Messages

I was able to get in right at 9 and had no problems and a lot of hotels still looked available.  Something to note though is don't go to the home page because the "reserve a hotel" button still doesn't go anything.  Make sure to click on the link in the reservation e mail that was sent to you and on the left side click reserve a hotel.

For those of you who already reserved were you able to select your dates?  I wanted to check in on Thursday, but the reservation automatically gave me the 27-30th.

This gave me issues too. Before you select your hotel and room you have to select the dates at the top of the page. The default is 27-30th but you can change that. For some reason mine was at 27-29th and at 6 am I was not with it enough to realize (after going back to the page after almost making the reservation and then realizing it never asked for the dates and thinking WTF is up with this?) that I wanted to check out on the 30th. So now I'm wait listed for the 30th even though it says my hotel and room are still available for the 30th when I look at it online. grrrr. But I called up and they tell me that those days aren't available that I had to get on the wait list.

p.s. if any of that was difficult to follow I apologize. I don't function well when asked to wake up at 6am.

Fanime posted to Facebook about where to direct this sort of inquiry.

~48-50% of attendess seeking a room will have a room.

funny, 100% of my friends and acquaintances that look for lodging at Fanime have always been able to make some arrangements. No matter how late in the game they start looking.

I feel like Fanime is slowly becoming an "older con". It's starting to garner more outside traffic as opposed to just the local high school and college kids. And many of the locals that started going to Fanime back in high school are often choosing to continue attending and not just "go adult" somewhere else. I see more and more proposals happen at fanime and people starting to bring their kids to con. That probably contributes to people's assumption that if you are older and attending the con you might have come as a family. But I think it's becoming less of a chaperoning the little ones thing and more of a whole family event. (which personally I think is really cool). It's a slow transition and I think that Fanime will always attract a younger crowd on average.

As far as people reacting to the stranger danger situations I mostly have to sympathize with the one being cautions and assuming the worst of a situations. Friends of mine have gone to cons where someone tried to follow them back the their room un-invited. Underage people were getting groped at one con. Even something as simple as a person offering my friend in a fur suit a drink of water could be a dangerous situation. So when we subconsciously judge if a situation is potentially dangerous, is race a factor? unfortunately yes. Is age a factor? you bet ya. Personally I've yet to have a bad experience with someone of color at a convention. And I have never felt paranoid or threatened by someone of color at a convention. In fact there have been a couple black cosplayers who were really awesome and made my con that year. On the other hand there is an older white guy my friends and I see at cons/gatherings on occasion and actively avoid. My point is "when you look at the world through rose colored glasses all the red flags look white". They aren't doing it to be offensive, many of them probably aren't consciously aware of it. As a woman there are many stereotypes and double standards that I have to deal with on a daily basis and it's very frustrating to say the least. So I understand where you are coming from there. However, I would be surprised if you got that attitude from the vast majority of attendees at Fanime. So do you let the attitudes of the few ruin the experience as a whole?

I think local bands would be cool so long as they maintain that relation to anime and japanese culture/influences (if anyone happens to know of appropriate bands post them, I'd love to check them out as I can't actually think of any myself). However, it has always been very exciting for me in the past to see an actual band/artist from Japan. Personally I wouldn't sacrifice that entirely even if it meant a much larger program.

Fanime crowds get all types of people. Yes, many of us are quite creative. I could see this drawing some interest. Have you done similar workshops at other conventions in the past?

I plan on going as Ravager (special variation)

I have a feeling they won't release official prices until after the Super Bowl. Especially if they need any kind of confirmation/cooperation from the hotels at this point. They will all be rather preoccupied for the next week.

I wonder what the actual room availability will be like once they factor in at con registration last year and artist alley/dealers hall attendees.  Since they get first dibs it's probably going to be slim chances of good hotels even for the people who registered right when it opened this year

I don't think there has been any official confirmation that people registered for artist alley/dealers hall will get special priority for hotel booking.

I don't think they'll give us time frames for who got into which priority block. It will likely depend greatly on the number of people who registered during any one time frame. I have a feeling though that when email notifications go out we might see some "I registered on X date and have Y priority date. What did you get?" posted by fans on the forum and/or social media.

The advantage of a required badge purchase prior to reserving a hotel is the initial monetary investment. You can't get that money back as opposed to the no-risk system that has been in place hereinto. It also prevents people for booking extra rooms early on for friends that end up making other arrangement. While the latter is a good intentioned legitimate practice it does hold up the very limited supply of rooms. This results in people being wait listed and also reserving a hotel room at their available second choice. Which in turn fill up causing more people to be wait listed. Then as the cancellation deadline draws closer and people start dropping rooms and others are notified that they got a room from the wait list they then have to drop their back up room. All-in-all it's a rather messy system. It's possible that groups who need 2+ hotel rooms have had 4-5 of their members reserving 2+ rooms each and then dropping them later just so they could get their best chances at high demand rooms.

My feeling is that those who reserve badges right off the bat should get first crack at rooms (no loto system). For one, a per-badge loto system might make it difficult for families (or other groups) who need 2+ rooms to reserve them at the same hotel if they end up with drastically different priority times for each badge. Secondly there are people who try so hard to ensure they get a close hotel because they would be significantly inconvenienced by being at a distance from the con-center (sellers, cosplayers with large props/costume pieces, people with handicaps).

