Comments

[Bullseye]

This was my first time to LFCC. I've been to the Excel and Collectormania and San Diego but I have to say I really enjoyed this one the most. I appreciate that the queues in the morning were crazy but once they got moving you were inside pretty quickly. The only really bad queue inside was for Summer Glau but the wait was worth it. Got very positive response to the picture I got her to sign including one of her reps. Sunday could not have run more smoothly. Got in early got my virtual ticket for Carrie Fisher so signature sorted. While queueing for Terry Farrell signature we were advised to come back in 15 minutes. So we went off for a coffee and came back. Straight up to her table with no one in front. Had a good 8-10min chat with her.

[cecitj]

 

All the photo shoots (except one, handled by a guy called Graham I believe - he was awesome!)

 

If you're referring to Photoshoot Area D, that was me, it is Graham and thank you :)

 

If it wasn't area D.....thank you anyway :)

 

It was area D! Thank you again, you were great. :)

[ruffles56]

Most of my thoughts have been covered elsewhere (repeatedly) but I think everyone can probably agree that there were 2 main groups of attendees this past weekend

1) People who didnt want to meet Stan Lee - these people (and there was a lot of them) had a great time, they met everyone they wanted and went home happy bunnies

 

Well, that wasn't quite my experience. I didn't want to meet Stan Lee, but I didn't get to meet anyone else - I was one of those who didn't get in at all.

 

I'm pretty zen about not getting in, because I did turn up later than many. I just wish someone had talked to us earlier to let us know what was going on - I was towards the back of the queue, and the first helper to come and speak to us turned up at 4pm.

 

I think the suggestion of only selling photo op tickets to those with entrance tickets is one to consider for the future. I didn't know until nearly the last minute that I'd be able to attend, so I bought my photo op just before the store closed, by which time Saturday entry tickets were no longer available online. Which has left me with a photo op ticket that the steward said I could get a refund for in the hall -- except I couldn't get into the hall to get my refund.

[Hapfairy]

I don't really mind if mods feel they have to delete stuff, it's their job after all. But I think most of us are just really worried that what we've said might not get passed on and the same issues could happen all over again. I'm hoping that once SM have recovered from the event that we'll get some responses.

 

Also re: the comment above that the problems were mainly with people who wanted to meet Stan Lee, I don't think that's necessarily true. My friends and I weren't trying to meet him but we still suffered a lot from the overcrowding and queueing issues. I did have to miss out on a lot of what I wanted to do.

[Gordon The Gopher]

I'm going to create a separate topic later that details every single problem that someone has raised.

 

The post will be edited and kept up to date with links to various other threads where need be. I'll go back to Saturday posts and capture them all to date (or whatever hasn't been deleted)

 

It will be more of a reference point than a discussion topic. Helps track them all too

Edited July 15, 2014 by Gordon The Gopher

[PhantomMajor]

in my opinion, the first thing that needs to be done is an open apology on this forum from SM to all those who missed out due to their incompetence and lack of organisation.

[jael001]

The first thing that needs to be done is for them to finish taking down the event and then spending time going through all the feedback BEFORE coming on here and posting. If they dont do that then people will just say they've ignored people's concerns.

[stavrosbel]

I've made my feelings known regarding Saturday in the thread Jason created with the rather condescending title, but here I'll sum up my weekend experience.

 

Friday: Pre-show Stan Lee - Couldn't fault this in fairness, probably the only aspect of the weekend that met my expectation of a professional and well co-ordinated event. Preview night successful, if you wanted to properly check out the stalls this was pretty much the only chance you had

 

Saturday: WAY too many people allowed access. Too hot, not enough access to toilets, fresh air or refreshments, queue jumpers as soon as the doors opened with neither security or crew doing a thing to prevent it. Photo shoots - I missed my shoot with Paul Freeman as he only had such a limited time window and it unavoidably clashed with another of my shoots, when one finished I had 5 minutes to get from one of the hall to the other. Impossible. Refund denied as the shoot went ahead. This is not a very smart policy and on this hopefully rare occasion should have been relaxed. Thankfully I swapped for a voucher that I used on the Sunday, but if I'd have missed a Sunday shoot I would have demanded the refund. Comic Awards hosted by Tony Head needed someone as entertaining as him to have stood up there and led the affair and I give full credit to the man for saving the evening and making it just about worth the ticket price. Audio and video were both poor and more was expected. £20 was too much for the ticket, it could have very easily gone south with a lesser host.

