So if you read the first Convention Story you found out that I obtained a flyer for an event called Fandomfest. Being new to the convention scene I had no understanding of how conventions were ran and this one taught me a valuable lesson on what happens when one is ran poorly.

I went with a group of three about three hours away from home to attend Fandomfest.  They quickly got their press passes, they work for a college newspaper, and I went to line up for my badge.  I waited about two hours and the fire marshall comes in and insists that no more tickets can be sold because the building has hit maximum capacity.  Now that puts me in a pickle since my ride is inside the convention so all I could do was wait patiently.  Another hour passes and the fire marshall gives the convention permission to sell a few more badges.  I managed to get mine only to be stopped five seconds afterwards and told I couldn’t enter the room because, you guessed it, max capacity. So now I bought my badge and still can’t get in.

Luckily I was just chatting with someone I thought was in line but turned out to be a volunteer for the convention.  He was nice enough to open a side door so I can get in, so yes I snuck into a convention that I PAID to be at. I wasn’t too happy about that. After that things ran for the most part smoothly.  I got to meet almost everyone I wanted to meet but it wasn’t till the panel with John Barrowman that I found out just how poorly ran the event was.

At the start of the Barrowman Q&A, which started 10 minutes late, he first tells the audience that he is sorry that his photo op ran six hours behind schedule. He also expressed his frustrations on how some people had to leave prior to the photo op because they could not be there at the newly schedule time and the convention was going to keep all the money.  He was outraged and stated people need to demand their money back and not tolerate that.  Nothing out of the ordinary happened till about five to 10 minutes before his panel was supposed to end. The convention staff did something that apparently was a motion to tell John to get off the stage.  To which he playfully tells the audience. “I think they want me to leave” he then turns back to the staff and said “you ****** up the schedule you’re just going to have to wait”

The convention has not held an event since 2017 where they messed up so royally that it completely destroyed what reputation they had left.  To make a long story short instead of having the event at their usual venue at the Louisville Convention Center they announced a week before the convention they were at an old Macy’s.  This caused a whole lot of trouble because the fire marshall stated this was not cleared with them and their event holds more people than what the building can handle.  Also half of the guests cancelled on the spot, some revealed they never even finalized agreements to begin with but still had them listed as guests.

So overall you do need to be careful which conventions to go to because some are pretty bad.  Also this establishes one of my rules of pre-ordering tickets before every convention.  Because I’m not dealing with that again.