The Entire Cast of Star Trek TNG is coming to Calgary Comic Con

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by OutOfTheCube

Seems like the whole thing has turned into a bit of a gong show.

Out of towners said that this was one of the worst organized conventions they had ever been too. They tried their best but you only get so far with limited project management, little experience on the ground, no one ostensibly in charge (except the fire marshal), and a small workforce of fan volunteers with limited training, little to no communications ability (besides what amounts to a colossal game of telephone) and no prerogative to make authoritative decisions and no ability to convey that to the convention goers (no PA system at all, almost no signs or directions, no maps at the entrances and staging areas where needed, and only one or two megaphones to pass around). My experience with the volunteers mostly fell into the two extremes of them being either extremely shy and apologetic or extremely brash, rude, and angry. Overall, they were trying to do well but amateurish at best. Maybe they need to work on getting their volunteers or hire staff from a bigger pool than the local fan clubs, etc. One of the strangest and unprofessional things going on was that I was told the parking lot sign said $10 but when they got inside, staff told them it was $13?

This convention is actually an interesting parallel to the history of the City of Calgary as a whole I think. Even 2-3 years ago, it was a relatively small con and in the intervening time, it has undergone a tremendous boom in attendance and hype and is about 5-10x larger now and they haven't got the boots on the ground or experience in management to cope properly. It's like how Calgary is a big economy, big population boom town with a small town feel. The Calgary Expo is a big money convention, with booming attendance, with small con management.

The entire Stampede Park is there. There are large usable spaces like the Saddledome, the GMC tent, etc. Leverage some of the experts & professionals that manage the Stampede every year so they have overflow areas, fewer bottlenecks (Hall D's entrance was basically the gateway to everything and outside it was a gong show), and more appropriate venues. Most importantly, don't just sell more tickets willy-nilly than fire regulations allow and then hope they can get by by trapping 3000 frustrated people outside and in the halls for hours at a time and letting them in a little at a time. I was in line beside a corporate management consultant and he said that he offered the convention his services for free (he had worked on other conventions also as a hobby) and they turned him and others away because they didn't recognize their need for more professional experience.

If fire regs say only this # of people can get in, then simply only put up that number of tickets for sale on the internet (separate passes for separate days so you can anticipate how many will show up each day) or at approved vendors and don't allow walk-ons next year because there is no way to anticipate or control who will arrive and line up for hours expecting to get in and getting angry when they are turned away early in the morning. Run the event like a regular ticketed event. Sell a set number of tickets, have multiple entrances to the main event (not just one), staff them with people with barcode readers, process quickly and efficiently. This is no different than making sure only 19289 get into the Saddledome. Do it properly. If they can't restrict things like that and still need to allow walk-ons, then they need to always plan for having the biggest spaces, the worst case scenarios, and have contingencies in place. More people walk-on and attend the Stampede than the Comic Expo. If that can be handled, this can be handled.

[Hemi-Cuda]

i wonder if this experience will tarnish the reputation of the Calgary Expo. seeing all the hype about the big name starts attending then hearing about how poorly everything was managed is pretty disappointing, gives the city a black eye. hopefully they can get their act together for next year and start repairing some of the damage

[Hack&Lube]

It sounds bad but once you got in, it was a good experience. If you were lucky enough to get inside, inside was a decent controlled environment that was enjoyable aside from being packed to the breaking point in terms of fire regulations. What happened outside was simply way more people showed up than they had prepared for or any ability to deal with. You can't have the cast of TNG, Stan Lee, and a bunch of other A-listers, etc. at a convention that has grown exponentially year after year on the Stampede grounds and not expect that huge crowds will show up as walk-ons on a Saturday morning expecting that they will be able to get in. Poor planning here. The worst part is that these people dutifully lined up aimlessly for 2-3 hours and then were left hanging and angry at not being told what was going on or offered refunds or apologies but simply the cold truth to "come back tomorrow" when they finally reached the ticket sales area. People were angry and bitter because there was no communication and they were wasting hours of their time. The moment the fire marshal shuts down any more admissions (even if it is before noon!) you need to have someone in charge on an actual PA system make an announcement instead of leaving the lined-up crowds to whisper and panic as rumors go through the horde like a giant game of telephone for another hour or two.

