Messages

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Last time I checked the con was 24hrs... 24/6= 4.... so 1/4 the day=4/5 the day????      Yeah, the long wait is horrendous- but considering the unique circumstances like having relocate where badge pickup was going to be as well as other factors- this wasn't as bad as it could have been.

Still though....a fourth of a day (if you were to actually be awake all 24 hours) is a LONG time to spend doing essentially nothing. In the case of Friday, where a lot of the attendees from the area actually have school until 3pm, this already cuts off most of their day. Friday also tends to have some big stuff happening, this year was Steam Powered Giraffe at Clockwork, but if you happened to be one of the many people just barely getting off school, coming to the convention to find a 5 hour line is the last thing you want.

A quarter of a day doesn't sound like much on its own, but when you factor in how much you pay for a badge, what actually goes on in those hours you spend standing in a line, and that the convention is only 3 and a half days, that is a significant portion.

Isn't Clockwork its own con though? It seems kind of rude to send a huge number of people to a different con to pick up their badges because fanime is unable to handle their own attendees. Yeah, I wish we'd known about getting our badges at CA, I had a group that was going to go there friday evening but missed it because of the lines at Fairmont, but you can't expect one convention to process everyone from a different convention.

I am genuinely interested what the reason this year was for not having the charter busses like last year...it really caused a lot of trouble in getting fans back and forth. My group wound up taking light rail since it conveniently stops right in front of our hotel. But on friday, we ran into a situation where we waited for our bus to holiday inn, the shuttle before us going to double tree filled up like a clown car, all seats filled and people standing to cram in. When our holiday inn shuttle stopped at fairmont to pick up more holiday inn guests, all the double tree guests begged to get on since the shuttle had already been full as it drove by. Bless the driver, he was such a sweetheart, he took all of the double tree guests since there were only 7 of us going to holiday, and he took them all to double tree first before dropping us off.

I'd actually heard a little bit about the shuttles not knowing where to go, but I thought that was just fans not knowing san jose. I live here so I know it can be somewhat confusing. Seeing the map there, that's way too much lol. Dunno what happened there.

Hahaha alright, whatever you'd like. I personally consider "entitled, inconsiderate, self-centered" as insults but ok.

Everyone take note that everyone must be an anime cosplayer for fanime! No more video games, no more comic books, no more movies, no more webcomics or american cartoons. There goes roughly a third of the gatherings, and approximately a quarter of dealer's hall :)

Can I also mention that fanime is by fans, for fans, and has been for all fandoms for I don't even care to count how many years? It's easy to get into, doesn't cost an arm and a leg, maybe we actually enjoy anime too, and most people aren't extremely "self centered and care only for their anime" and actually are nice to talk to. Seems like you're the odd one out here so, I'm sorry for existing since it seems to hinder your own interests and amusement.

Hahaha what the hell? 500 to 20,000 and you're calling yourself the minority? Solutions and compromises to what now? What are you, 14? Sorry you hate everything you're not interested in and sorry you want all of us to bend to your will, but whoops everyone likes their own stuff so it's gonna happen.

"You cannot just do whatever you want everywhere all the time" and such.

Best just to stick to your own and let others have theirs, as I really dont care what you cosplay and if it was something I didn't like, I wouldn't care either way. Wouldn't call you out on it or anything.

But awesome, thanks nemuneko, I hadn't heard an exact date so that's cool to hear it'll be open earlier than I was told.

Likewise, considering I've done nothing but defend myself and others against you lol

So explain how we're supposed to coordinate so there aren't 500 of us. If your response is actually going to be "just stop doing what you're enjoying", you're kind of just as bad. I'm still amazed that people hate us for this. It's not like we can automatically know how many there will be, and just NOT cosplay something we enjoy? I've already dropped homestuck as a cosplay because of this and because no matter what I can do, people will hate what I do ENTIRELY because it's homestuck. I'm sorry we have a horrible reputation but we also get horrible responses for things not all of us are responsible for. And yeah, it's simple cosplay. No it's not as well thought out, although some are amazing. But it gives people a chance to cosplay something they enjoy for less cost and not as much talent if they don't have it?

Being one of those homestuck cosplayers, sorry for being offended but yeah, rather offended. I was under the impression that a lot of various fandoms are embraced at conventions, but it's homestuck that gets most of the slack simply because there's a lot of us? Believe me, a con to ourselves would be nice, but why take it out on us if there isn't one and we just happen to want to cosplay and find others interested in it? You have your cosplays, we have ours. There are plenty of other things at this convention not related to anime or japanese culture anyways. The league of legends gathering was huge as well, maybe not 500 people but that sure as hell isn't an anime.

As for everything else, chifunii hit the point well on all those. I do have to comment on the artist alley location as well though. South Hall is NOT that far...it's half a block and directly behind the convention center. By the way, it's huge or did you not notice? Artist Alley in previous years was so painfully cramped, it was wonderful to have a huge hall entirely for this, and it was actually really cool in there compared to the warm stuffy air in dealer's hall. Construction isn't supposed to end until next winter, so apparently we're getting one more convention with the construction, but it should be really amazing after.

I didn't have too much trouble with people blocking walkways this year, but I had SERIOUS issues with it over by the dealer's hall entrance, where they taped the silly little roadway isles down. It was a good idea I guess, but horribly followed up on, when large groups of people stopped for pictures dead center of it. Of all the roaming staff I saw, I never saw any there and if I did, they didn't say a word about keeping it moving.

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.

asdfgh so many gatherings are trying to get their saturday noon slot, and I'm supposed to be in quite a few of them, watching others.

I still think this should be sunday noonish like last year, so many of the other large gatherings want saturday as well lol

lol edited this post. If we still do the noon on saturday, I might be a bit late. My costume is huge and takes forever to put on.

I don't think Friday would be the best option. I'm thinking of a ton of people who would have school that day, I myself knowing several TF2 cosplayers who wouldn't be able to be a part of it because of that. Also, with it being the first day, I think it might be too crazy.

Saturday or sunday please. Also hoping this doesn't interfere with some of the other meets I'm in, but I still think it would be better on one of those two days.

I've got a Suicune costume, a fairly big one. That's about all I can say for now :>

Finally we have a Touhou gathering going (I'd been lurking the forums for a month waiting). So thanks for getting this started!

My original plan was to bring out my Yukari costume again, but suddenly I have a new plan. I'm coming as Toyosatomimi this year, and I'm almost scared to see a lot of ten desires characters.

As for times, I really don't know. I thought the Sunday 2pm slot worked fine last year, especially with a lot of the bigger meets on saturday (I'm sure a lot of people, me incuded, might be in those meets as well). I put touhou in priority always except I have one big costume for pokemon so if those two conflict, I'm gonna cry lol. Otherwise, saturday it is.