 

Sunday: To be in with half a chance of meeting the guests I wanted, I turned up at 6am to queue. At around 7.30 it absolutely pissed it down with the gates remaining firmly locked, despite people already queuing for Stan Lee. How was this happening? Clothes drenched by 9am. Not as many people today, but again possibly too many for a comfortable experience. Limit ticket sales or change your venue. Had an unfortunate experience following a meeting with one guest which I won't go into here, suffice to say the crew trying to console me were doing a VERY poor job of it, to the point where one girl was being downright unpleasant.

 

Overall, I am shocked that this is the same Showmasters who organised LFCC 2013 as that for me was a wonderful experience. This will sadly be my final SM con unless real guarantees are made that the biggest issues are not repeated. Guarantees backed with refunds if promises made are not acted on.

[tabbath]

I've been trying to resist posting but feel like its time i had my say on the weekend.

 

As both a dealer & an attendee LFCC is always chaotic for me i have to try & split my time between the 2 so i tend to spread photoshoots & autographs across the wkend to mean i'm away from the stall less, i've been attending showmasters events for 10 years now & this had to be the busiest & most chaotic one yet.

I have great praise for the crew & staff, its a tough job & i've crewed at other events in the past and its hard work & can be quite draining so they do a great job, but there seemed to be a distinct lack of information on over the weekend from start to finish, people not knowing where things were or if things had been changed etc, made it look very unprofessional. I have to say a massive thank you to the crew on the Stan Lee photoshoot on Sunday afternoon who were amazing & tried to keep things moving as quickly as possible & were so helpful when i thought i was gonna have to sacrifice my photoshoot & head back to work.

We had some amazing people at the stall over the wkend & great feedback which i'm extremely happy about as there's alot of hard work that goes into the prep, makes it all worth while. One thing i will say is i do think Showmasters need to check the layout as we had cosplayers having photos right opposite where we were on Saturday in front of a back drop which meant we ended up with a botteneck of people which got a bit dangerous at one point, things like that need an open space so not to cause chaos.

Needless to say with how busy it was, i didn't get everything i wanted done but a big chunk of it & met some amazing guests & chatted to some really friendly attendees in the queue.

 

My major gripe over the wkend was the dealing of the Isaac Hempstead Wright single shot, it was very unprofessional & should never have happened. The staff were extremely apologetic but that really didn't help when we'd been queuing for an hr & when we went to be refunds it was slow and the staff at the photo sales desk didn't know what was going on. Needless to say i ended up missing out on any photos or autos with him, if they'd have cancelled it earlier or not sold them at all, i'd have had the double shot or braved the auto queue. Also the photo sessions can we please go back to making sure all the photographers check photos when they've taken them, it takes seconds & some weren't doing it the wkend, i had to insist on a 2nd photo in one shoot as it was blatantly obvious that the guest was talking when it was taken, at £20 a shot there was no way i was excepting that.

I had many friends visiting the show over the wkend & almost half of them have now said if that's the scale & the chaos level for future LFCC's they won't be attending which is really sad as its doing events like this where i met most of them & its nice to have people to share your experiences with.

[PartTimeRogue]

So here are my comments/suggestions...

 

I attended the early Stan Lee signing on Friday. The queue was easily identifiable because there was only the one.... people were in good spirits until 11am came and went and the queue hadn't moved. At about half past, a chap wearing a blue vest shouted that Stan Lee was running late and would be another 20 minutes. At about 12, the queue started going in. Once inside, crew were helpful and keeping things orderly. Particularly the young lady with dark brown hair wearing a Ravenclaw purple t-shirt - she was really bubbly, friendly and approachable. I got my Stan auto which was really the whole reason for my visit and was out by 1.30pm.

