VanXant

absolutely reprehensible that SM staff STILL have this atttitude. i remember the same attitude from London a few years ago when the "professional" photographer was unable to get pics in focus. seems nothing's changed and once they have the money the concern goes out the window?

Danny was great. he signed my Predator 2 cover and put "s*** happens!" on it :-D

it was ok. signage on the NEC itself was lacking, got early and there was nothing on the carpark signs as my email had said, finally found the hall ok though. bit odd that Danny Glover didn't have a VQ system until later on, not sure why SM didn't think he would need one. his handler told me he didn't have one then when i went back 20 mins later they were handing them out, fortunately i still got a reasonably low number. venders were the usual load of overpriced tat, seems very little genuine memorabilia these days, it's 5 stalls of pokemon, 2 of sugary cakes and 12 of vinyl bobblehead-looking things. room was pretty good, fairly spaced out and the temp was decent. SM staff doing their usual idiotically persistant "move up move up" litany - do you all not have eyes? do you not see the people in the area already that might appreciate a little breathing space? do you not understand the concept of people maybe not liking strangers squashing up to them for no good reason - especially later in the day when they're likely sweaty and smelly? do you not grasp the fact that squashing up together makes it harder to get bags open at the time to get your items out? or risks an item getting bent or crumpled by someone bumping into you or catching you with their bag as they move, etc etc? do you think me moving 3" closer to the person in front is going to make things go faster? you're not enhancing anyone's convention experience or making things even remotely more efficient with your persistent whining, so either give it a rest or have the common sense to set up some snake-like barriers or something. didn't quite get the in having us all snake up in the building then get let outside and back in through a different door, why not just make a gap at the end we could file through? the guests i met were great, Danny and Christophe especially, and Kristanna was just sweet :-)

can't help feeling the GL shoot will be marred by the fact they made them paint over the flag on the roof :-/

well i always wanted this signed but £45....hard think time

And here you're all "Nyah nyah, I'm getting strangled by Hannibal, die with envy!" I haven't washed my neck since! great pic but damn, that's some tan Mads has! he wandered past the Rutger desk on Sat, i didn't think he looked that brown! "I haven't washed my neck since!" ....hmm, i guess you're not trying to pull his hand away then!....it does look like you're thinking "tighter! TIGHTER!" :-D

What was wrong with hotel olympia? Just having a quick look at it on Tripadviser: a lot. no kidding! my room's furniture was shoddy, there was a LOT of black mould in the bathroom and the fixtures were broken. i got a room change but the other room wasn't much better - a lack of mould was about as good as it got. didn't even have a goddamn plug for the basin! it was very noisy with traffic too, but having been up through the night and wrecked with a lot of walking it didn't affect me too much [traffic is kinda white noise to me so i tune it out better than music or voices] but i can imagine it would really affect some people ~ with no aircon, you had little option to have the windows open.

hmmm. i seem to recall quite a few comments about the quality and blurriness of photos on last year too, was it the same photographers this time?

This year at the Hilton it cost me £180 per night (thats a double 'wheelchair accessible' room). No breakfast included. Looking at next years rates for the Hilton, to book in advance its currently at £240 a night for the same room. So that's a hike of £60 a night, clear example of profiteering on the fact the LFCC is now more or less fixed at Olympia. Kind of annoying as the other 'accessible' hotels in the area are really too far away from Olympia for it to be comfortable trekking to an fro in a wheelchair for me. i had something like that when i went to Download, the calendar-rate list for the place i stayed at was £50 every day until the fest weekend, then £100 for those 2 days. very annoying.

i found it odd that they still had the weapons dealers - i mean, if i wanted to cause a scene i'd stand calmly in the queue, get a bag search no bother, then wander into the hall and pick up anything from a zombie-slayer machete to a katana and go hog wild - what's to stop that? i thought some of those sized blades etc were illegal too, but i'm not 100% on the knife law.

i usually go to the Premier, but due to last minute stuff this year i had to go to the Hotel Olympia. worst hotel ever, i'd rather doss in the event doorway next time!

