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PyronIkari, you say that just about everybody you talked to in retrospect had nothing but negative comments about their experience--but as a maid, while serving our patrons and interacting with them directly, most feedback I recieved was positive or at the very least ambivalent. Most patrons seemed quite pleased with the service they recieved, and we had several individuals and parties who came back on the second day to be served again.

I don't deny that some people probably loved it and thought it was the greatest thing sliced bread. But you need to remember your audience. Think about it in this form. Remember why i was banned in the first place? Merit or weight of words didn't matter, it was only for the fact that I was being negative in a community where negativity is frowned upon. That was even anonymously on the internet... in person the magnitude is amplified atleast a hundred. People are afraid of saying something bad, because they believe if they something bad, everyone will gang up on them(like happened to me). Again... it's worse in person. I wouldn't go far as to say "pleased" but "content" I will accept. most of the people I talk to didn't say they hated it or anything, but found it rather pointless. If memory served me correctly, I asked about 9 people that just left the cafe on saturday, 6 people on sunday, and there were two people who I asked during my panel(but I don't count these due to hindsight). That's a small amount of people considering, but when none of them were "happy" or "impressed" then we're talking about getting average ratings instead of "good". This means there was a very major point lacking for something that was supposed to be a "new experience" for these people.

From what I've seen and heard so far, the majority of negative (or at least non-positive) reactions have been regarding the length of the line or the price of the foodstuffs, and very little regarding their actual experience at the cafe or interaction with any of the maids, butlers, or other staff involved. I know we had at least one patron who had several questions regarding authentic maid cafes and how our project at Fanime was attempting to resemble such places, but Karisma took special time out of her duties as a shift manager to sit personally with that patron and answer all of her questions to the best of her knowledge, and in the end said patron seemed completely satisfied with the information she recieved.

Mmm... sorry for this but I don't trust anyone on the staff outside of Jun to give an accurate depcition of what an authentic cafe is, and for her, it's shaky at best. She even knows that, although she has a decent understanding, she only knows so much from her experiences.

The majority of responses I got were that they didn't see how or what the point was outside of the costumes. There was no difference in demeanor or action. What I mean by this was that "They didn't act like maids".

Now, I will acknowledge that some patrons may have been reluctant to say anything negative directly to me because I was an actual serving maid involved in the project, but I find it hard to believe that you are the only person in the world capable of speaking their mind to somebody's face if they have a problem or are confused about something; if there had been so many patrons confused or disappointed with their service, I would have expected at least one or two to say something directly.

You'd be suprised.

Edited for Karisma's post:

So what, you want me to say how great of a job you guys did, and how wonderful it was? Sorry, but it wasn't. You felt insulted by my post? Well, too bad for you then, nothing I said was directly insulting at all, if me telling you guys how you guys made mistakes, what was wrong, and what not... is insulting to you? Then honestly... *TOO BAD*.  This was a volunteer thing... and? I run panels. I ran one of the biggest(if not the biggest panel) this year. A lot of time and effort was put into running it. It went off and was a huge success. I've heard a lot of things that people said sucked about the panel, and did I get pissy about it? Did I say they shouldn't bitch at me, or that they should be constructive? NOPE... WHY? Because they are my audience, and they are the ones that I'm listening to. Fortunately for me... the subject matter of my panel is something I understand. I understand the audience, I understand the subject, I understand what they want... and I plan that accordingly.

You are missing the biggest point of my complaint here. NONE OF YOU REALLY KNOW WHAT A MAID CAFE IS. You give me this bullshit like "Well we did the best we could to be authentic but it's due to *CON* limitations, and *UNION REGULATIONS* that prevented you to be fully authentic? Then let's hear it Karisma... what would you have done if there were 0 limitations? How would maids act? What would they say? How would you regulate things, in what can and cannot be done?

there were two nanoha cosplayers, a chrono(me) and a vita... but the vita seemed to not be a nanoha fan as he did not recognize that chrono was from the same series when i said hi to him.