Suggestion: the queue was kinda long and only the people near the front were addressed. Perhaps the chap could have gone further down the queue to update those at the end, or another person could have done this to make sure people knew what was going on.

 

I arrived on Saturday just before 9am. We were directed around the back of EC1 and 2 and ended up walking the entire way round when it would have been easier just to go straight up. There was no easy way to identify which queues were which. We joined the EB queue by asking others in the queues which queue they thought they were in. After about half an hour, a man in a black shirt with flowers on started another queue for EB ticket holders (I think this was Jason?). We rushed to get in this queue... even though we didn't really know what was going on. I noticed upon going into EC2 that there were A4 sheets stuck on the glass doors. This really isn't enough if you're queuing around the corner. An hour later and we were in.

Suggestion: clear signage for queues and proper briefings/timely updates for all crew.

 

I wanted to pick up a programme so I could see the layout and also enter the raffle - I had no idea where these were sold but thought they might be at the sales desk. I was not about to queue up with all those people wanting to buy talk and shoot tickets just for a £5 programme.

Suggestion: have crew selling the programmes as they check your tickets upon entering EC.

 

I only wanted to attend the YALC talks so headed straight there - had to ask a member of their crew for directions to their Sales desk and they were super helpful. Sorted myself out there and then spent time milling around the stalls. It was heaving and you couldn't really get to the front of a stand unless you waited for a gap to appear- blocking the stream. On several occasions I was hit by various wings, armour or weapons from cosplayers.

Suggestion: I know this might be really stupid and not easy to control, but getting people to go up one side of the stalls in one direction and then back down the other side in the other direction would be helpful. Or bigger aisles. Or big storage space for cosplayers to stash weapons or big parts of their costumes while they're browsing - they could then pick these items back up for photos in that middle strip of the hall that had been kept clear.

 

Other than the YALC sessions and browsing stalls, there wasn't anything else I wanted to do so needed to take a seat somewhere- I have problems with my feet and they get really painful after standing for 2-3 hours straight. There wasn't a lot of space for sitting either and where people had found space, they were also leaving their litter behind.

Suggestion: dedicate a space in the venue for rests, and get more bins!

 

I'd bought tickets to attend the GoT commentary and screening that evening but wasn't sure where it would be held. I asked a member of crew wearing a blue t-shirt where it would be and she said she thought it was EC1. I'd read on here previously about blue crew not really being in the know so asked a red t-shirt wearer too. EC1 she said. Me and my partner went to grab some air at about 5.30 before heading over to EC1 and were sat outside on the steps of EC2 when a queue started forming behind us. We had no idea what it was for and ignored it after being told by the red t-shirter that the screening was in EC1. Just before we got up to go to EC1, a man in a blue t-shirt shouted that the queue behind us was for the screening. We jumped up and got in that queue, waited really patiently past 7pm until someone in a blue t-shirt came and announced that we would have to organise ourselves into groups with tickets numbered 1-50 first, then 50-100, 100-150 and so on. Again, the back of the queue was left clueless until word had spread through the queue. This rearranging took at least half an hour and then getting everyone seated in the hall took even longer. I was overall disappointed with the screening. The seats were uncomfortable to sit on for a long period of time and I wasn't very excited about the guest speakers. Had they been announced on the website when I bought my tickets, I wouldn't have bothered. I also thought there was a surprise speaker but none were announced. The guests that were there were very funny and shared a little insight into the episode but it wasn't worth £20 per ticket. Given that there were 500+ people there having paid £20 each, I would have liked a "bigger" guest.

 

My partner and I evaluated our Saturday experience and decided to sell on our Sunday tickets - I was only planning to attend Sunday for YALC talks but with our disappointment over the workshop and talk we attended there, and the overcrowding, it just wasn't worth the £30. It was only after we got home that we read on Facebook about the overcrowding, Stan Lee supposedly leaving early, people being turned away after 5 hours queuing, and other complaints that we knew we'd made the right decision.