No one has been in the Office yesterday, People are only getting back today at the earliest. I can't make any promises about refunds being given though. That someone got autograph vouchers at the Show is kind of unusual. I can understand why someone would be unhappy about a Picture like this. But if they start doing this regularly there'll be a line around the venue trying to get refunds because someone doesn't like the Expression on their face. There's way too many People abusing such things nowadays. right, i have big a problem with this comment. as far as i'm concerned, if someone's paid money for a product [photo] and entered into a paid transaction with you, if it's not of satisfactory quality/fit for purpose [ie, display proudly] then they are entitled to a refund. REFUND, not some "autograph voucher" cop-out. statutory rights/consumer rights cover this and putting some of your own caveats in the blurb doesn't override the Law. people pay a LOT of money for a photo in some cases, and the fact that some are so bad that one guy has actually just torn it up is simply unacceptable. that comment about not liking an expression is a very sly form of sneering insult as far as i'm concerned - those photos should be "fit for purpose" and if someone doesn't think it's acceptable then at the VERY LEAST they should get another try. you're damn right someone should complain if they don't like a miserable-looking guest who's ruined the event for them - why should you pocket the money and leave them with a ruined bitter experience - or no product at all, if the thing was so bad they'd rather rip it up? If we'd ordered a book in advance and when we got it the print was blurry or such, would you try the same brush-off? it is NOT abusing, and i'm really unimpressed you're trying to play that card; how are they abusing if they hand the pic back and get a refund? if they KEPT the pic and got a refund, you might have a point, beyond that the punter has had a wasted trip and a downer of an experience, so what exactly is it you're saying they're abusing? related to this is the commentary about him having to be actively pleaded with to do a shoot - don't these guests have a contract with you? People pay a lot of money and travel huge distances for a pic/auto and guests shouldn't be allowed to pull a strop like this on a whim - i fell victim to this a few years back when Val Kilmer just decided to no-show, and afer costs and several hundred miles of travel, i wasn't impressed. sickness should be the only excuse not to do what was agreed.

i know what it was and where it was from, i meant i didn't know enough about it to say it was accurate/the real thing/whatever. the Dredd bike was cool, shame they couldn't have done a bit more of a back drop for it to give a bit atmosphere. i really liked that flick, would love to have Karl as a guest here :-)

ha! i may have been the person he thanked. were you in real early? we were laughing cos he signed the other pic "Where were you?!" :-D

very nice guy, signed my Warlock DVD and had a little chat. Been a fan since i saw it so was nice to meet him 30 years down the line :-D

