Mr1999
Member
Hello NeoGAF, come closer, I have a story to share about my experience at GalaxyCon in Richmond VA, which took place yesterday, Saturday. Let me give you some background on my convention history. Every year, the family and I attend conventions once or twice. Last year, we went to New York Comic Con and FanExpo, both much larger than GalaxyCon in Richmond VA.
New York Comic Con attracts around 200,000 attendees, while GalaxyCon only sees 40,000 to 50,000. Given our experience with big conventions, we felt confident about handling GalaxyCon. However, it turned out to be a complete disaster, and I think we're done with conventions altogether since they are getting more expensive , degraded, and reptitive as time goes by.
Let's start with purchasing of the tickets. I bought them months ago to avoid price hikes and potential selll outs. Usually, I opt to have the badges mailed, but GalaxyCon didn't offer this service, someone said it was because of concerns about scalping. This meant we had to wait in line to pick up our badges, which we have done before numerous times at other conventions and expected to take about 45 minutes or so, if that. Sometimes its like 10 minutes depending on the convention.
Anyways, we wake up early as we had to travel to another state, a drive that took us three hours. Parking was chaotic, but having dealt with worse situations in places like New York, we managed. Upon arriving at the convention center, we were greeted by a massive line that wrapped around the building multiple times, stretching at least over a mile. We entered the line and were uncertain of its end, and we hoped to get inside in time for the panels, or at least the photo op I paid for.
As hours passed, we realized things were not going as planned. The line moved painfully slow, causing us to miss scheduled events like the panels and our photo op. Finally, after 3 hours waiting in line, we entered and we knew right away it was oversold, you can just tell, they oversold tickets to both vendors and attendees and the building wasn't big enough to house all those people. I asked someone waiting in a massive line for Sting how long was he going to wait? He said he was was waiting all day and that if I entered in the line now to anticipate 4 to 5 hours. I did not come to see Sting, but that's crazy amount of time to see anyone.
We were disappointed, but we wanted to salvage the day, so we attempted to shop at the vendors' booths, something which I never do because of how overpriced things are, but even there, the vendors were having connection issues and then I started reading reports on REDDIT how people were being charged because of payments finally going through after stepping outside and that they didn't know who to contact. I came with cash but it was not enough for what I wanted and I had already used some of it for the trip.
I said no big deal, just go to an ATM and get some cash. Upon arriving to the first ATM, there was another massive line, halfway waiting in line the ATM stopped dispensing money. So we had to find another ATM and again, it was not working. I think the building had like 2 or 3 atms from what I saw. NYCC has like 10 ATM's in a row, but still, for the size of the Richmond building, there should have been way more ATM's. I guess the only other working ATM was at the Marriot which would have taken a good amount of time just to get there and you had no proof that it was working either.
Frustrated and feeling like we wasted time and money, I couldn't help but overhear Brent Spiner talking to someone about quality of the event. I did not know exactly what he was saying, but it didn't sound good, something along the lines of "Yea I don't know what's going on" with regards to the event. GalaxyCon turned out to be a colossal disappointment. Sad but oh well, GalaxyCon was the final straw that shattered our enthusiasm for such events.
According to a post I saw on reddit, they are removing negative feedback on the Galaxycon Richmond Fan Page on FB. I hope they give me a refund for the photo op, even though it states there are no refunds for missed photo ops. Actually they should refund the entire thing, including tickets but I'm not expecting that, they better refund the photo op though. I'm just leaving this here. Don't go to GalaxyCon Richmond folks, ESPECIALLY on a Saturday, actually don't go to any con if you are not wanting to see someone you REALLY like and admire, most of the stuff there are junk and overpriced. You can sometimes buy the same thing from the booths store cheaper than what they are selling things for there. Some of the stuff looked like it came from Temu, im sorry but I have to say it.
Oh and the most craziest thing of all, when we went to register for our badges, they didn't even check our ID, they just scanned one of the 3 QR codes I had and gave me all 3 badges without any question, so I don't know the whole scalping thing as it would have made no difference to deter people from reselling their badges, or in this case, a QR badge, they just wasted everyones time.
Here are some pictures of the chaos. It really started getting dangerous inside around 2-3. I have never felt unsafe at a convention but I guess there's a first for everything. I can see now how a bad situation can arise due to over crowding.