 

As far as pre event planning goes, many people have said that they don't have Twitter.... you don't need a Twitter account to check the posts. You can still check to see if your question has been answered already just by visiting the direct URL.

Suggestion: I find it baffling that this forum doesn't allow members to use Gmail or Hotmail addresses to sign up with- these are surely two of the biggest providers of free email and when you limit the options of contact available, this forum needs to be more accessible. I've had to sign up to Yahoo just to post this comment! SM should clarify all points of contact on the website

 

I'd like to say a big thanks to David for keeping up with the updates and questions on Twitter, and to TooTall for the really helpful FAQ post on here.

 

Overall, I got what I wanted from LFCC, which was the Stan Lee autograph. I was disappointed with some of it and it could have been organised better. But, it could have been worse. Credit where it's due to SM for getting Stan Lee. But unless huge improvements are made, I won't attend any more.

[scotty16]

WOW what an experience! Lots of good points and some bad. good first-

Met Stan Lee 6 times over the weekend a true living legend and didn't disappoint.

Proposed to my girlfriend in front of Stan Lee (She said yes... )

Edward James Olmos was unbelievable, did not expect him to be so friendly, warm, engaging and happy, actually

made it feel like he was just glad to be there.

The double photoshoot with Olmos and Bamber was perfect, Jamie Bamber was a true gentlemen even when my fiancee

decided to give him a massive hug before the photo

Casper Van Dien and Dina Meyer are without doubt some of the nicest guests ever to have attended a convention, they were

so sweet.

Michael Bien Saturday afternoon was a pleasure too.

Even though i didn't meet him, it was clear Davd Hewlett was going above and beyond to make any of his fans feel special.

Kristian Nain was fun to talk to and share a joke even after he had finished for the day on Sunday as we joked that Isaac was getting a bit big to carry around now. Isaac himself was a pleasure and so polite on the saturday.

The quality of the stalls and events taking place helped create a fantastic experience.

The vast majority of fans themselves were friendly, always willing to stop for photos and showed how to cope in some tough situations.

The Dragon skull was brilliant.

the person behind me in the Stan Lee queue for his auto actually had the original Amazing Fantasy 15!!

The extra Stan Lee signing on Friday was a great way for people to get him early and not stress over the weekend.

The 2 buildings when used correctly was a big help this year without a doubt.

 

Now for the negatives...

Saturday by 1pm and having to enforce a 1 in 1 out policy. Clearly it was overbooked, as we exited at this time to see early bird pass holders still unable to enter, returning at 3.30 to waltz straight in with our hands stamped only to see the queue still snaked all the way round. Sunday was an improvement for there was still a 30-60 minute window between 12-1 where it became very claustrophobic.

It became impossible to move on saturday as the place just came to a standstill thus in turn making it difficult to browse the stalls or indeed exit the building.

The decision to not have the side exits open unless Gold pass was poor, it was a 20 minute walk Saturday from the autograph area to the front door through a horde of people when there was a perfectly good and large exit by the autograph tables filled with about 10 fans sitting on the floor.

Having stan lee do autographs in EC1 and Photoshoots in EC2 was a silly decision if he was 22 never mind 92.

Felt sorry for all those people who queued for 4 hours Sunday morning to get his autograph with VQ numbers under 100 only for him not to sign. It was not Stan's fault he had to leave but some common sense should have prevailed that he was not going to be able to do all the activities that had been agreed upon, it seemed every other week, Stan was either having an additional photoshoot, talk, appeareance, signing being added, the guy is 92! the decision for 90 minute photoshoots baffled me as it was clear it had a draining effect on him.

Also a limit on autographs at a time surely has to be implemented making a guy with arthritis sign 14+ items in one go seemed harsh in the extreme and downright annoying for fans waiting behind and would ensure more people with the opportunity to meet their idol with higher VQ numbers.

As harsh as this might sound but surely Summer Glau should have replace 'shae' in the photo booth midway through Saturday when it became clear she massively popular, as the queues became a hindrance to the general public's ease of access. Plus 'shae' would have been able to have been with the rest of the 'GOT' cast.

the mystery guest for the 'GOT' talk...

