Wiskel

Personally, I think a lot of good could come from this over the next few years. I'm quite happy to have the venue itself suggest a bit more thought needs to go into the organisation of entry, exits and public space around the cons. Plus, Brighton is a pretty cool place.

Wil Wheaton Some guests from Community would be great

The thread is starting to derail a little on to prices in general. My points have never been that a business can't plan to make a healthy profit, nor that prices should be subsidised. As costs go up so should prices. My point has simply been that the people you meet at sci fi events around tend to be lovely people - although there is one on this thread I don't think I'd get on with. You don't "win" the event by leaving with more stuff than anyone else and photos I got signed last weekend wouldn't make me happy without being able to tell my friends a little bit of an anecdote about how I got them. Good anecdotes do not start with " My credit card had a higher limit than everyone else and so XXXX was contractually obliged to smile at me and write their name." Even the disappointments of cons make good stories and end with "I hope I get chance to do it next time." The natural cycle of capitalism is that something starts small and idealistic, gets big, compromises its ideals, then eventually loses the plot, forgets customer service and finally goes into decline. The best thing to do right now is find a way to make next years show work for all. The wrong thing to do is to decide it's ok to exclude people based on income. I'm hoping for the best. Craig

I would wager that for many on the forums and at the event "money" is not the biggest driving factor beyond whether they have enough spare to go or not. What I mean is sci fi / fantasy is one of the few genres where fans are of all ages. I can talk Star Wars and Dr Who with my 8 year old nephew. My favourite memory of LFCC is from a year or two ago as I watched Matt Smith stop, greet and engage with every youngster during his busy signing on Saturday. Every kid got a warm welcome and a beaming smile. My favourite memory from this year is watching Summer Glau, Juliet Landeau and Terry Farrell greet almost everyone warmly. Having queued for all 3 I spent a bit of time in the area. My problem with the "supply and demand" argument is that I'm fortunate enough that I could buy gold passes if I wanted. I accept the arguments on the forums about people prone to stress or trying to co-ordinate a very busy day, but I wonder if Matt Smith and Stan Lee would rather sign 20 autos for a dealer, one for a middle aged bloke like me who's fairly friendly and can afford shiny tickets, or one for a kid in costume. I get the feeling they're fans too. So, lets have the changes resulting from this years problems keep the fans in mind please, Let's remember the event is there to be enjoyed and not reinvent Animal Farm. Craig

I have no problem with people choosing to buy expensive tickets - my point is purely that if an event runs well they shouldn't be needed. My apologies if I phrased it badly. "Special" probably wasn't a good choice of word. There's a big difference between an expensive ticket being a more pleasant way to spend the day and it being the only way to get what you want. I'd hate showmasters to think that was the way to solve this year's problems

