Welcome to the Wasabiverse
My #DragonCon 2010 Report, Part 3 of 3: The Ugly
Registration.
I mean, COME ON Dragon*Con.
Seriously.
There are dozens of blogs, Livejournal posts, forum discussions and websites all preaching the reasons why Dragon*Con’s registration sucks. Instead of some epic post going on and on forever – I prefer to just illustrate the problem and solution using math.
<math geekiness>
EQUATION #1:
I have never preregistered for Dragon*Con.
Here’s the math: If I did preregister, it would save me about $40. Then I would have the privilege of standing in line for about three hours.
If I show up with $100 in cash, then I don’t wait in line. I walk straight up to the window, give my money, and get my badge… all in less than 10 minutes.
Thus,
170 minutes of my time > $40
EQUATION #2:
Dragon*Con is attended by about 40,000 unique paying attendees each year… give or take. The average ticket price clocks in at about $50. The event (not including revenue from dealers and advertisement sales) grosses about $2,000,000.
Thus,
$2,000,000 = enough money to hire a professional paid staff to run registration instead of volunteers
</math geekiness>
-
@L-berg: Yes, volunteers do rock registration at many a convention. I just think there has to be a point where a show gets SO large that you need the pros.
Skilled volunteers at a 4k event is one thing; at 40k? Then the money exists for people to spend more time than just “season” planning for the folks coming.
-
We were fortunate and waited only 2-3 hours (I didn’t have my watch or phone on me to keep track accurately). I will say the format of “A, B, C, D” is an absolute joke. It was also terrible seeing the line go AROUND THE BLOCK of the Sheraton, for anyone arriving just a few hours after we did.
While they claim they will fix registration for next year, I am not getting my hopes up.
-
In this case, it’s not the fact that they were volunteers, it’s that the whole system is screwed up. I’ll admit, there’s nothing that irritated me more than seeing letter lines with NOBODY in them, while some letters were snaking back into the second maze line. Hopefully the new barcode system will make it a much faster process!
-
Even at 2 million have you figured out how much it cost them to get the stars there for Dragon Con not counting rental of the of the ballrooms and the rooms that Dragon Con has to pay for for the Stars at 140 + guest. Think about it air fare + room + food = a lot of money going out. I am sure they didn’t make as much overhead as you think.
-
@Shawn: Having worked events of all sizes similar to Dragon*Con for close to a decade and my experience doing professionally run event with Universal Studios before that, I am fairly sure that my “guestimate” is pretty close to the mark.
Without spoiling the “magic” behind the guests being there – your money pays for them to appear more than Dragon*Con’s each year.
Rental of the ballrooms is cheap… if they pay anything at all. As long as the convention signs a guarantee to sell a certain percentage of hotel rooms the rental fees are usually waived. I think we both know that selling rooms is a non-issue for Dragon*Con.
Sure – there are expenses, but not nearly as expensive as overhead generated from ticket sales, dealer space, merchandise sales, an other various sources of DC revenue.
-
I’m lucky enough to have an Eternal membership, so registration was not an issue, although I completely sympathize with the lines … completely outrageous. One thing I wanted to point out was security was an utter joke this year. Pretty much at any “night time” activities, I was counting at least one non attendee for every 9 attendee’s with a badge. There is no universal security code for the host hotels either. All of them range from “lock down” to “anyone can come in, but please buy copious amounts of alcohol and don’t forget to molest the scantily clad females.” Ridiculous …. If I wanted to spend 4 nights at a frat party, I would go back to school and get my PhD.
-
The person in charge of registration for D*C has promised that next year it will be better. I think you could take that with a grain of salt. My last experience with D*C registration was for a 1-day ticket on Saturday in 2006 (where I came MAINLY to hear Heather Alexander perform). I got in line at 7:30 AM and had my badge by 11:15 AM.
And, in actuality, the number of attendees is closer to 70000 now, no matter what the for-profit corporation that runs the convention or any of its spokesbeings say otherwise. It’s still too many people in too small a space.
This all being said, I will be applying to be a guest in 2011, but have backup plans to make money out in an environment we all need to experience once in a while: FRESH, CLEAN AIR.
-
- Comment Feed for this Post
I wish it had been three hours. It took me five and a half hours to get my badge this year.