The tue believer awards...

The shambles of holding the programme giveaway on the sunday instead of limiting the number of programmes available each day and holding the raffle at the end of each separate day. So numbers 1-1000 in the draw Friday. 10001-2000 Saturday and so forth.

The quality of the Volunteers was a marked downgrade on the previous year in which they were all faultless. It was clear the situation overwhelmed alot of them and that a large number were either undertrained, uninformed, misinformed, didn't care and were rude.

Example being that we were told by 3/4 volunteers that the programme giveaway in EC1 on sunday had been cancelled...So standing in line for the Stan Lee talk at 3.15 i can hear the microphone going, so go off to investigate to find to my surprise the giveaway talk.. Naturally, programme in hand i take a seat leaving my fiancee in the queue. I come out after the shambles to discover my fiancee has been shouted out by one the volunteers, (who was organising the line for Stan lee), because she did not have tickets which i had and his response being to shout at her "Why did your boyfriend leave the queue" "Why did you let him". This is 3.25, 30 minutes before the Talk and if she had taken the guy's name you can guarantee i would have been having words with him. All anybody is there for was to have a good time and see Stan Lee, why this 'volunteer' felt the need to be aggressive and aggravate the the people who were patiently queuing to see their idol was beyond me. And i hope someone did get his name and complained because it would be a travesty if he was allowed to 'help' next year.

In general i found a large number of the volunteers responses to be surprisingly aggressive and confrontational rather than professional, courtious and clear (The Stan Lee Photoshoot personel on Friday were spot on in this regard as were the showmasters people in his autograph booth). I do feel this is more down to them being flustered and unable to deal with the situation, it is not surprising that through these threads the volunteers who are being praised for their organistion skills more often than not are returning volunteers from previous years.

The lack of signs detailing what queuee was for what leading (It's all well and good sticking signs on door in the entrances, but when there are thousands of people crowding round and more and more joining the queue every minute it becomes impossible to see). Perhaps having billboards/standng ones displaying a map layout specifically for the queuees and having them dotted along the walkways around the building would save confusion in future.

Communication between Volunteer personal seemed non existant and the lack of information being relayed to the people outside waiting to get in was shocking, especially on the Saturday.

 

 

Sorry for the long post but wanted to wait until i had got back from an event that will live long in the memory, i know the negative aspect of my post is far greater in length but it is only constructive criticism so that future events can be even greater successes. The good points far exceeded the negative for myself personally.

Edited July 15, 2014 by scotty16

[Green Cat]

Well I enjoyed the event because I made the decision where I saw things were going wrong just to go with the flow and not let it bother me, HOWEVER there were a myriad of things which I was disappointed to see.

 

I won’t address the queues as I had a gold pass and so it didn’t affect me, but when I arrived on Friday night it took over an hour to sort out my pass and I was passed from person to person – I ended up refusing to leave the side of the person who had the passes in a bag working on the principle that the right person would turn up with the some kind of paper system to tick me off and give me my pass which with done with the whole air of this is too much bother and feel sorry for our problems.

 

And this set the tenor of the whole event, if I heard once, I heard a million times “I’m just a volunteer, sorry I don’t know” said with the tone of “please leave me alone and ask someone else” – on Friday night I had one question – David Wenham has cancelled tonight, what do I do? and I was passed onto four different people, none of which could answer my question. In the end I decided that I would just go along to the photo sessions on Sat.

 

I have worked and run many events including Goodwood Festival of Speed, Top Gear Live, a major £2M Help For Heroes and I am sorry to say that I have never encountered such bad staff/customer interaction. The words “I’m just a volunteer” should never be used as an excuse for not knowing your facts, you volunteered to do a job, you should do your homework. I saw one woman up and leave the programme desk empty because “she had to get a picture” despite the fact it left no-one to cover.

