mjocovers

Well, this is the first time we haven't immediately booked for the next Hub. We normally buy gold, & it felt a bit strange not booking up straight away but unfortunately the Barrowman tour clashes with it, plus something else which may or may not be happening that weekend as well. We are still hoping to go to Hub 5 if we can (even though the logistics will be a nightmare), but will decide much nearer the time, and if we do go will probably only get standard.

I thought this Con ran pretty smoothly. The stewarding seems to be improving with each Hub. Maybe having the main guests there for both days helped as well, as it didn't seem as frantic as at previous cons (not the rush of trying to get all photos/autos done on one day for a main guest), though obviously that isn't going to be possible every time.

Thats a good point. I remember changing seats back at the Aftermath convention because of the camera blocking the view. Luckily it wasn't really a problem then as that was a very small con, and I think the aisle was wider then as I moved to another seat the other side of the aisle where I could see better. For some people an aisle seat or an end row seat isn't a matter of choice but of necessity, so things that block the view from the aisle would limit the seat choice even more than normal for those people!

20 quid for burgers!! Not everyone is a big eater, that price seems a bit ridiculous

It says on the web site that the weekend tickets already include "access to Barbeque Friday Night by the tree house" So why are the BBQ tickets now an extra £20 ??

I didn't go to Collectormania MK, but, out of curiosity, I just looked back at the Barrowman thread on its forum , and, yes someone wasn't happy at all, but its also very clear from the responses there that Barrowman signed over 1000 autos that day, and had an open queue just before 5pm so he was still there then! (and one thing the Sun article does make clear is that showmasters fully expected John to get through 1000 autos at Olympia because he had done it before, when the reporter asked "if John is likely to get through the 1,000 or so people hoping for an autograph" the reply was "Yes, we've had him before and he gets through a silly amount. We're open until 5pm and John signs until the end." ) So whatever your perceptions of the event, it looks like Barrowman did spend a lot of time there, and saw huge number of people. I'm not saying your friend didn't have a bad experience at MK (after all everyone has an off moment occssionally), but every time I've met Barrowman (and I have on numerous occassions ), he's been very pleasant; if he hadn't been I doubt I would have spent so much money going to see him in various things over the last 3 years!

I hope this was a joke, because if Barrowman didn't care about his fans he wouldn't have spent so much time after virtually every performance of La Cage signing for free for the hordes for fans that were there, even when he had 2 shows a day to perform. And if someone spends more time taking breaks than signing, how the hell does he get through so many autographs at Conventions?.

You were lucky then, maybe he was more sociable at the Saturday signings than the Sunday ones. It was a real shame. The cost of a convention can be expensive. There's the expense of the autograph, photo, admission charge, hotel cost, train fare for myself and my partner, not to mention the shear hassle of getting from A to B sometimes if one has a disability. And if one is paying out all that money primarily to see one guest (in this case David Soul), and if that guest is, shall we say, a very disappointing experience, it can leave one feeling why did we bother in the first place!.

It was obviously an idea inspired by trying to be fair to the early buyers, but which fell down because of the varying numbers and positions in the queue of the "multiple buyers". The two options are to have some sort of seating plan at the ticket purchase phase, so you can see what blocks of tickets or single tickets are available, and purchase as required, same as with many conc ert tickets. I suspect this however would needsome sophisticated web software for the ticketsales, which might be rather costly. The alternative is to have a list of who purchased how many seats in what order, and then either write a computer program to automatically allocate blocks of seats, or do it manually. The first of these might be an interesting intellectual exercise for any programmers present, but possibly time consuming. The second would just be time-consuming. And both would require probably holding more info (order of ticket sales plus size of each sale) than is seemingly currently held. I'm sure it's not beyond the wisdom of somebody like Too Tall; it might be beyond his time available, and indeed the information readily available from the current ticket sales system. er, I think that's more complicated than I intended. My idea (as outlined previously) would just mean that someone (presumably the person who processes/issues the tickets) would have a sheet of paper with just a basic list of numbers on it (so it there are 500 tickets, it would have 1 - 500), and would just mark off on the list at if the order is for more than one ticket. This 'ticket list' could then, at some point, be given to whoever was doing the seating plan My idea was to then,at some stage, transfer the numbers from the 'ticket list' to the 'seating plan sheet' in the same way that seemed to be done at the weekend, but just making sure that (based on ticket list), tickets purchased together are seated together. It doesn't have to be an exact science with equal blocks of tickets, just that if, for example, the person allocating the seats comes across a group of 5 tickets on the ticket list that were bought together, and which in theory would entitle the ticket holders to central seats in row A, but there aren't enough central seats available, just put them in the centre of row B instead.