First off, all of the press that I personally talked to had nothing but positive things to say about the cafe. While yes, the line was long at the very beginning, I think its understandable considering that was the first year we've done things and really had to figure things out from scratch as far as how things were going to work.

Hindsight bias. You are part of the cafe. I was rather unknown person asking for honest opinions of random patrons that walked into the cafe. I was outside on the balcony smoking a lot so quite a few people walked by me during the cafe hours. My exact question was "Hey did you just come out of the fanimaid cafe thing? How was it? Like, what happened exactly?"

And I let them talk about it for however long they did, said thanks and let them leave. Most of your patrons were disappointed and unimpressed.

As far as the whole "more to it" part of the maid cafe, after we got the kinks worked out as far as the actual serving and cleaning up and seating people, we were able to free up more time/maids for socializing more and hanging out with them. I feel bad for people who were unfortunately not able to get the same service as happened towards the end of the con as the beginning, but again, first year and we were figuring things out as fast as we could.

But that's only a minor part of it. Even if it's busy, there are small nuances that make it a maid cafe. Bowing, word choice how you carry yourself. There was no mannerisms or form in what I had witnessed, and not a single person even commented on the mannerisms or actions of the maids at all.

Next year looks to be more promising in ALL aspects. We'll have a bigger room, more maids, as well as we can now start working out kinks of maids socializing and playing games, doing drawings with the patrons, ect. I plan on taking on a bigger part of helping with next year as I feel like I have a good finger on the pulse of how we should change and improve for the future.

Doing drawings? Huh? From what I witnessed and what I knew prior and after... you guys are trying to make it more "Japanese" over more "Authentic". The things like, not taking pictures with them and what not only works when you have long time patrons and an established center of business. It's supposed to be rewards for repeat customers over long periods of time, but that doesn't work when all you have is a weekend, and a few hours per day. There was too much focus on things that DIDN'T matter and no focus on VERY IMPORTANT aspects of what "Makes a Maid Cafe".

On another note, we do accept constructive feedback. However, everything you've said in general about the maid cafe has been nothing but negative. Perhaps if you had not been so argumentative and negative in the past, people wouldn't have been so willing to write you off. If you are genuinely interested in helping improve for next year, key term being HELPING, I'm sure you could take it privately to someone who is willing to take your advice given that it is constructive.

Oh please... welcome to the real world. Negative comments reflect what is being done wrong. There are always pieces and places that need improvement, and without focusing on these parts, things will never get better. You can have millions of people telling you it's wonderful and ignore the flaws you have, but then it won't grow.

Think about it, someone who knows about Maid Cafes, someone who can tell you the differences between the kinds, which are real cafes, which are tourists traps, etc... is telling you "Something is wrong here and you should improve these points" and you're saying he's not being constructive?

If someone is hurting you, destroying you costume, or not backing off when you tell them to then that's completely different than what I was refering to. The way it sounded PyronIkari was only hugged and responded by trying to kick someone's ass.

You seem to not understand the basis of what assault is? Me shoving someone to the ground is 100x better than me getting them arrested, fined, and put into prison from anywhere from a month to two years. Yes... I was hugged, unwantedly, by someone I have never seen before in my life while I was walking. If you did this on the street, you would have much more than me pushing you on the floor. Most people would break your nose, or beat the crap out of you even after the fact. I didn't chase after these guys to beat them, I did a reactionary push, compared to a reactionary punch to the face. You see "TRYING TO KICK SOMEONE'S ASS" doesn't fly with me. If I "Tried" to do so, I would. I shouldn't have to be polite to some idiot who has no social graces at all to politely ask them to stop hugging me, wait for it to register into their heads and then have them let go. For some people, they're too dense to even understand those words. One guy held up a sign to me and opened his arms to hug me. He then said "Can I hug you?" Me not being in a costume, just walking down the hall to my hotel room. I said "if he attempted to hug me, I'd punch him". He seemed to not understand this as he kept following me and saying things like "Why can't I hug you? I just want to hug you, let me hug you".

You would think after I said I'd punch him if he tried... he'd get the message. But no, he didn't.