 

I saw people in red t-shirts shouting at people in blue t-shirts – word of advice just because you are loud and bullying that does not make you a good team leader, I have managed a volunteer team of over 200 and never needed to shout at any of them. You also don’t air dirty laundry in public and telling someone off in front of customers he is trying to manage is just stupid. Also as a customer, I don’t care that you only had 2 hours of sleep, I just want you to be able to do your job.

 

As I said at the start I chose to just go with the flow and stayed very friendly and very polite to all these people, not pointing out any errors, only once did I make a stand when for the Comic Awards, a blue t-shirt person asked all the gold passes to come forward and then after being shouted down by a red t-shirt person we were told to go back to the queue which I refused to do having been in the front half I didn’t see why I should be expected to go the back because of an mistake by a staff member. And again my interaction with them was just firm politeness, no shouting, no swearing, but the expectation that you have created this problem, so I expect you to sort it out without causing me - the paying customer - more problems.

 

Finally I never did find the mythical land of gold which was the Gold Pass Room, although having seen the picture perhaps it was better I didn’t.

[chiara72]

It was the third time for me in London, because the first time was at Milton Keynes. I would say that in about 10 years the things are getting better, because the photos are distributed soon after the photo shooting, and the talks are interesting. The only thing that could be better is the ENORMOUS queue at the entry! I think that it is incredible that you must wait a lot of time in a queue that is endless...... and I had the fear not to be in time for the first photoshooting of the morning..... and the crew said to me that I had to go netherless to the end of this crazy queue!!!!!!!!

you should cut the time of the queue of the entries, please, especially for the people with the pre-paid ticket who have the first photoshooting of the day!

and you shoud add a lot of seats for the people to rest, because it is not human to think that the people can stand up all the day.....

Edited July 15, 2014 by chiara72

[Gamabunta]

This was my first big convention. The ones we have in sweden is about 4 times a year. And the celebs are around 4-6 depending on the city it's at. I was fairly clear on that it would be big and crowded with the amount of celebs attending. But nothing could prepare me for the saturday, wow what a mass. But i didnt think it was that bad, many people yes, long ques ofc. But still managable. I mean when SM said that there would be a fair amount of tickets to be sold at the doors, i don't know why people expected it to be in the thousands. The ques must have reached over thousen people standing in it, and that clearly says you wont come in if you are standing at the backside of the center, or anywhere after that. :) If i had come there without a ticket and seen the que, i would just have left and said 'tough luck' on myself. I should have pre-bought a ticket. Can't blame anyone else for your own choices.

 

Thanks for the epic experience SM, just wish i had more money to grab all the autographs i wanted.

[MrsEllacott]

 

 

 

I dont mind people on crutches or in wheel chairs queue jumping. i think it is important to do that even as disabled people can become ill, block the way for everyone else or cause accidents when people around them aren't paying attention. so im quite happy for disable to jump in. I laso am happy for gald , silver and vip peope to go before standard tickets into photos, auto's or general entry. on top of this i think that those who had PRE baught their tickets should all have been let into the venue before they started letting in people who had turned up to the event without pre buying tickets. then there may not have been quite a squeeze inside as when you got to capacity they could have just aside right no more tickets on sale were full.

 

So nice to hear someone say that cos I had a few dodgy looks from other people when I was placed near the front of the queues for photos as my autistic son struggles with long queues! Though most people were happy and understanding to allow people like my son be moved towards the front! Just nice to hear someone who actually understands!

 

MrsEllacott i have epilepsy myself and hence have a greater understanding of people with disabilities. glad you liked my comment. if i were disabled i too would not want to stand in a line or have the thought of injuring someone due to me being in the line. it is important that people think "how would i feel in their situation". everyone will have different opinions but we sometimes need to do what's best for those people whatever the consequences.

 

 

There was a lady in the second Colin Baker photoshoot yesterday who was on crutches. The crew member was going to place her at the front of the queue in front of us holding gold passes. However, she was quite happy to stand behind us as she thought it unfair as we had paid for the privilege of being at the front. I couldn't, and didn't want to, speak for the others but I let her go in front of me.

