Clarification of Diamond and Gold Passes

[Vhiper]

 

 

 

 

To be fair - I've got two diamond passes and if gold pass members could turn up and just walking in before me I would be slightly annoyed. I've paid a huge amount of money so that I can be guaranteed an autograph from Michael Gambon and not worry about virtual tickets; if he even goes into them - he is only there for one day).

No gold pass holder is asking to go ahead of a diamond pass holder, just asking not to have to bother with a VQ and join the line AFTER diamond passes, just like at photo shoots

 

 

I just meant that you couldn't tell when all the diamond passes are gone. Are they going by tally of how many are sold - I'm just thinking how a virtual ticket system will even work on these diamond guest.

 

The photo shoots work so well - as does the system for VQ for normal guest - for both regular and gold passes

 

 

Anyone with a diamond pass can just join the front of any queue for that diamond guest, so even if you'd turn up late, you can just walk to the front of the queue and get in before the non-diamond pass holders. That would not change whether or not you force gold pass holders to get a VQ ticket or not.

 

 

Thanks for the info - though I would still feel very strange about it - going to the front of a queue of waiting people :S

 

That is what you've paid for! Please don't feel bad about it and go to the front of a queue if you're entitled to priority! Think of it being the same as travelling 1st class on an airplane, will you then also wait with the economy passengers in the line, while you paid premium to go through 1st class boarding?

[candymit]

So a gold pass holder gets across first entry (above diamond unless they have also bought gold which I doubt)

Access to all talks as part of the package

Front of the queue for all photo shoots (apart from diamond)

No need for a vt for all if the guest apart from 5 which are prioritised to diamond passes

 

Am I missing something when people say they aren't worth the money? Stop throwing your toys out of the pram for the sake of five guests. You still get to jump the queue on the 140 other guests.

 

And unless I'm mistaken only diamond pass can have MJF auto anyway. So everyone's getting stressed because you have to get vt' s for four guests out of the one hundred and forty???

[Nick]

I've been a staunch supporter of Showmasters events right from the get go (was there at CM1 lol),

I appreciate you always say you learn and listen to feedback. I know you appreciate constructive comments and remarks. With that in mind, I'd like to politely say that, on this ocasion, I feel you've got it wrong.

I do feel let down on this one. I understand this was not your intention, genuinely I do, but nevertheless this is the outcome.

I will always continue to support you, your team and your company, but I hope this feedback can nevertheless be considered.

Best wishes to you and your team, and good luck for the event.

[Vhiper]

So a gold pass holder gets across first entry (above diamond unless they have also bought gold which I doubt)

Access to all talks as part of the package

Front of the queue for all photo shoots (apart from diamond)

No need for a vt for all if the guest apart from 5 which are prioritised to diamond passes

 

Am I missing something when people say they aren't worth the money? Stop throwing your toys out of the pram for the sake of five guests. You still get to jump the queue on the 140 other guests.

 

And unless I'm mistaken only diamond pass can have MJF auto anyway. So everyone's getting stressed because you have to get vt' s for four guests out of the one hundred and forty???

 

Access to all talks excluding diamond guests and no VT doesn't mean you can jump the queue, it means you can join the queue at any time of your choosing. and yes, if those 5 guests happen to be the ones you want to meet, I can imagine it's a hassle.

[ianb]

The event is scheduled to finish at 6.00pm on Saturday and Sunday. At some point SM will have to stop giving out virtual tickets to finish on time. If there were no virtual tickets and therefore no way of knowing how many people wanted autographs then in theory all the gold pass holders could turn up at 5.30 and expect autographs. This means the guest most stay on or people who already have virtual tickets would be told that they could not get an autograph.

 

The diamond guests are popular for a reason and there has to be some way of controlling and actually knowing how many autographs are to be signed and how long this will take.

 

I would be interested to know how many gold passes were sold before Paxton, Gambon and Weaver were announced.

[Hayden Is My Hero]

Very disappointed to hear Gold pass holders require a VQ ticket for the diamond guests.