You forgot to mention that during the La Cage run he was also filming his CBBC series 'Animals at Work', doing assorted radio and tv interviews, guest starred at the Feinstein concert, as well as standing in for Elaine Page on her radio 2 shows! I'm not surprised that he looked exhausted at times on Sunday

I also think it was a good idea in theory, and it could work if there is a master list made by the person dealing with ticket orders at the time of purchase, just highlighting which tickets were bought together. So for example the first 14 on the master sheet might be 1 2(red) 3 (red) 4(red) 5 (red) 6 (green) 7 (green) 8 9 10 11 (red) 12 (red) 13 (red) 14 which would mean that tickets 2, 3, 4, 5 were bought together. Tickets 6, 7 were bought together, and tickets 11, 12, 13 were bought together. (It would be necessary to use 2 different colours otherwise if it was all the same highlighter it would look like tickets 2-7 were all bought by one person, rather than being 2 separate orders!) Then when it comes to the actual seating plan, simply use the same principle they use in the theatre of allocating the best available seats, so, for example if there weren't 3 good seats together in Row A for ticket holders 11-13, allocate them seats in row B instead. Then on the day of the con there could either just be a seating plan sheet like there was before which matched ticket numbers to seats, or people could be given (or asked to swap their ticket for) another ticket (or piece of paper) which has their actual seat number on it. Anyway that just an idea.

Yes, I wondered about that, but as I don't look like I have a disability (but do), I didn't like to say anything at the time (I was in the front row as well), and the person moved when she realized she couldn't save seats. I did notice that the person concerned had a Gold number in 140s, so even if she was disabled I wouldn't have expected her to be in the front row (unless there were exceptional circumstances, like the person who was at the front because she had to lip read, which was fully understandable). Anyway I think overall the Con went very smoothly, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself, so yes, a big Thank You to Too Tall.

just a question, would the groups be set by ticket/group number as set out in the ET2 rules or would you still be allowed to form your own groups provided you stayed in the same one for the party? it seems a shame since it means you miss out on the chance to meet other attendees in the meantime (ie: in between meeting the guests), particularly if it's on the Friday, but guess there aren't many other options I'm afraid it would have to be the groups as per the ticket numbers. People form groups now but we end up with 15+ groups and then 40+ people in couples etc, it's just not possible to get the guests to all of these groups, this is the issue at the moment. I understand it not great and it makes it a bit artificial but it's the only way to make sure everyone gets to see the guests. And at the end of the day that's the reason for the recepcition, to met the guests, meeting other attendees it an added bonus, but not the main point of it. Seems like a sensible idea even though it will loose some of the atmosphere. On a purely personal note though, if the new system is implemented, I'd hate to be out of the room when a guest was brought to my group, so I assume something will be arranged about that. I must say as far as the overall organization of the Con is concerned I think Hub 3 was an improvemnet on the last one. And I really appreciate it that ME seem to listen to what people say. And, Too Tall, again big thanks to you for everything you do.

lf I buy a ticket for a particular actors photoshoot based on the timings stated at the time I bought the ticket, and the time gets changed (eg moved later), what happens? Because on Saturday I can only attend in the morning, and at the moment that's OK, but concerned that I'll get to the con and find the shoot has been rescheduled to a time that I won't be there.

In this situation, you'd just talk to me and I'd sort it out. Obviously it's a very specific case and I understand why. Thanks!