Also, the ticket sales area was on the opposite end from where the gateway to the actual convention was (Hall D main doors). So effectively people lined up for 2 hours (from the C-Train circling the building into the BMO building and then into the Corral) only to get their passes there and then have to go back the other way and line up again for another 1-2 hours to get into BMO Hall D because it was over capacity as well.

Another issue was network congestion, many people could not even make normal call or text people. Data and WiFi were impossible to access which further contributed to the loss of control and communication and sense of what was going on for people.

[Kswiss]

Most brutal organized event I ever been to. Waited in line for 2 hours, get to the front and they say no more ticket sales...I asked a volunteer why it wasnt announced...he said it was but...frackin they failed to inform people near the middle to the end of the line...(which like someon said before, there were so many of them) The mismanaged event created a black market for people leaving the event..people buying others passes that were leaving....it was hilarious...horrible experience.....something has to change or word is going to spread how crap the event was.....end of rant......

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Kswiss

Most brutal organized event I ever been to. Waited in line for 2 hours, get to the front and they say no more ticket sales...I asked a volunteer why it wasnt announced...he said it was but...frackin they failed to inform people near the middle to the end of the line...(which like someon said before, there were so many of them) The mismanaged event created a black market for people leaving the event..people buying others passes that were leaving....it was hilarious...horrible experience.....something has to change or word is going to spread how crap the event was.....end of rant......

It wasn't announced. "Announced" to the volunteers meant that a few volunteers had told a few people here and there and let the news trickle through like a confused game of telephone and the message got lost almost right away. Why they didn't use the PA system or there was nobody on a simple megaphone that walked the line and did this I have no idea. None of the volunteers seemed to know that the fire marshal would let people in again once the place started emptying out a bit (which is what is logical after all) and simply told people they were out of luck and to get out and try again tomorrow.

Outside briefly became a hilarious gong show of people having their own alternative convention and fashion show + black market of pass begging and scalping.

[Bertuzzied]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Outside briefly became a hilarious gong show of people having their own alternative convention and fashion show + black market of pass begging and scalping.

I have 10 exhibitor passes. Maybe i should have sold them for $400 each and got back the cost of my booth! hehe

[The Goon]

I think the Expo organizers should well heed the words of Uncle Ben: "With great power comes great responsibility."

[TurnedTheCorner]

I'm really dreading heading down there today after reading this.

[Notorious Honey Badger]

Few hundred in line already. Saw a girl in a Mileena outfit from mk. Ooh yah.

[Human Torch]

Is it even worth trying to buy tickets at the door to get in today?

[Regular_John]

Seems in the spirit of "the show must go on" their still not really handeling this properly. Website/twitter are all saying "just show up at 8:30am! Saturday passes will be honored, but some day passes will be for sale!" once again creating a "show up and you might get in" situation.

I suspect nobody at the top has the stones to make the difficult decision here and they are still trying to run things like their dealing with a circle of close personal friends who have no problem being patient. When really it's time to admit "ok, we're oversold here, and people with advanced tickets were turned away, no more ticket sales"

Even last night I saw on twitter, someone asked how PAX is able to handle 70k people a day with entry/re-entry but Calgary Expo can't? @CalgaryExpo responded by asking if PAX caps attendance...

Well s*** guys, maybe that's something for you to find out isn't it? You're running a huge event, stuff like that should be on your radar.

But, having said all that, most years this is a great event, I don't believe the organizers maliciously set out to nickel & dime for every ticket they could, it just got too big too fast. So at the very least they deserve a chance to learn from this year's debacle and make good at future events. And I hope they do.