 

I understand, and agree, that Diamond Pass holders should go in first but Gold pass holders should still be able to go in front of regular pass holders, otherwise where is the advantage for the gold pass holder?

[Zahariel]

Nothing can be done now, other then to say I am disappointed.

[showmasters]

I am sorry some of you do not like the way this is set out but its been like that from the start i will take this time to respond to some of your points , but i do not feel we have acted in any way other then how we have said it would be.

 

 

someone has said we have changed the wording as far as i am aware the wording has not been changed, but even if it was your point is that the wording was changed from

 

Diamond Pass Guests "may" require a VQ ticket

to

Diamond Pass Guests you will require a VQ ticket

 

Then i am sorry there is no difference as "may require" means you may need a VQ ticket and we have made it very clear you do have to have a VQ ticket so that is the same as the wording you calm it to have been , if this has been changed or not the outcome is the same you needed to be informed if you needed a VQ ticket or not so this is a none point ,so to be clear 100% yes you will need a VQ ticket to meet Dimond pass guests as it has been stated from the start , i will say again i do not berleave the wording has been changed so this is a none argument.

 

 

Right from the star we made it very clear that these guests are going to have to be sponsored by the selling of Diamond passes NEVER have we said that gold pass holders will gain any more advantage from these guests , its VERY CLEAR and in all the post i have responded to you will see i say the same thing , if you want to meet these Dimond pass guests then buy a Dimond pass , i have read post where people say that the Dimond pass was not good value for money and i said every time you may think that that is up to you but if you want to meet a Diamond pass guest then buy a Dimond pass , its very clear and the people on here now saying it was not clear do know this is the case.

 

We are not "ripping off people as we gain NOTHING in any way by making anyones life harder or our lives harder over our busiest weekend of the year, we are here to run fun events and to be able to deliver these amazing guests to you in a fun and safe manner.

 

Now last year with Stan Lee we did not offer Dimond passes and everyone wanted to just be able to buy a pass that GUARANTEED then everything in one ticket , we saw there need for such a ticket and we also sore that this would help with the panic that some people felt in getting what they wanted , we also saw this was a way to bring in big names that we could never afford to underwrite on the old system so the Dimond ticket was created , last year with Stan we also saw there was an issue with people wanting to buy a gold pass to make the event work better for them and some off these fans did not care about meeting Stan Lee they just wanted the Gold pass to make it posable to get what they wanted, that is why there was none Stan Lee gold passes available last year as there was a big demand for them.

 

So now you can see we cannot let all the gold passes have this free access to the Dimond pass guests as this just would not work with the time available to us on some of these guests , and i know you all would not want us to limit the gold passes that are are available to say just say 100 ? and then stop selling them ? they would have sold out in less than 5 minutes and many of you would not have a chance to buy them and that would create more upset.

 

Look at this in this way Michael Gambon would not be able to get through say 300 to 500 Gold as we sell them at this time as well as his Dimond passes that he was guaranteed to meet ,its just not posable so we would have had to have caped the golds at 100 and that would not have worked for lots of you intact around 400 of you would not have been able to buy gold, that shows you we cannot offer these advantages to Golds for Dimond pass guests and be able to guarantee them, THAT IS WHY WE DID NOT OFFER THEM .

 

We have not taken anything away from the gold passes in fact you get better value as we have more guests attending and as you all can get to the VQ tickets first in the morning you have more vale in that you can get these VQ tickets and your chances of getting everyone you want from he weekend is very very high indeed.

 

Things do change from your to year , some times people do not see the way things will change things when they buy the same thing year in year out but we do this not to rip you off as some of the more aggressive people on here are saying or to make it harder for you or to make your weekend miserable , we do it to make things work better be able to bring bigger names to the event we run and to give people the chance to meet there idols , we are all fans we do this as our job that is correct but firstly we do it because we love the hobby , we are all fans here we are all decent people and only try to make the events fun safe and for you all to shear an amazing weekend together.

