Warning to you all now, this is my opinion of how LFCC was this year. Feel free to criticise or answer questions etc This post has positives as well as negatives.
My husband and I have attended LFCC for many many, many, years now, as well as attending other events by Showmasters/Collectormania etc.
We thought this year would be the best one yet because of all the big name people but it was far from it. (We attended Saturday, arriving about 9am)
It was stupidly busy, I get that no one saw just how busy it was coming, I really do.. but I think the staff didn't really react well to it at all. The queues were ridiculous, there was no real monitoring of any of the queues at all. There were no signs. There was no broad understanding of what was happening. It was pure chaos. The queue we were initially in (for quite some time) somehow had another fork of queuing people sprout from it and the staff didn't give a toss and our part of the queue suddenly became obsolete. (By the way, this was the/possibly just one of the "Earlybird" queues. None of the staff knew what was going on or what to do AT ALL. Our queue was not moving, we could all see another coil of apparently the same queue moving but we never moved. We could also see the pay on the day queue moving pretty steadily. I would really love someone to answer this for me, were the pay on the day people buying their tickets and then just going in or buying and then having to re-queue with those of us who had bought in advance? It just seems a bit crazy if all those in paid in advance were getting in after those who decided to rock up on the day.
A lady in the queue told us about the Stan Lee queue and my husband decided to go over that way to check it out. (By the way, if you're reading this then thank you for that tip!) The Stan Lee queue was moving a lot faster than other queues and so we abandoned our still stationary queue to hop to his queue. On the way I passed a staff member and asked if once we had been stamped in Earl's Court 1 whether we could just go straight into Earl's Court 2 and he said we could. Perfect. We got in after a short wait, had our hands stamped, quickly grabbed a VT for Stan Lee (in the 600s) before asking a staff member where to sort out our Stan Lee photoshoot tickets we had prepaid for. He had no clue. A lovely man also attending the show jumped in to explain to us exactly where we had to go, in the other building, and that based on our numbers we'd be in the 12-2 shoot. (Another big thank you to the lovely man which told us this.) Afterwards we walked straight into Earl's Court 2.... after getting lost leaving 1 as we were directed to a doorway by a staff member that led to a sub basement which was a large empty place where most of the doors were locked. Fun times.
So as per usual, once inside we grabbed VT for all the awesome guests we wanted to see and advised our 3 friends (who were attending for the first time) to do the same. We began to peruse the stalls but even doing that was hard to achieve. There were so many people cram packed you couldn't really get any where, the outside stalls were impossible to get to.. I can't even put into words how irritating it was trying to do anything at all in that hall as it was just absolutely manic. I get that it was busy and they didn't plan for that etc etc but I think they should limit the ticket numbers. Once X amount are sold whether in advance, on the door, whatever - that's it. Then re-sell more once the hall calms down or something. I don't know.. but I'm pretty sure something better could have been in place to avoid some of the utter madness.
After awhile we headed over to the photoshoot area for Stan Lee. There was one general queue and we joined it. There were at least 2 staff members near the front of the queue. Now from where we were in the queue, we could see many people holding different tickets. Some said "extra" on them, which if the gentleman from earlier was correct when he told us, meant that they should be in the afternoon shoot. Some tickets were over 1k in number. I think at this point, a staff member should have come down the line detailing what was happening and when people should be there, explaining who were for the afternoon shoot etc. Nope. Instead they held up an A4 laminated sign saying 1-200 until 12:15pm. I had to leave the queue to go to the front to be able to read this sign so I'm not surprised many people didn't get this information, I imagine many queuing solo and not wanting to risk their place in line. Myself and a girl queuing next to us told as many people as we could on the way back to where we were. No staff ventured down the line to tell those waiting this. The lovely group of people next to us kept venturing back to the staff for updates as both them and us were not far past the 200 mark we felt we should stick around (we were 248 and 249). The "queue" became a mass of people as the real queue began, most people having common sense waited calmly to be called forward and so this wasn't really an issue. To one of the staff member's credit - he kept those who shouldn't be in the queue way out. He was like the beast at the threshold and he was pretty stern with it. This was a good thing. I still think the other staff member with him should have been crowd controlling the others waiting. When we finally got called into the queue, it was just tape on the floor, it worked but.. I think actual barriers may have not only been nicer but stopped people cutting through the large solid square of snaked round people to get to the Young Writer's something or other talk. The photoshoot itself was shoot but sweet, Stan Lee was gracious and friendly with everyone although staff were abrupt you could see why as they were trying to get as many people seen etc. I did feel for the guy in front of us, he was in an awesome Kraven costume, his wife was all dressed up too and they were covered in Spidey tattoos - quite clearly MASSIVE FANS. He handed one of the staff members a gift to give to Stan Lee with a photo of him and Stan Lee from what looked like quite a while ago. I thought this was really thoughtful of the guy, he didn't want to waste other people's photo time going "Here Stan, have this" so he just wanted the staff to give it to Stan Lee after he finished doing all the photos. The staff refused, putting the gift and photo into Kraven's bag and telling him to do it himself later.