[were]

I'm not banned anymore \o/(No reason to explain that)

Well I can see why you were banned. Sure people should ask for hugs instead of just taking them but do you really feel that it's necessary to push someone down to the floor because they wanted to hug you? Perhaps next time you could just tell them it's unwanted instead of being violent?
I'm sure the fanimaid staff would love some constructive feedback. What exactly was the "more" that you and your friends were hoping for? I really doubt Jerry was trying to be rude but there were lots of people trying to cut in line and sneak in real quickt o talk their the maids or take pictures with them and unfortunatly that's no able to happen if the cafe is to continue running smoothly.

-_- I was banned for this forum wrongly... hence why I'm unbanned now. Quite honestly, yes, I do feel the need to do something, and they're lucky I don't do more. I'm a firm believer that if you do something retarded like that, then don't be suprised when you get a reaction.

The fanimaid staff DOES NOT want constructive feedback... that was the reason why I was "banned" in the first place. And *I THINK* I have a better judgment on what he was to me compared to you. He was VERY RUDE in how he said it. I wasn't cutting or barging in, and at the time all I was doing was looking inside, I didn't say I wanted a table or even try to go inside or anything like that, I was merely looking around. For all he knew I was just trying to see what was going on. He was a total dick and I didn't make a deal out of it when I easily could have.

Glad you had fun.



As you can tell from that, me and Stu definitely did.

BTW... links to those vids you were talking about during the panel Jason...

You should thank Jared more than me. He put in a lot of work to get those slides working, and he planned almost the entire thing, I just threw down the basis and ideas for the panel, he was the one that came up with the meat.

I'm not banned anymore \o/(No reason to explain that)

I had a talk with quite a few people about the fanimaid cafe, and almost everything(ALMOST) I heard was negative. I also had a fun run in with Jerry in which he was quite rude to me.

The general things i heard was "I didn't get the point of it? I walked in and I was served food by a girl. And that was about it".
"I always thought there was more to Maid cafes than costumes" and the such.

It was quite funny, because I walked over there to check it out with my friend, and I saw Jun working who I wanted to say hi to and before anything happened Jerry walked up to me and quite rudely said "Is there anything I can help you with?" and I replied back with "Uh, yeah this is the maid cafe right?" and he instantly said "WELL AS YOU CAN SEE THERE IS A LINE OVER THERE". At this point I was considering my options. I could very easily had made a large scene but decided not to, due to the fact that a few of the maids were quite nice to me online and I didn't want to ruin things for them.

So I played it off "Oh sorry, I thought that was the line for the ATM" and then he replies back with... "OH well, is this for take out or dine in?" "Excuse me? Oh, I guess dine in, but it's fine, nevermind". "Yeah. LIKE I SAID there's a line over there, so go get in line".

So I just walked off.


Other things... people trying to hug me, and people trying to hug my friends. I had 4 people literally try to force themselves onto me at different times at the con while NOT cosplaying and multiple times while cosplaying. One I shoved to the floor and said that if he attempted anything like that to me or my friends again, I would break his nose. The thing is, this didn't phase him as I saw him just blindly run up and hug someone else about 2 minutes later.


Late night antics. I don't mind people having fun and messing around, I support it, but people need to be just a tad more considerate. Just because it's late and not many people use the elevators is not an excuse for people to sit in the elevators in a circle and mash the elevator buttons while screaming/singing/talking. I had just returned to the hotel from a very important meeting at around 2am and when I pressed the elevator floor I saw 5 people sitting in a circle on the ground screaming and singing show tunes. So I waited for another elevator only to see an overweight guy, reading a pornographic magazine(the magazine name escapes me right now, but it does reviews for eroge, and it's one that I pick up occasionally to see what's coming out) while eating chips on the floor on the floor. This... disgusted me. It was bad enough he was looking at porn... but him being totally overweight, unwashed, and in a t-shirt and pants that weren't exactly well fitting on him after I just returned was not what I wanted to see in an elevator heading back to my room. I wouldn't have even minded if he was doing it against the wall of the convention center or at a table, but on the floor of the elevator...

Arcana Heart:Heartful Edition