[Bigtime]

While it is clear that the Expo certainly bit off more than it could chew this year, I think a lot of people are giving a free pass to the venue as able to handle a crowd of this size. Instead of me trying to explain it I'll let forumer "suburbia" from SSP give his take on how inadequate the BMO Centre is to handle an event once it becomes this size:

No - it would not test the capacity of *ANY* venue. The BMO centre is particularly bad as the entry / exit capacity is no where near the actual capacity of the large halls from a sq ft perspective. Just having better and larger foyer / lobby spaces and better exit bandwidth would double the actual fire capacity of the large halls, particularly when halls A, B & C are combined. Too bad it couldn't be re-done with a clean slate on the same footprint.

Just to demonstrate what I'm talking about with real numbers, halls A, B & C are 50K sf each and while the net sf would allow for about 5K in each of those, the actual limit is between 2,700 and 3,200, limited by the number of doors (dumb - if you have that much space, why limit usage by not putting enough doors?). Now when you combine the three, you'd think you could just add the capacity of each and have over 9,000 people, but, the individual numbers include exit capacity into the neighboring halls (so often hall A is rented, hall C is rented, but they don't rent the middle as it is required for exit from A & C) so when you combine all three the capacity is only 7,000 people based on exit bandwidth, whereas the sf would allow for 15,000. Now those numbers are based on no furniture IE reception type / open set-ups, so they don't apply for this type of event where there is in-hall infrastructure, but this certainly, at a fundamental level, demonstrates the bone-head design. Hall D & E are a bit better I think (with more exit bandwidth and better washrooms also) but overall, there is much left to be desired. Even if you could have 15K in A, B & C and a further 10K in D & E, the lobby / foyer space is not built for that, so another limitation.

Anyway, having heard the numbers (43K) for the comic show, we should not be in this situation. A real shame. To clarify about how they measure 43K, which is person-days, it is like the stampede. If you have a three day pass, you measure as three people. It does not mean that they have 43K people in there at once, or even close. Additionally, most people only go for a portion of the day. There are certainly facilities in the world that can manage 43K at once, but that would be completely out of our league. If we could have something that could truly handle 25K it would be very good.

Funny enough we have been discussing convention/trade centre size on SSP as of late, and this is an area where Calgary is WAY behind other cities in Canada and the US (especially considering our size now).

[Notorious Honey Badger]

Got to the grounds around 815. It's now 912 and I have a ticket and am in the corral. They have a live band entertaining peeps until things open up.

[LouCypher]

I found it fairly enjoyable but as the BMO center became packed it was really difficult to do much of anything. Seems well put together from an attraction standpoint but not really enough room to get around and see it all. Hope they learn for next year and really expand the amount of space, I agree with some above posters in that the stampede grounds could be utilized better. An event like this clearly is only going to draw more and more as years go by.

[Regular_John]

Sadly from the looks of #CalgaryExpo they have set themselves up for another day of the same.

Hey #calgaryexpo, why are people buying tickets getting in before people who already have passes? Greedy much?

‏@greggbeever
#calgaryexpo is quite possibly worse today

I'm just repeating myself at this point, but I'm still not sure why they'd even attempt to sell day passes at this point. The company line at this point should be "no more ticket sales, unless you have an advanced ticket you will not be admitted", then you can sell a few for the extenuating "we traveled with a party of 4 but only have 3 tickets" circumstances as they arise.
Scratch that, looks like they announced just that, no more ticket sales.
...for an hour?

Oh well, looks like it's gonna be a beautiful day outside, gonna make myself a pot of coffee and sit outside for a bit.

[MrMastodonFarm]

What the hell is this, the San Diego comic con?

Can't believe the demand for this in Calgary.

[The Goon]

I am in the super-long line right now. It's moving, but oh, so long. At least there's a furry right behind us to keep us entertained/freak out my son.

[WhiteTiger]

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

What the hell is this, the San Diego comic con?

Can't believe the demand for this in Calgary.

So one would think. We do tend to be rather boring in that respect. However, I have a feeling that a lot of this is driven by the calibre of the guests (and not just the TNG ones). For some reason, folks love to stand in lines to see famous people.

[Notorious Honey Badger]

Showin up early has made all the difference. I have a beauty seat for the panels today.

[GirlySports]

I'm surprised such an event even sells 'day tickets' I thought it would have been all pre-sales. Especially with this guest list.

I don't know anything about Comics so I have no idea.