Seriously though, I'm wondering what went through the staff's heads when they decided that 5 laptops and approximately 15 people working badge booths to accommodate the thousands of people who were showing up at once was a brilliant idea?
I'm expecting a good number of these topics to show up here, but it was enraging to hear the stories I have other this weekend so every little mention should HOPEFULLY get heard by next year...if not, consider me done with fanime.
My own story isn't nearly as horrible but does kind of show a good example of how unorganized this is. I had planned on going to day zero badge pickup, but I was already getting texts from friends saying "This line is too long, just stay at the hotel or something", "consider yourself lucky right now", etc. So when two of my friends and I went the next morning to pick up our badges, we went up the main escalators and a staff member at the doors asked if we had any questions. All we did was ask about where pre-registration people go since we'd literally just gotten there, and she pointed into the room towards the two lines, telling us to go on the left. I found out about a half hour later this was the last room of a massive 3-4 hour line, and we were just told to go right in (makes me wonder how many people came up, confused and just wanting directions, but were essentially given a free pass of several hours). Another roommate who'd been there 3 hours before me walked into the room just a few minutes later, rather confused and upset how I'd gotten ahead of her.
And it still took almost two hours to get our badges, from a line of booths where I saw 5 people handing pre-registration, 3 handling on-site (after only having 5 laptops in the other room for them to check in), and maybe 9 people passing badges out.
I've gone to Fanime for several years now, and the only problem with registration I've ever had was when a system crash last year (or so we were told) brought the line to a stop for 4 hours. Everything else was smooth and it was awesome, but I think it's gotten far too big to expect this to keep working. Other large conventions are on top of this already, I don't see how this is an issue. AX is supposed to be the counterpart to Fanime and yet it runs so much smoother with almost as many people, most likely more by this point. I don't know....I just know a lot of people who aren't going to bother with the convention next year if this isn't fixed. I'm not spending 60 bucks for a weekend I'm going to miss most events for anyways, just waiting 7 hours in line. All those people wanting to go to Clockwork on friday night? Hahahaha good luck getting your badge in time if you happen to have school that day.
As an added note, I'd like to know what the hell even happened with the masquerade, seems like the staff wasn't quite on it that night with the serious number of sound mix-ups, cut offs, early starts and no script. I felt sorry for the people who'd practiced so hard to go up there, suddenly having everything go wrong in front of everyone.