 

 

I am the same as that lady as well! I usually find myself among the gold passes so I have no issue with that. But never do I expect to be placed first, I just go where I am told. Sunday is the only time I have ever asked if I could be moved further up the queue for something and that was only because it was the last thing we were doing that day and my son was on the verge of a meltdown at the time.

[MrsEllacott]

 

Suggestion 3 - Do not sell talk tickets or photoshoot tickets to anyone who does not have a prepaid ticket. You already do this for DSTL! I'm tempted to say only sell to those who have gold or early entry tickets because times are often not available when tickets are sold..

 

 

 

I agree, but not to the final part, cos quite honestly that is unfair. I buy all my tickets in advance, never buy anything once there. I have to plan in advance in order to have successful weekend as I have my autistic son with me, who loves coming to these shows! I prefer standard entry as it is, but have upgraded in the past if I have needed to.

[Queen_Sindel]

Okay, first of all I apologize for not typing more and faster. As some may have seen I broke my wrist on Saturday. That was not a joke post.

 

 

Id love to know why Showmasters have Banned my wifes account today she only posted one message saying she was concerned about blocking fire exits and it was a real danger to all the people inside, not sure what warranted having her account closed, maybe my account will also be closed because of this message?

We have been going to SM events for ten years but after your response and mass deletions of genuine concerns it leaves a very bad taste in the mouth and I don't think we will bother again

 

SM have hidden one topic and a couple of posts this morning because they still want to look at them and respond accordingly. Some things were getting out of hand there.

 

There have been four bans lately which I have all done myself. Two of those were troll accounts (which we got a ton of report posts about), one account was the user who felt the need to create one of these troll accounts (which we have proof of) and the fourth ban was another poster who continued to be verbally abusive despite an explanation.

 

There has been no ban whatsoever because of posts about blocking fire exits. There's been a couple of posts about that issue and they are still there. If a user is banned because of certain posts I can assure you the posts that were the reason will be removed too. "Removed" here meaning hidden from user view, mods and admins still have access.

 

As long as you have legitimate concerns which you voice in a way that doesn't contain more f bombs than I currently have working fingers there is no problems whatsoever with you or anyone else posting.

[Kuato_Lives]

. Also the photo sessions can we please go back to making sure all the photographers check photos when they've taken them, it takes seconds & some weren't doing it the wkend, i had to insist on a 2nd photo in one shoot as it was blatantly obvious that the guest was talking when it was taken, at £20 a shot there was no way i was excepting that.

 

 

I'm in very much agreement with this. While I do like this photo, it's been lined up terrible, we're not even in the centre

 

 

I've been noticing other peoples photos they've been posting on social media with bad line ups too quite recently over the past year.

[discodiva]

I'll say what I said in the other thread.....

 

 

I miss Malcolm...*sighs*

[rich835]

Ok, I don't post on Forums very often, but I feel compelled to pass on my thoughts about the weekend.

This is the 3rd SM Comic Con I've attended, the other 2 being in Cardiff, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
I really dislike the stress involved of travelling to London and the hustle and bustle that go hand in hand with the capital, but there were some great guests going whom my son and I really wanted to meet, and we felt it was unlikely that they would be going to the smaller one in Cardiff later this year, so we took the plunge.

We were there from midday Saturday, and for EB on Sunday. We thought we'd get a few autos on Saturday of some of the less popular guests, then dedicate Sunday to Stan Lee. We'd ordered Audience and Photoshoot tickets with him for the Sunday, and planned to try and get his auto by arriving at 6:00am on Sunday.

My first reaction was, the the whole event was overcrowded. There should be a limit on the amount of people allowed in, and I would go as far as to suggest that perhaps tickets should only be allowed to be purchased online, and not at the door? Everyone has access to the internet these days, and let's face it, if you're someone who likes going to these things, then you've probably found out about it by surfing anyway. In EC2 especially, Health & Safety would've had a field day.

I learned very quickly that I had to keep asking questions to find out what I needed to do. Most of the tickets I purchased, didn't arrive and those that did were wrong. I emailed SM in advance and was advised to go straight to the Sales Desk upon arrival to get this sorted out. I asked 3 SM officials before getting an accurate answer of where to go. I wasted 90 mins on this.

