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Can someone estimate how big a their rooms are? When I called to ask, they have no clue, but other hotels have a clue. Below is what I gathered in square feet.

Ramada: They have no clue
Hilton: 550
Marriott: 325
Fairmont: 450
Hyatt: 450

The phone recording says January 19, but the person who you would talk to on the phone says it's still subject to change. At this point, I speculate that 1 week notice isn't something they're going to do, so I predict it will be delayed later.

Since they are supposedly going to enforce paid registration to book a hotel, I have to guess that they still hadn't figured out what to do with (wild guess) 10% of the people who don't register the usual way. That means industry, press, vendor, prepaid from last year, and probably some more categories I don't know about.


Lastly, let's stay on topic. A comment like "The info comes out whenever it comes out" is basically "Let's shut down this thread". Where are the moderators to clean up off-topic content? (feel free to remove this paragraph too)

Ah thanks. Seems like I'm off by a magnitude of maybe 10k people!

When people ask me how many people go to Fanime, I tell them "around 40,000". Is my guesstimation anywhere near accurate?

I know there are many ways to look at numbers:
- How many are actually Clockwork Academy attendees
- People who buy badges more than once (like on Friday and then on Sunday)
- People who don't buy badges

Can someone shed some light here beyond the cookie cutter response in the past that used to be, "no way to know"?

There's supposedly a new system in place. Will it be better than the previous system? It better be! But nobody knows until time comes.

It's worth a shot to request consolidation be emailing [email protected]

PLEASE post your results afterwards, for the benefit of everyone understanding Fanime's practices (and policies).

As for refunds I am not staff so I cannot comment, but I find it unlikely. However you probably can change your single reg into a group reg if you email CMR when the rest of your group has the money.

I don't mean to sound rude here, but I asked in this thread because I wanted a response from Fanime staff and this seemed one of the easier venues to do it.  I would email CMR but I doubt they have the ability to make exceptions without Fanime's input.  Since they're a third party company, I'm hedging my bets that they would probably just parrot the "no refunds" policy back at me, hence my post here.

I'm sure you'll get an answer, I was merely offering an alternative and sharing experience. This years circumstances are a bit different, but in previous years I've only seen a polite 'no' in response to refund requests.

I haven't ever heard of any circumstances in which Fanime agrees to a refund. They may do so privately, but I can't speak for what I don't know. Just an alternate opinion here: your credit card company may be able to help negotiate something.

I actually have not personally run across any conventions that allow refunds/transfers. Could you give a more specific example?

Sure. Off the top of my head...

Refund Policy: If your cancellation request is received within 30 days of your registration date, you will receive a full refund within 2 weeks. After 30 days, no refunds will be given, and you may only request a transfer or a name change.
Transfer Policy: You will be given one request for a deferral/transfer, good only for the following year.
Name Changes: If you do not want a transfer, you have the option of requesting one name change only.

First, you can transfer the membership to someone else. Write us a letter giving us your name — include your postcard if you have one — and the name and address of the person you're transferring it to. Mail it to our usual P.O. Box address. Or if you're pressed for time, hand the letter to the person who's going to use your membership and have them bring it to the Pre-Reg Desk.

And second, you can roll your membership over to next year once. Just let us know before the convention that you won't be attending and you'd like your membership rolled over to the next year, and we'll move you out of this year's database and put you on next year's list.

I noticed while picking up my badge today that (a) the line was several hours long, and (b) the badges were pre-printed and the volunteers had to look for each person's name, which struck me as extremely inefficient. I'd like to suggest in future years, you simply print out a bunch of blank badges. When someone reaches the pre-reg booth, just look up the type of badge they had, take a badge of that type, and scribble their name on with a permanent marker. It'll make things go much faster.

That is a good idea and it's how other conventions do it. For example, ALA, the line was long but surprisingly fast.

Sent you a PM, hope to hear back soon. And congratulations for getting a table!  :)

 It looks like people are getting approved now, by what it looks like on FB.

I'm looking for a table-share as well!  :-*

No wonder... thanks you guys so much!

Thanks. I really hope this isn't one of those "too good to be true things" and "oops, we messed up, so you pay up!"

If this is really correct, I'm getting a great deal. When I called CMR, they said the parlor is tiny and furniture is not movable. How accurate is this?

Yeah, you have to book through Fanime to get the Fanime rates and rooms.

...so why not say it's between X and Y?

I did find a source via Wikipedia, a memo from Team San Jose puts attendance for Fanime Conference 2011 at 19,250.

Team San Jose's numbers were just a guesstimate. They have the actual numbers for this year.

Oh good, glad I see some number. Most people just want a ball-park estimate, ya know?

Seems like everything is a secret.

I have been wondering how many people go to Fanime (and how many registrations). I think somebody said that the number doesn't get released until the following year's Fanime, but I still don't know how many attendees or registrations there were for 2011. Does the public get to know or is this insider-information?

Any ETA on when the schedule will be released?

Is there a schedule right now yet? I'd like to get my plans ready.

I didn't know there was a mobile (mobile-friendly?) schedule last year, otherwise, people wouldn't have been hounding me for the physical schedule that I printed and brought. Anyway, a mobile-friendly schedule would be totally awesome. Works great with cosplaying and trying to reduce what you carry around.