Okay, I just want to raise a few comments/opinions from my attendance on Fri and Sat; some good, some bad. Let's start with the good. - The move to two halls was a definite improvement. It opened up a load of space, and perhaps the reduction in packed bodies helped in keeping the temperature sensible as opposed to last year. - I actually managed to get a useful answer out of a Showmasters person, for the first time in numerous cons, so thanks to that guy who got me to Kim in time. There is however more to this in the Bad section. - Moving the queue to the other side of the building was a good call, as it puts us in the shade. Weather was quite kind this year, but it was appreciated anyway, as was moving us into the shelter of a hall at 7AM. - Good guests again. The only downer for me was the one who convinced me to come was a late addition so all the good flights/hotel rooms were gone, but c'est la vie. I still got to meet them, right? Now for the Bad, or at least the Not-As-Good, in some cases. A few about the staff unfortunately, but please take these comments as intended from a fanboy who spends a lot of time and money to be here, not some pointless venomous rant. - as mentioned, the clueless staff. Really, if you're wearing a shirt and advertising yourself as part of the organisation, you need to be able to offer a modicum of help to your customers. It tests people's patience when they ask for directions or advice and get a blank look and "uh, I dunno." What would your reaction be if you got that from a sales assistant in a shop, or a waiter in a restaurant? When you're trying to hurry to a guest to get a low VQ number and you don't know where they are, the last thing you want is to go wandering aimlessly around a huge hall, wasting valuable minutes that can literally add many dozens to your ticket number if it's a very high-demand guest. This isn't the first year this has happened, and you don't even seem able to provide a printed guide before hand - this "we don't know where people will be sitting till the last minute" excuse is, frankly, laughable. Some people only get there for one day, and this sort of thing can result in them missing their opportunity. Surely staff can be given a cheat-sheet or map or such? Even just a "the Game of Thrones guys are all over there" sort of thing would be enough in most cases. - in addition, some of you guys need to chill out. The woman running the Rutger Hauer desk on Sat - for crying out loud woman, you need to settle yourself down. LITERALLY every 20 seconds it was "move up, get cosy with the person in front." Tell, me, move up WHERE exactly, since we were 6 feet from the desk with four people in front of us trying not to get photos/posters crumpled, and encroaching on Michelle Gomez's desk [who fortunately wasn't there or I assume she would've been narked]? Can you explain precisely how nagging us incessantly to squash up hastens Mr Hauer's signing? Seriously, this sort of thing is extremely irritating. - My major complaint, is once again the Showmasters staff made a total mockery of the entrance on Saturday. Friday seemed no bother - queue in the zigzag, get scanned, go in. Saturday, not so much. For a kick off, many of us had made the effort to get there from 6AM or earlier. We don't do that for fun, we do it because we're dedicated, huge fans of someone, and want/need to guarantee a chance to meet them. So, we're queued in the zigzag, and near opening time, someone decided they needed another couple rows, so they added some gates and shuffled us up. All well and good…except for no reason at all, the people directing this decided to stop the flow and start another line. So as a result, we had latecomers getting at the front of a queue the same as people who had put up with standing about for hours - that's as good as spitting in our faces. Compounding that, come 9AM, they just stood aside and basically said "go for it", no scanning or anything, resulting in a horde all heading for the same places at once. You quote all this security stuff, no reselling tickets etc etc, then you do nothing to enforce it. I could have been standing there with no ticket and could have just walked right in! You let everyone in en masse, and then start whingeing at people not to run - what did you think was going to happen?! - my other major issue is the advertising of the cars. The ads led people to believe there were actual screen-used vehicles, and they were anything but. The Delorean was good, but just a replica. The 89 Batmobile was similar, but just some road-going fn job that wasn't even fully screen-accurate. And the Tumbler - OMG, are you serious? What the Hell was that thing? It looked like an MFI flat-pack kit, I'm sure it was made of screwed together plywood. "Awful" doesn't even begin to cover how it looked close up. If I had turned up for a photo op for that specifically I would have been severely enraged. The dog car, I can't comment on as I don't know enough about it, but this specimen was frankly an embarrassment. It was like a cosplay version of it, it wasn't even a proper vehicle for crying out loud. - what was up with the exits, I walked around the hall to the normal one and was told I had to go all the way back again and then walk all the way back down to the front street. The place wasn't even busy or crowded so I don't get why that policy was in place? - a personal one for me is the vendors these days. There's so much tat and unofficial stuff it's not funny. I get some people like any t-shirts etc, but I have a hang-up about supporting official things of whatever I support, be it films, bands or celebrities, but each to their own I guess. And did I really see a stand trying to encourage people to sign up to Communism? How's that film/comic related? - it's been raised before but I need to say it - prices. I don't know who sets them, but £75 or £95 a pop…not funny. Everyone has an idea of what they think is reasonable to pay, that's mine. Say no more. So, yeah - thanks for another couple days of great guests, despite my missing a talk lol, but really, you need to get your act together with the handling of this event on the day as the sort of things I've mentioned about can ruin someone's day and there are people who spend hundreds to attend - I spent a fair bit on hotels and petrol and there are people from other countries who spend far more than me. Thanks for listening.

Firstly - Kim was fricking awesome. he's the reason i came this year, and drove 5 hours through the night cos the last minute addition meant all decent flights were gone. he was amazing with the fans and really funny. he even thanked someone in front of me for getting a siggy for someone who couldn't attend. Secondly - what's this about a Kim talk? there's nothing listed on the Tickets page, and i'm really annoyed that i've missed something like this as i would've signed up in a heartbeat. >:-(