After checking on our guests and finding them either away for awhile or not up to our numbers we decided to gather for lunch. We called our friends (as we had separated to search out some loot) we found that 2 of them had only just re-entered the hall after leaving for some much needed air. They didn't want to leave again as they had been stuck outside for ages after staff members were refusing them re-entry as it was too busy inside. I can see the sense in trying to keep numbers down, but turning away those who have paid already seems a bit ludicrous. Instead they should have not been selling as many on the day tickets to push the hall to breaking point with the amount of people inside it. I can only assume there were a crazy amount of health and safety issues that day with the crowds, locked side doors, lack of staff availability and broken aircon which I understand most of which were unforeseen. Our third friend met with us only to tell us he had gone back to check on Anthony Head's VT number to find him gone. Not even his picture or name remained. Finding this odd (because normally if they leave the staff don't bother to remove their picture etc) we decided to investigate after lunch.
Coming back from lunch we went to get some of the autographs we had been hoping for. First we went to the staff at the table at the front of the hall to ask about Anthony Head - they had no idea. They told us we would have to talk to an autograph staff member. So onwards, we find a guy and ask him, he tells us Anthony Head had been moved to the opposite side. Was it that hard to stick up an A4 sign where he had been just to say he had been moved next to Juliet Landau? Come on guys.
Stan Lee and Carrie Fisher were nowhere near our numbers and we were getting pretty worried. We had initially been pretty up beat about it as previous big names we've seen have managed to get through 1k+ people in a day. It means no personalisation and a brief "hello" but it means everyone gets to see their favourite celeb. Between the five of us, we managed to get mop up our other autographs in the afternoon but held out way past the time we planned in the hopes of the last two we really wanted. Stan Lee was on 1-200 and Carrie Fisher was about the same. We gave up on Carrie Fisher, her numbers were crawling upwards. I assume like Stan lee she was hammered with photo shoots but I really don't know. At half 3 (knowing he would resume his photo shoots at 4) we made a last ditch effort to Stan Lee, his sign simply said "closed". I'm so glad we got in early with photoshoot tickets otherwise it would have been a complete disappointment. We left after 4pm and there was still a HUGE queue snaking around the back of the building. These people had no chance of seeing Stan Lee or Carrie Fisher (I assume most of them wanted to see one or the other) and probably a slim chance at some of the other celebs yet no staff were out there telling them this. I imagine a lot of people paid to enter rather late and were disappointed with what was left.
Carrie Fisher for me was always a "maybe", it was clear from the day she was announced that her times were limited. S**t happens, maybe she'll come another day.
Stan Lee, now I get he is old and fair play to the guy for putting up with thousands of sweaty people (let's face it, we were all sweating and stinking) but I think LFCC went about this all wrong. They should have left it at the ONE photoshoot per day and the rest of the time signing. It was ridiculous that they kept adding shoots (jacking up the price by £30 in the process so I really can't see how they were "doing it for the fans" or anything like that. It came down to money.)
The other thing is, they should have done the photoshoot in EC1 where Stan was signing. There was room for it, it would save the old guy from hopping between buildings, save confusion on customer's behalf as he was torn between both halls and have limited waiting times marginally in not having to wait for him to get to A to B etc.
The whole thing was a mess really, I really do understand that most of it was unforeseen etc but I feel like most of the staff were not prepared for ANYTHING, not even their standard jobs if it hadn't of been completely manic. Most of the ones we spoke to throughout the day couldn't help us and we found more help from other people attending. They need staff who are willing to take control of a situation - the hordes of people milling around confused inside and out needed a shepherd and all we had were people directing us to other staff members or areas. SIGNS. YOU NEED MORE SIGNS. Seriously.
I think I can safely say that our 3 friends won't be attending again as they hated every minute of it. Between them they bought 3 autographs (the 3rd gave up on Anthony head as his queue was massive, Anthony Head wasn't actually there and no staff could give him a time for when he'd be back) and they also bought no collectibles. We underspent massively compared to what we normally do even though we spent more time there than normal. I honestly don't think we will go next year, I'd rather go to a smaller event as I hated most of Saturday.
Sorry for the rather long post, I just wanted to vent a bit and maybe some of the people who helped us will read this and see we were really grateful. Also to the girl dressed as Elsa who was with us in the queue, I really hope you made it to your photoshoot, I tried to see if I could still see you after we had gotten into EC1 to tell you our plan did infact work but couldn't find you so I hope you made it in while we were inside.