This also strikes me as the most handicapped friendly system. They can get badges at con for the next year (in a priority line if the regular line would be too long). And then get in an early hotel reservation group and likely be able to get a hotel close to the con center. I can't imagine the system that we have had up to this point would be considered highly accessible unless there are other avenues for hotel reservations that people with a handicap could go through that I am un-aware of (this is quite possible, I am not all-knowing).

especially when some of that programming -- most famously the Masquerade -- has a reputation for being a bit of a mess.

I'm not disagreeing that Fanime has had communication problems. On a couple of occasions I've sent emails to fanime that this or that event wasn't listed in the program or didn't have accurate information. But I just don't think fanime telling us "we will have a masquerade" is any indication of how good it will be or if there will be technical issues and so on. And thus attendees can't base whether they will or will not go based on an announcement like that. Programming quality (aside from guests) has less to do with announcing said programming to the general public and more to do with execution. To get a general idea of what the con will be like it is not unreasonable to say "look at least year's programming" and then decide if you want to go or not. I just feel like it is a wild exaggeration for pantsu to say "We know absolutely NOTHING about the con, except that it's happening memorial day weekend in san jose.  No announcements of any kind."

Considering they got badge reg up before Christmas that's actually much earlier then some years. AA selection is taking a while but the actual submission process was also punctual by Fanime standards. They probably can't open masquerade or panel submissions too early or they are likely to get quite a few cancelations.

If this system does work out I'll definitely register at con this year for next years show so I could be higher on the list for hotel opening.

Same. My only concern is that so many people will start doing this that it becomes impossible to get rooms at certain hotels unless you pre reg at con for next year. Which also means my Monday of con could turn into waiting for hours in line. Won't that be fun after running around all weekend on minimal sleep.  ::)

(Many other cons of Fanime's size start announcing guests and events for their next con a few months after that year's con ends.

What con does this? AX has 0 guests announce. Kraken con has 1 announced. SacAnime has 1 announced. Back your claims up with specific examples rather then throwing around generalizations. Really guests are the only thing we don't know about for next Fanime. All other programming is likely to be comparable to the year before. The only guest that makes any sort of difference to me for Fanime is who they are going to get for Music Fest. And if I really don't like who they get there is plenty of other programming going on. I couldn't imagine getting an autograph or photo making the difference between spending $55 + hotel or not.

Hotel Reg last year was the worst I've seen it EVER. It's always bad but last year it seemed as though the site was entirely in-operable for the first couple hours. The same sort of thing happened with badge pick up. It finally got to the point that people waited 8+ hours in line and they had people fainting on them in line. Then fanime found a solution that really worked. It seems like it has to get bad to the point of being in-tolerable for any real improvement to be enacted. Fanime has been proposing that badges be required for hotel registration for some time now and to me this looks like the best solution they have come up with so far. My main concern is that next year instead of the servers crashing when hotel reg goes up they will crash when badges go on sale. It's likely been a big problem that people could reserve rooms almost without limit and without any consequence for canceling those reservations later on (which is why refundable badges would just re-create the same issue). This is not a perfect solution, and they really should have notified us before badges went online, but there really isn't a perfect solution and at least it's an attempt at improvement. If they find that rooms at hotels are selling out entirely before they even open up to the general public to be purchased they might tweak the system further in the future. Perhaps they can make rooms available in blocks so they are guaranteed to at least still have some available when reservations open to the general public.

https://fanimecon.cmrushelp.com

(includes phone #s and "send us a message" link on right hand side)

[likely]

No date has been officially confirmed. The last word I saw on it was posted on twitter on Dec. 21 saying it would likely be January/February (https://twitter.com/AngrySean/statuses/679061902257881088). There has been no word from what I can see on Fanime's Facebook page. They did however say on Facebook that they will provide more advanced notice for hotels then they did for badge registration.

Should I be worried that I never received a confirmation email after paying for my group's badges?

You should check your spam folder. If you still can't find it you will need to contact CMR (the company that Fanime uses to handle their reg and hotels). Contact info can be found here: http://fanimecon.cmrushelp.com/customer/portal/emails/new?

I find it amusing that they have us agree to the code of conduct when we register, but they appear to be updating the code of conduct atm. So you don't actually know what you are agreeing to. For all I know I've agreed to wear a cthulhu hat the entire time I'm on convention premises. Not that I would mind... #CthulhuHats2016

It usually helps to at least say what character you are interested in. That way people can judge if it's the sort of thing that is within their wheelhouse. Also, I think technically these types of requests should go under the "Incredible Stuff I can Make" board because it also is about asking people to make things for you (I know, not super clear).

I can see 2 types of people coming to see this. Ones that are like "oh, I like zelda and would like to learn more about it". These types of people are interested just because it is something they are familiar with but probably haven't done much individual research on it. Then there are people who are like, "I'm the biggest Zelda fan boy/girl ever and must check out anything Zelda related... because Zelda is awesome". These people will have watched all of the fan theory videos, read obscure creator interviews, and generally dedicate large portions of their lives to all things Zelda. So, I would say the first kind of person might find something even marginally researched entertaining. However, if you aren't REALLY the biggest Zelda fan ever you might have trouble keeping the interest of the second group (or if you're allowing audience participation you risk getting bulldozed out of our own panel by the second group). If you are not the biggest Zelda fan ever then I would suggest indicating in the title and/or description of the panel that this is geared towards Zelda beginners. e.g. "Zelda Theories 101" an introduction to Zelda fan theories focusing on.... That way the hard core fans don't show up expecting to get blown away with tuns of new information and end up feeling let down.