Overall I had a positive experience, but there were a few things that got me.
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- The Artist Alley and Vendors being in the parking garage meant that they did have more room, which was great, considering last year and how cramped and crowded both were over in the Red Lion. It did run into the issue that I think was brought up last year, in which that it did get hot and muggy despite the air conditioning and was very dimly lit, especially in the artist alley. This was particularly noticeable in the Artist Alley part, where there seemed to be only two or so AC units spread about its entire section and maybe one fan? Up until about halfway through the vendors section it seemed to stay cool, but it was noticeable that the Artist Alley part was much hotter and muggier. Major kudos to those artists that stuck through that.
- The placement of the Artist Alley right behind the Vendors also seemed to be, oddly choiced. As noted by someone above, one had to go through the Vendors section in order to get to Artist Alley. The map for the Hilton Parking Garage shows the Vendors area to be comprised of the western part of the garage while the Artists were to be on the eastern. This seems like it would’ve been more ideal (and would more evenly divide the AC) rather than having the artists tucked or rather, shoved into the back.
I found the vendor's kind of lackluster this year. They were selling a lot of the same thing, one of my friends said she found no DVDs for sale (which I always see as a hard thing to sell at cons anyway), but even the figures and shadow boxes I felt there was a limited selection. There was a lot of Madoka and Fate/Stay Night.
I had a couple friends which mentioned the same thing. It seemed like selection on all accounts for both vendors and artists were down. Last year, my wallet kept trying to jump out of my pocket in order to buy things, this year not so much. What was the total number of vendors and artists compared to last year? It just seemed like there was not that much variety at all.
So, I actually had issues in the dealers hall too. The guy sold me a mystery bag told me everything in it was anime and it wasn't. There was a Raiders T-shirt of all things.
I’m pretty sure you were not the only person that had that issue, as a friend of one of my friends had the exact same issue with the exact same bloody t-shirt, a mystery bag with a Raiders T-shirt that they didn’t want. Recalling the thread from last year, I’m pretty sure a similar thing happened with mystery bags with non anime things being shoved in those bags and posed as an anime mystery bag. Really this reflects poorly on the con as a whole and ought to be dealt by the staff in some way.
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-This was my first year attempting to volunteer, and to be perfectly honest I’m extremely hesitant to do it again as I found the experience horrible despite sticking with it for a few hours. It might have been a fluke and perhaps I had volunteered at the wrong time. At the volunteer desk they noted they did not need any further volunteers at the parking garage so they told me to head upstairs to operations for assignment. Went to operations, where they decided to put me in the parking garage to help with the lines. Head back down into the parking garage, where the people there did not know what to do with me and suggested that I go back up to operations.
In regards to the staff I think that overall they did an outstanding job and I wish to thank them for their dedication in making this convention possible. I do think that there was an issue in communications between different staff though. Throughout my entire experience volunteering I found myself being bounced around by staff that did not know what to do with me and repeatedly told to either go to operations by yojimbos and other staff or as I was told by operations to attempt to assist or give breaks to yojimbos (who when I could find some that were not already on a break of some sort, would then tell me they were okay and to go back to operations for further placement). Really felt like I was stuck in some odd frustrating loop.
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- Panels, the variety of panels on Saturday seemed to be lackluster; especially considering many of the panels I was interested in going to seemed to be crammed onto Sunday. Monday only had a single panel I was interested in. There was also some, technical issues with a few of the panels I went to, one panel that I went to the person hosting it was running about five minutes late, only to find that the room that the panel was supposed to be hosted in was locked, which caused more delays while everyone waited several minutes for the room to be unlocked. A different panel that was running later in the evening did not have the microphone that the host had requested for until about a quarter to halfway through the panel. There was also a couple panels that I recalled from last year would be super popular, and yet they were crammed into rooms that seemed smaller than the ones they were provided with last year, so I doubted I’d be able to get in and did not even bother trying.
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- Gaming in the Red Lion. I think someone else noted it. But with that many computers and other electronic devices in one enclosed room, it got hot. Especially in the back corner with the computers up against the wall, that had to be several degrees hotter than the rest of the room.