Once I got my tickets for the Stan Lee photoshoot, I was none the wiser as to which session I would be in on the Sunday, and the SM officials didn't know either. All I got was "It looks like you'll be on the late one".

I got 3 autographs on the Saturday, but every other minute of my time was spent trying to find things, asking questions and queuing for things. I took this all on the chin, as it was Saturday, I expected it to be the busiest day, and I didn't arrive till midday, fair enough.

Next was the Sunday fiasco..
We arrived at 05:50, in an attempt to get Stan Lee's autograph. Now I appreciate I have no right to expect to get Stan's autograph, obviously it's first come first served. He's an older guy, and we all know that he had to abort due to tiredness. I have no issue with that of course, it happens and I don't blame Stan in the slightest.

Anyway, we managed to get VQ tickets 91 & 92. We really thought we had a chance at that point.
We did everything we were told to do. We waited in line, we then went away when we were advised to do so, and returned to check the status of things and kept asking the officials for updates, to make sure we were doing the right thing and were in the right place at all times. It became clear very quickly that the SM officials didn't really know much, they were just making a judgement on things.
Surely though, someone must have known that Stan wasn't actually going to arrive before 11:00am! Whoever was looking after him could have phoned this information in and passed it on very easily. So that was 2 hours wasted immediately for us. I'm annoyed because in that time, I could've gone away and got VQ tickets for some of the other big guests. In a nutshell the entire morning and early afternoon were wasted due to lack of, or wrong information.

By the way, a note to the two very rude people in the queue who accused me of trying to jump the queue, when infact I was just trying to find out information. Other people around me thought they were traders with passes that were trying to get Stan's autograph on multiple items. All they kept shouting at me were the words "the queue is over there". They wouldn't let me get a word in to explain myself and one of them swore at my son. One was a short tubby old guy with white hair and beard, and the other was younger stood just in front of him. Perhaps they were together. Several people spoke to me later who witnessed this and said they couldn't believe how these people were acting.

After this upsetting incident, we still did everything we were told to do, kept checking back and so on. Eventually we were told that Stan was signing no more autographs due to tiredness, I can understand and sympathize with this of course. However, we were also told that he was not going to be doing the audience talk in the afternoon, and that it was likely that the afternoon photoshoot would also be cancelled. Again we accepted this, and therefore spent the rest of the day in EC2.

Imagine our upset, when we later found out that the talk actually did take place!
I will be contacting Showmasters to request a refund for this, as I was given the wrong information. All it needed was a tannoy announcement of some sort, and we wouldn't have missed out on the talk.

We did get some happy memories during the last couple of hours though.
The queues died down for the other big guests for whom we were told there was not much chance earlier, and we suddenly got autographs for Summer Glau, Ian McDiarmid and Carrie Fisher :-)

Time went on, and Stan Lee was late for his final photo shoot, I was worried as my son and I had to leave at 18:00, so I spoke to a crew member who was so helpful, and ensured that we got our photo with Stan just in time before we had to leave. That crewman has my sincere thanks, he saved the weekend for us and we finally left the event with smiles on our faces. He's a legend.

Anyway my final thoughts are:
It's highly unlikely I'll go to such a large event again. I'll stick to the smaller ones like Cardiff and Milton Keynes.
What could have been done to improve it? Simple, good communication. The crewmen clearly had little information and were guessing for the most part.
Matrix signs, walkie talkies, it's not difficult.
They should've been realistic about what Stan could do considering his age. Autographs should've been limited to one per person, and pre-purchased online.

[eccheetham]

parttimerogue-

I wanted to pick up a programme so I could see the layout and also enter the raffle - I had no idea where these were sold but thought they might be at the sales desk. I was not about to queue up with all those people wanting to buy talk and shoot tickets just for a £5 programme.

Suggestion: have crew selling the programmes as they check your tickets upon entering EC.

I agree with you on this they should have been selling the programs at the door. i wanted one but couldnt find where to get one. none of the crew could help me either.