This picture you see below, thats just 1 side of the building, it has 4 rows of line that go back and forth on 3 sides of the building, so its this X3, plus the other line you see on the left, that's the start of the line. So 3 sides of the building, 3 to 4 lines each, plus 1 starting line on the other side of the street that all made up 1 line. What a mess lol.
New York Comic Con attracts around 200,000 attendees, while GalaxyCon only sees 40,000 to 50,000. Given our experience with big conventions, we felt confident about handling GalaxyCon. However, it turned out to be a complete disaster, and I think we're done with conventions altogether since they are getting more expensive , degraded, and reptitive as time goes by.
Let's start with purchasing of the tickets. I bought them months ago to avoid price hikes and potential selll outs. Usually, I opt to have the badges mailed, but GalaxyCon didn't offer this service, someone said it was because of concerns about scalping. This meant we had to wait in line to pick up our badges, which we have done before numerous times at other conventions and expected to take about 45 minutes or so, if that. Sometimes its like 10 minutes depending on the convention.
Anyways, we wake up early as we had to travel to another state, a drive that took us three hours. Parking was chaotic, but having dealt with worse situations in places like New York, we managed. Upon arriving at the convention center, we were greeted by a massive line that wrapped around the building multiple times, stretching at least over a mile. We entered the line and were uncertain of its end, and we hoped to get inside in time for the panels, or at least the photo op I paid for.
As hours passed, we realized things were not going as planned. The line moved painfully slow, causing us to miss scheduled events like the panels and our photo op. Finally, after 3 hours waiting in line, we entered and we knew right away it was oversold, you can just tell, they oversold tickets to both vendors and attendees and the building wasn't big enough to house all those people. I asked someone waiting in a massive line for Sting how long was he going to wait? He said he was was waiting all day and that if I entered in the line now to anticipate 4 to 5 hours. I did not come to see Sting, but that's crazy amount of time to see anyone.
We were disappointed, but we wanted to salvage the day, so we attempted to shop at the vendors' booths, something which I never do because of how overpriced things are, but even there, the vendors were having connection issues and then I started reading reports on REDDIT how people were being charged because of payments finally going through after stepping outside and that they didn't know who to contact. I came with cash but it was not enough for what I wanted and I had already used some of it for the trip.
I said no big deal, just go to an ATM and get some cash. Upon arriving to the first ATM, there was another massive line, halfway waiting in line the ATM stopped dispensing money. So we had to find another ATM and again, it was not working. I think the building had like 2 or 3 atms from what I saw. NYCC has like 10 ATM's in a row, but still, for the size of the Richmond building, there should have been way more ATM's. I guess the only other working ATM was at the Marriot which would have taken a good amount of time just to get there and you had no proof that it was working either.
Frustrated and feeling like we wasted time and money, I couldn't help but overhear Brent Spiner talking to someone about quality of the event. I did not know exactly what he was saying, but it didn't sound good, something along the lines of "Yea I don't know what's going on" with regards to the event. GalaxyCon turned out to be a colossal disappointment. Sad but oh well, GalaxyCon was the final straw that shattered our enthusiasm for such events.
According to a post I saw on reddit, they are removing negative feedback on the Galaxycon Richmond Fan Page on FB. I hope they give me a refund for the photo op, even though it states there are no refunds for missed photo ops. Actually they should refund the entire thing, including tickets but I'm not expecting that, they better refund the photo op though. I'm just leaving this here. Don't go to GalaxyCon Richmond folks, ESPECIALLY on a Saturday, actually don't go to any con if you are not wanting to see someone you REALLY like and admire, most of the stuff there are junk and overpriced. You can sometimes buy the same thing from the booths store cheaper than what they are selling things for there. Some of the stuff looked like it came from Temu, im sorry but I have to say it.
Oh and the most craziest thing of all, when we went to register for our badges, they didn't even check our ID, they just scanned one of the 3 QR codes I had and gave me all 3 badges without any question, so I don't know the whole scalping thing as it would have made no difference to deter people from reselling their badges, or in this case, a QR badge, they just wasted everyones time.
Here are some pictures of the chaos. It really started getting dangerous inside around 2-3. I have never felt unsafe at a convention but I guess there's a first for everything. I can see now how a bad situation can arise due to over crowding.
This picture you see below, thats just 1 side of the building, it has 4 rows of line that go back and forth on 3 sides of the building, so its this X3, plus the other line you see on the left, that's the start of the line. So 3 sides of the building, 3 to 4 lines each, plus 1 starting line on the other side of the street that all made up 1 line. What a mess lol.
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