 

one other point we have caped the entry to this years event we have also taken on more space in the halls and as such the event should feel better that last year , we do this so its better for you , if we had wanted to sell more tickets and bring in more income we could have dun this but we felt it was better to have more space, we have upset people capping the door this year and we are sorry for that but at the end of the day things do sell out people that support us by buying tickets early have no worries and have there tickets , this year we have had loads of people say that did not expect it to sell out , but after last year when we had to turn 1000s of walk ups thats people that just turn up to buy a ticket and we have know idea they are coming or how many of them there are going to be and also having to deal with these people being unhappy with us as as they just wanted to turn up and come in we all saw things have to change , so we do what we can and try to explain to you all what and why things have changed and if you stand back and look at why we do things you will see we do this to be fair to the masses and we try to run the show in a fair way for everyone.

 

I hope that you can see where i am coming from and i would also like to thank the support from the members on here that have come forward and said that they understood from the start what we had offered and that they also see we do try our best thank you for that show of Support.

 

Jason

[biggarysson]

Maybe I'm missing something because I'm new, but isn't doing it this way actually better for us gold pass holders? Since we get in before the regular entrance people, gold pass members should be able to get low VQ numbers for the diamond guests. Since the diamond guests are likely to be very popular, without us gold pass people having VQ tickets as soon as the diamond pass people finished you could have, like, 800 gold pass people try to queue up the minute the VQ numbers start. After all, nobody would want to miss their chance. Even if you did manage to be there at the right moment the open signing started with Sigourney Weaver, and were at or near the front, by the time you finsihed there would be a massive queue of gold pass holders for Michael Gambon and you would be stuck waiting there. And if you had to go off to get a photo op or something, by the time you came back there would probably be another new 50 gold pass members infront of you.

 

Yes, this policy will mean a bit of a rush at the start for us to get a low VQ number for diamond guests, but I think without it you would have massive queues of gold pass members stuck at the diamond guest signing booths. So yes, I hope to get an autograph from Michael Gambon, but I think my odds will actually be better because I will be able to get a low VQ number rather than if I had to try to get a good place in the queue if all the gold pass members showed up at once...

 

Anyway, I know I'm in the minority, but I agree with the decision.

[showmasters]

If gold passes were guaranteed an autograph would this not devalue the diamond passes which are necessary to raise the funds to get the guests there in the first place. There are just 6 diamond guests and for MJF his autograph is exclusive to diamond pass holders. Are people who now have bought gold passes going just to get autographs from the 5 remaining diamond guests because I would have thought that they would be there to see others and get photographs which a gold pass will make things so much easier. Without a gold pass I am sure that you would get a lot less done.

 

 

Thank you ianb my point 100%

 

j

[Hemooo]

sorry, but the gold pass is not worth it at all for me now. I'm planning to get an autograph from Christopher Lloyd, Robert Englund,

Sigourney Weaver & Bill Paxton. Now I need to wake up early and get in a line (I can imagine it will be huge) in order to get VT. I can understand this for Weaver since it's exclusive guest, but not for every diamond guest.

[vicky114]

Not necessarily as last year prepaid were let in the same as golds

[celine]

Is there like several queues for the talks, one for the diamond passes, one for the gold and one for the others? I mean if they all go in in that order I'm assuming there's serveral queues right?

Edited July 1, 2015 by celine

[showmasters]

 

 

 

IF the person giving the VQ tickets is ready to distibute the moment you get in....If that person is still busy setting up, tying their hair or whatever, the regular entry ticketholders will be joing the line as well and you can only get one VQ at a time, so by the time you get 1 VQ ticket for a diamond guest, the line for any other diamond guests you might also want, will be swamped. As I said, hardly any value in that....nor a quiet and relaxed way to enjoy a con, which is what I want with a gold pass....

