Grand Rapids, MI Comic Con...

[jaybes]

Anyone going or heard anything about this?

 

I think it's their first year? Website looked decent for a first-time con.

 

Oct 12

 

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

 

 

[catrick339]

Heard about it from a friend who lives local, I'll slide in and check it out for sure.

[jaybes]

Yeah, for $5 I guess it cant be that bad!

 

[jaybes]

Epic fail from the organizers. The line is literally over 1 mile, wraps into surrounding neighborhoods. This should have been at Van Andel...not a glorified moose lodge. Unfortunately there's a lot of comic fans leaving because they are taking 5 minutes to let one person in. Understaffed failure.

[catrick339]

WHEW! Had friends come in from out of town, didn't make the run to Grand Rapids.

WHEW!

[jaybes]

WHEW! Had friends come in from out of town, didn't make the run to Grand Rapids.

WHEW!

 

Consider yourself lucky, it was a disaster.

 

Their excuse was "we didn't anticipate this large of a crowd"...? Really?! When have you ever heard of a large metropolitan city having a bad turnout at a COMIC CON?!

 

There was like one little old lady taking admission fees...one at a time...for over 5000 people......needless to say it wasn't planned very well.

 

They say they let 3500 people in and turned away over 2000 additional people. After a certain time they stopped letting people in because the tempurature in the room was too hot. It was a hot, sticky, smelly mess.

 

I saw a few of my comic acquaintences in line as I was leaving, and it turns out none of them got in...and these are people that spend a LOT of money on SA/GA stuff. I feel bad for the dealers, some of which came from a long ways away, who didn't sell hardly any books. I talked to a couple local dealers, one of which was struggling to make his money back on his $40 table

 

Honestly there was hardly any comics, mostly DVDs and games. Felt like a sweaty garage sale hosted by a middle-school.

 

They say you only get one chance for a first impression, and sadly I think their poor planning will cost them big time, no matter what they plan on doing next year. GR is basically halfway between Chicago and Detroit...why bother with a poorly planned con when you can just go to WW in Chigaco and Fanfare in Detroit?

 

I'll support them next year, but they really, really need input from people with Con experience.

 

 

[catrick339]

Wow. That's a shame.

 

Not too far north of I-94, the MAIN east/west corridor between Detroit and Chicago, and the US 131 corridor runs north and south and picks up Kalamazoo all the way to the Upper Peninsula, the whole west side of the state.

 

And they couldn't figure ahead of time that there was a potentially monster market available for the grabbing?

 

Let's hope they haven't ruined things for future shows.

[jaybes]

Oh i'm sure they will be very successful for future shows, but I think the experience also turned a lot of people off that won't go back. Of course the young cosplayers will go to any Con, but I think people who are serious about comics won't go to another show hosted by them, mainly because there were hardly any books! Just a few vendors, selling mainly TBPs/DVD/Magic Cards, etc.