their transport and hotels to London are *thrilled* with this short notice change of not just venue but entire city!

I figured that the included prop shoots worked the same as the other shoots... so for example when I go for my Diamond Pass included Sigourney Weaver with Powerloader, that they will be called in the same order as other shoots, as it's a signourney weaver shoot and so ticket-only. I'm hoping Queen_Sindel is mistaken and is thinking of the solo prop shoots, like you + powerloader / throne / clocktower etc (but no guest), which are not included in any passes and are non-ticketed, so work on the basis of just turn up and queue. Clarity would be good though, as I will need to change a few things on my schedule if the Sigourney and Powerloader shoot will be a free-for-all of everyone who has it under a diamond pass or photoshoot ticket...

It will probably be an issue of space capital - Sales figures from last year will have been reviewed and with limited space this year, a signing tv/film guest might have been expected to draw more people and sell more than a cosplay guest. To be totally honest, as a cosplayer myself I didn't actually like having "professional cosplayers" lauded as guests, and a number of other people on other convention forums and groups online who went to this event didn't like it either. The general gist of these feedback conversations online (which I mostly agree with) is that the ones they had there came across as over-sexualising cosplay (essentially some of them are alternative glamour models), and taking something away from the experience of cosplay as a fan-led form of self and character expression by putting certain cosplayers on a pedestal above others. Cosplay should be about 'pro's, it should be completely inclusive. I appreciate that some people enjoy having them there though, so as I say maybe SM reviewed the figures and some of this feedback (and I saw a LOT of topics around the net which I summarised in the above) and decided not to use the increasingly valuable space for this kind of guest.

Jason, we use EventBrite at work regularly and it's actually very simple to re-issue tickets that are cancelled or refunded. If you enable refunds, people can log into EventBrite, request a refund of their ticket, this is actioned by someone from SM (by 'actioned' I mean they literally just have to click a requested refund to approve it), they get a refund, the number of tickets available goes up by one and that eticket is immediately available for purchase by someone else. I think you have created a problem here by not letting people get a refund on unwanted entry tickets, which creates a legitimate second market for unwanted tickets, which then inevitably turns into a tout market once they realise the value. However, if you were to use EventBrite's extremely simple refund and reissue process, this could be avoided. I'm not saying allow refunds for everything, as yes each refund still needs to be actioned by someone and this might be too onerous to apply to all tickets, but certainly for entry tickets a refund process makes sense, and good business sense too - unwanted tickets would result in less attendees, but tickets reissued to people who can attend gets more people in the door and spending inside. This process would not cause you guys much hassle with finance either, as I know that EventBrite hold onto all funds until one business week after the event - specifically to allow for refunds to be factored in and an easier transfer transaction. You also don't get charged service fees for refunded transactions. To be honest, I thought this was one of the main reasons behind a switch to e-tickets. We switched to this method for ease of reporting participation and for people to be able to register or cancel our events through the system which has made our lives easier by presenting us with up to date, realistic attendance numbers. That's my experienced two-cents anyway - genuinely happy to give anyone from SM advice if wanted

Shorts every day - on Saturday this will be part of my Jurassic Park ranger cosplay, but friday and sunday I'll be wearing my spaceballs alien shirt and probably my BSG or Xfiles one

Manchester. We're on the 12:35 Manchester Picadilly > Euston on the Friday if any fellow Mancs are on that train?

Have you ever tried to blow up a small picture that you've scanned in? It's a low res, pixely nightmare It's a 6x8 photo, and will scan in as such. The digital original image is high resolution, so can be enlarged and printed to much bigger sizes whilst retaining a high quality picture. I scan the smaller pics so I can back them up and share them online with friends, but it's useless for any other purpose

The £15 figure was referring to the cost of me getting digital copies of the 3 photoshoots included in my Sigourney Weaver Diamond pass at £4.99 each. Sorry, I should have expanded on that But yes, it would be good if they could work out a system of somehow sending 'voucher codes' or similar equal to the number of shoots in the diamond pass for the digital images. There isn't a major e-commerce system that I know of that doesn't support voucher codes.

I've been going to Showmasters shows for years, and I was really happy when they started letting us purchase the high res digital files for the photoshoots. I had a query though as this year I have a diamond pass - I was wondering if Showmasters would consider including the digital files as part of the package? If not retrospectively to the ones sold for this event then at least consider it going forward for the future shows. I don't mind paying for them normally - I appreciate the hosting costs etc and don't begrudge them the bit of extra profit for the abilty to have my pics blown up. However, I've paid a sniff short of £400 for Sigourney Weaver, and if I'm honest it feels like a bit of a kick in the teeth to have to pay another £15 for the digital photoshoot files on top. Is this something you would consider? (If anyone from SM is even reading this... would appreciate a mod to flag it with them if possible please)