 

 

I am sorry we are ready to go on all guests by the time the public are in we have been there 3 hours before then and are at that point only whating for you to be let in , we have dun this before :-)

 

these guests are EXTRA ? not what you used to get last year from the show so gold passes if they want to get in early and get a VQ ticket in the morning that is a extra value to your pass not less sorry but how ever you like it , its extra and not something you got last year as we did not have this many large first time guests

[john.bttf]

Hello,

 

I have 3 questions :

 

1) At what time a GOLDPASS holder must be at the door at the morning ? (8H00 - 8H30 ?) (sooner ? )

 

2) Is the Goldpass line/entry are clearly indicated ? (outdoor)

 

3) I have a diamond pass for christopher Lloyd, but I would like 2 more autographs of him. Does I nedd VQ ticket for him ? or can I get the 3 autographs at the same time ? (and pays the 2 other of course)

 

Thank you very much.

[showmasters]

Maybe I'm missing something because I'm new, but isn't doing it this way actually better for us gold pass holders? Since we get in before the regular entrance people, gold pass members should be able to get low VQ numbers for the diamond guests. Since the diamond guests are likely to be very popular, without us gold pass people having VQ tickets as soon as the diamond pass people finished you could have, like, 800 gold pass people try to queue up the minute the VQ numbers start. After all, nobody would want to miss their chance. Even if you did manage to be there at the right moment the open signing started with Sigourney Weaver, and were at or near the front, by the time you finsihed there would be a massive queue of gold pass holders for Michael Gambon and you would be stuck waiting there. And if you had to go off to get a photo op or something, by the time you came back there would probably be another new 50 gold pass members infront of you.

 

Yes, this policy will mean a bit of a rush at the start for us to get a low VQ number for diamond guests, but I think without it you would have massive queues of gold pass members stuck at the diamond guest signing booths. So yes, I hope to get an autograph from Michael Gambon, but I think my odds will actually be better because I will be able to get a low VQ number rather than if I had to try to get a good place in the queue if all the gold pass members showed up at once...

 

Anyway, I know I'm in the minority, but I agree with the decision.

 

 

thank you for seeing our logic we try to think this all though properly and look after everyone not just the few or the high rollers or the lucky people to be in the right place and the right time , so we plan things to be fair and try to do the right thing for everyone.

 

anyway thank you for thinking about this like we have.

 

jason

[john.bttf]

Ok, there are only 5 diamond guests (MJFOX is not available without Diamond).

 

So, GOLDPASS still very usefull for every other guests.

 

The only change, is goldpass MUST be soon at the door to enter first, and get a VQ ticket. Is Showmaster will be organise the entry of the goldpass (in calm I mean) and distibute VQ ticket for the 5 DIamond guest ?

[StuartG2198]

Hello,

 

I have 3 questions :

 

1) At what time a GOLDPASS holder must be at the door at the morning ? (8H00 - 8H30 ?) (sooner ? )

 

2) Is the Goldpass line/entry are clearly indicated ? (outdoor)

 

3) I have a diamond pass for christopher Lloyd, but I would like 2 more autographs of him. Does I nedd VQ ticket for him ? or can I get the 3 autographs at the same time ? (and pays the 2 other of course)

 

Thank you very much.

 

1) A difficult question to answer, either way the gold pass holders will be let in before the rest so you will have the opportunity to get VQ tickets before everyone else, unfortunately as i can't predict how the queues will be at certain times this is a difficult question to answer but id imagine if you were in the gold line at 8/8:30 you'd be fine

 

2) Yes

 

3) My understanding of this is that as you are a diamond pass holder you will NOT need a VQ, you should be able to get all of your autographs together but you will be expected to pay the extra outside of the diamond pass

Edited July 1, 2015 by StuartG2198

[showmasters]

Not necessarily as last year prepaid were let in the same as golds

 

 

Sorry Vicky that is not true , i have to come in here from time to time to put to bed untruths and myths.

 

I myself let in all the golds first thing i let them all go in and when the line was empty i gave the order to let both the pre paid and the pay on the day in at the same time , i myself have dun this for the past 10 years and i have never change this way of letting the public in and i can say 100% this is the truth.