I'm of the view that complaints are easy to ignore and the show organisers are neither stupid nor want to do us harm. I'm also of the view that this was a troubled event to say the least and none of us want to repeat the experience next time out so I'm going to try and offer suggestions, not just complaint. I had an ok experience and attended Saturday only. I think the only reason I had an ok experience was that I wasn't trying to do anything Stan Lee related and have no interest in photo shoots. This year it was an all day task to get 7 autos (only one from a "big name" - John Hurt) and look at the dealer stalls. I also had a prepaid early bird ticket (for the first time ever) I'm normally a pay on the door type. So very glad I didn't try that this year. 1. The current ticket system does not work for an event this size. The way tickets are sold means that there's an advantage to buying in advance and getting an early bird ticket BUT we all know the real rate limiting factor to how well your day goes is the numbers on your VQ tickets. So many people knew that this year and there were so many guests that the early bird prepaid line stretched right around the building by 8.30 and was well and truly folded and doubled back by 9am. You've created a need to be in the hall early, not just at the event in good time. That's a system that rewards "ungentlemanly" conduct towards others. I hadn't foreseen that. I've been to loads of these events before and 2 years ago the line was very manageable at 8.15am. I'd expected it to be longer this year but not that long. I hate to suggest this, I really do, I'm too laid back to be organised and I tend to believe things will work out just fine whatever time I turn up during the day, but I think the event needs to move to a limited number of tickets that are only available in advance. I also think you're going to have to figure out a way of distributing the VQ tickets online too. You hurt no-one by getting to a point late in the day where the lines go to open queue but you frustrate people who are 1000th in the prepaid early bird queue at 8.15am when they think they've done as much as possible to be organised. 2. The venue is poorly designed for the event. A rival company uses Excel. A trip there is very pleasant compared to Earl's court. There is a shedload of room in the hallway outside the halls where A LOT of people can gather for cosplay photos and on a nice day so much room outside that everyone can find somewhere cool to stand and people watch while waiting for VQ tickets or to hang with their friends and take photos to their hearts content - and no main roads 100 yards from the front door. I bear cosplayers no ill will, you make the event more colourful and add to the atmosphere. I like you being there but with nowhere easy to gather either inside or outside the venue for photos it must have been limited fun for you - especially the girls who had Mario kart costumes. how the hell did you move at all on saturday? The down side of Excel is that there is a lot less queuing room outside the halls to get in. Maybe you could hire two or three halls, One for guests and autographs and photo shoots where no-one is trying to cross the hall and the queues have a bit of space to breathe. One for dealers and stands Maybe even one for your associated events, like cosplay and YA lit conferences. Every one of your halls could also do with one empty corner where people can gather and sit down when they're determined to and not be in the way. I personally learned a lot about YA literature because I was determined to sit down and that was the only bit of floor I could find where I wasn't in the way or surrounded by others. 3. Your volunteers are generally nice people but even nice people get cranky when things get out of control and they don't know how to fix them. My biggest problem on Saturday was Summer Glau's signing queue. I got VQ ticket 398 and she was my third stop. I got to the guardian of her tickets about 4 or 5 mins after getting into the hall. I was in the early bird prepaid entry queue a short way before it doubled back on itself (Just before it reached right around the venue) 398 isn't awful. I figured I'd get my auto mid afternoon and that was a fairly good guess. I kept a close watch on the queue though. She had an early photo shoot (or something ) and didn't start signing until about 10.30 At first the queue was going slowly and predictably. I'm cool with that. She was paying a lot of attention to people meeting her and nice guests tend to sign slowly sometimes. Fair enough. No complaints from me about guests being too nice. Then I took my eye off her queuet for what can't have been too long and it had suddenly jumped up to 400 and she was going for lunch at about 1. When she returned at about 3.00 (from somewhere) the tickets wereup to 500 and 45 mins before this a long queue had started forming. Your guests are generally nice people too, but we get worried when we start to see something going wrong and the longer her queue got the more people joined it because we all know that once a queue gets out of hand your volunteers are going to start doing random things like closing it and we want in before that happens. Then we were in the way of the Jason queue or something and the whole section of the hall was filled with loads of people all standing still while herds of people tried to get from one side of us to the other. I guess my suggestion here is that your volunteers need at least enough training to know that jumping VQs forward by big numbers catches us out and causes problems. You also need enough authority and reinforcements to reduce the queues when necessary. I had ticket 398 and loads of people around me were below 300. I would have hated it if you'd decided to reduce the number from 500 to 300 and then go back up in small numbers but you would have solved the problem that way. If you want to get really adventurous you need to go higher tech though. You could do with a big "train departures board" that's visible from most of the hall that can update your VQ numbers. It would have saved me taking up space in your queuing areas as I periodically trekked back and forwards to see if it was my turn. 4. Gold. silver, platinum, ruby and unobtainium tickets Just to say please don't try to solve the problems with extra special tickets. I understand why you have them, I understand you like money and some people like to be special, I even understand most of the people who like to be special are nice. Just saying these events are best when they remember they're about fandom and community. I guess you wouldn't be running them if you didn't share those values. Try and hang on to them and ensure everyone has a good experience. Too many tickets that guarantee you get what you want suggests you don't have much faith that everyone should if possible. You don't need special tickets if the event works. Anyway, that's my attempt at thinking about solutions rather than focusing on complaint. Without a few new ideas we'll happily play our part in breaking the system even more. If we don't trust the system by the next big event then queuing will start at 6am, be out of hand by 7 and awful by 8. I really don't want to have to queue at 3am in 2 years time. Craig