The horror that is Comic-Con International: San Diego, that is.
For those attending--for those who work on it, the horror has probably been growing for months.
There's probably no good way to find hotel rooms for 100,000 people. But there's a bad way--maybe many bad ways. The bad way that CCI does it is that no one can book rooms for the dozen or so official con hotels--all the biggest hotels in San Diego's downtown area--until this morning at 10 am, California time.
Which means that, say, 35,000 or 40,000 people (some share rooms, others live in town, as we used to) start calling and going to the website at that time. Of those, how many can possibly get through? How many spend almost an hour redialing and redialing and redialing while in the other room someone is online tryng to connect? How many are still trying now, almost an hour later? It could have been worse, in that we did finally get a room. It could also have been much better.
Since there are more hotel room seekers than there are rooms available--or else what's the big deal?--why couldn't they just use a kind of lottery system. All year long, people could send in their request to be at this hotel or that one. On the chosen day, the names could be randomly drawn (no more random, really, than whose phone call with connect and whose won't), and while there were rooms remaining, they would be assigned. Those who didn't get in would go onto a waiting list, so that when the invariable cancellations happened, they would get rooms too. People could list a second choice hotel, just in case. None of the madness, none of the chaos.
I don't have any particular insight into the minds of the people who run the con (although I've known some of them for decades), but madness and chaos seems to be the desired result of many of their policies.
Their security guards don't communicate effectively, so different policies are enforced at different doors and different times. Many of them are surly, some downright antagonistic from the get-go--ever a problem with security guards, sadly, since the type of person drawn to that career is so often people who wish they were cops but couldn't meet the physical, mental, or emotional qualifications. And also unfortunately, the convention's highest-ups refuse to even respond to complaints about this behavior. The attitude seems to be "we've done it this long, so we know how to do it." Of course, they don't actually have to deal with most of the issues we regular joes have to, because they have the special badges and the walkie talkies and the motorized carts. Maybe it would be a good thing for all con committee members to have to wear regular attendee badges (and stand in line to get them) and go through the process that fans and pros have to go through).
The number of attendees keeps on growing, even though the facility is as big as it can get. If there have been discussions about capping the number, I haven't heard about them. Instead, the aisles get so clogged that they are sometimes absolutely impassable, sometimes just nearly so. A fire or other emergency in the hall during the con would undoubtedly result in hundreds of deaths, if not thousands.
People line up for hours before celebrity panels. Again, some kind of lottery or ticket system (the Bookeller's Expo has adopted one, with what seem to be positive results) would not only free these people from sitting on the floor for hours, but would make those floors safer by keeping them clear.
People line up outside, waiting to get in, for hours as well. In July. In San Diego. Last year they apparently had to close the lines for awhile because people were fainting, risking heatstroke, or that's what I heard.
Even if you're a professional in the field, and pre-registered, you have to stand in line for what can be hours to get your badgeholder, without which you can't get in the hall. Why not mail the badgeholder out with the badge? Why not set up a system where badges are scanned when you enter the hall, so they know who's there and who's not, rather than making you line up to identify yourself? Other conventions do it this way.
As far as I can tell, the con thrives on chaos and madness. They want it to look "exciting." Having attended since 1983, I can safely say that it's far beyond exciting, and far beyond fun. It's a professional necessity, it's great for networking and for seeing friends (but hard to have an actual conversation because of the noise and the constant ebb and flow of the crowd). But I go because I have to, not because I want to. And I look forward to it almost not at all. It's dread, not pleasant anticipation, like having an annual appointment with a dentist who hasn't actually been to medical school and has a toolkit of hammers and pliers.
A few relatively easy steps--some lottery systems, capping attendance at a more comfortable 80,000 or so, cutting it back down to 4 days instead of the too-long 4+--might make it fun again. They might also reduce the money earned by the non-profit that runs it, and the salaries paid, including those to some friends of mine. But it it was genuinely fun again, maybe people would be willing to pay more to go. Maybe a little exclusivity would be better than the mob scene they have now.
Or maybe--crazy, I know, but I'd love to see it happen--it could be split into several different, smaller conventions, or held in multiple facilities like some other big conventions are. Movies and TV shows in one building, comics in another, action figures elsewhere, gaming someplace else.
They still have "comic" in the name, but they're increasingly hard to find at the show. A San Diego Comic-Con that was focused on comics could be a beautiful thing.
And you'd probably be able to get a hotel room for it.
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