 

hope that helps clear that one up of you and everyone

 

jason

[john.bttf]

 

Hello,

 

I have 3 questions :

 

1) At what time a GOLDPASS holder must be at the door at the morning ? (8H00 - 8H30 ?) (sooner ? )

 

2) Is the Goldpass line/entry are clearly indicated ? (outdoor)

 

3) I have a diamond pass for christopher Lloyd, but I would like 2 more autographs of him. Does I nedd VQ ticket for him ? or can I get the 3 autographs at the same time ? (and pays the 2 other of course)

 

Thank you very much.

 

1) A difficult question to answer, either way the gold pass holders will be let in before the rest so you will have the opportunity to get VQ tickets before everyone else, unfortunately as i can't predict how the queues will be at certain times this is a difficult question to answer but id imagine if you were in the gold line at 8/8:30 you'd be fine

 

2) Yes

 

3) My understanding of this is that as you are a diamond pass holder you will NOT need a VQ, you should be able to get all of your autographs together but you will be expected to pay the extra outside of the diamond pass

 

Thanks :-)

 

But the number of GOLDPASS is knew, right ? So the "Goldpass line" can't be bigger than this number ?

[Hayden Is My Hero]

Quick question that will ease my mind, is the time good holders have at entry (10 mins is it?) from the moment the first gold pass holder goes through the door or the gold pass holder at the end of the line? If it's 10 mins after the last person in line that will make it MUCH easier for us Gold Pass holders to get the VQs when we get in.

[Shangel]

 

Not necessarily as last year prepaid were let in the same as golds

 

 

Sorry Vicky that is not true , i have to come in here from time to time to put to bed untruths and myths.

 

I myself let in all the golds first thing i let them all go in and when the line was empty i gave the order to let both the pre paid and the pay on the day in at the same time , i myself have dun this for the past 10 years and i have never change this way of letting the public in and i can say 100% this is the truth.

 

hope that helps clear that one up of you and everyone

 

jason

 

 

I was there, Vicky. I can confirm that Jason is telling the truth here. All the golds that were queuing up were let in before the early birds/pay on the day started moving.

[a2k]

I just hope that the diamond passes get what was sold to them unlike what happened with the comic gold fiasco last year where we were miss sold and received very few of the perks that were originally sold

[StuartG2198]

 

 

Not necessarily as last year prepaid were let in the same as golds

 

 

Sorry Vicky that is not true , i have to come in here from time to time to put to bed untruths and myths.

 

I myself let in all the golds first thing i let them all go in and when the line was empty i gave the order to let both the pre paid and the pay on the day in at the same time , i myself have dun this for the past 10 years and i have never change this way of letting the public in and i can say 100% this is the truth.

 

hope that helps clear that one up of you and everyone

 

jason

 

 

I was there, Vicky. I can confirm that Jason is telling the truth here. All the golds that were queuing up were let in before the early birds/pay on the day started moving.

 

 

i was also upfront when Jason opened the doors and have been the last few years when he has done the same.

[only_jay]

 

 

Not necessarily as last year prepaid were let in the same as golds

 

 

Sorry Vicky that is not true , i have to come in here from time to time to put to bed untruths and myths.

 

I myself let in all the golds first thing i let them all go in and when the line was empty i gave the order to let both the pre paid and the pay on the day in at the same time , i myself have dun this for the past 10 years and i have never change this way of letting the public in and i can say 100% this is the truth.

 

hope that helps clear that one up of you and everyone

 

jason

 

 

I was there, Vicky. I can confirm that Jason is telling the truth here. All the golds that were queuing up were let in before the early birds/pay on the day started moving.

 

Not true... I was in the queue on Saturday waiting (sunday was fine) to receive my Gold pass as the general queue started going in and I had been waiting.

But the past is the past the pass more than made up for it over the weekend.

Edited July 1, 2015 by only_jay