Okay, maybe it's just me. I'm *hoping* it's just me. But so far, this Worldcon seems awfully poorly set up -- it certainly gave me the *worst*
con experience I've ever had, and it's only the first day.
I got into town w/o incident, parked in the Convention Center ($10 for 12hrs), and went roaming. The functions are rather scattered -- all the anime and a lot
of the films are over at the Sheraton, 6 blocks away. And of course it rained all day. Well, I experimented with the local mass transit -- not bad, not
great.
What I had no way of knowing was that, when I got back to the Center just before 10PM, the ENTIRE PLACE was locked up tight as a drum. Say what? My
*car's* in there. I still have to drive out to my hotel and get checked in -- my *luggage* is in the *car.* And I can't get to it. There's no
signs, no staff presence, nothing. And I didn't see or hear anything during the afternoon to suggest that people should expect the Center to turn into
Fort Knox at... I dunno, 9PM? 8PM?
And I'm not the only one -- there were at least a couple dozen congoers wandering around the outside of the Center (in the rain, many without umbrellas),
after dark, unable to get in. Several of whom I suspect were foreigners with poor-to-nonexistent English skills, judging from some conversations I overheard.
I eventually found a security entrance and talked them into letting me in. Whereupon I found myself the only living soul (as far as I could tell) inside a
huge Convention Center with most of the lights turned off, and all of the elevators and escalators shut down.
My car is parked 5 floors up.
Yep, that mile-high atmosphere really hurts when you're trying to climb five floors of stairs. I actually had a near fainting spell (again, all alone in a
completely abandoned Convention Center).
What cheezes me off about the whole thing is that there was no warning, and no help. If someone had *told* me that the building was locking up at xPM, I would
have made sure to clear my car out before that. And like I said, I wasn't the only one who didn't get the memo -- why wasn't there any staff
presence, or at least some SIGNS, to clue in the people wandering lost around the Center in the dark? I mean, COME ON! You've got people in a strange
city, late at night, locked out of the one building they know much of anything about, their stuff locked *in* the building, and no idea of who to call or what
to do? At least put up some signs. Put some BIG BOLD WARNINGS in the convention schedule and guide. SOMETHING. Right now, as far as I can tell, we were
just expected to *know* this somehow and plan around it. *I* had no idea, and I've been doing cons for business and pleasure for quite a few years now.
Gah. I'm ranting. I'm exhausted, hungry, and my nerves are *shot.* I won't even go into the way the functions are spread all over, or how the
Sheraton's internal layout is downright Escherian....
con experience I've ever had, and it's only the first day.
I got into town w/o incident, parked in the Convention Center ($10 for 12hrs), and went roaming. The functions are rather scattered -- all the anime and a lot
of the films are over at the Sheraton, 6 blocks away. And of course it rained all day. Well, I experimented with the local mass transit -- not bad, not
great.
What I had no way of knowing was that, when I got back to the Center just before 10PM, the ENTIRE PLACE was locked up tight as a drum. Say what? My
*car's* in there. I still have to drive out to my hotel and get checked in -- my *luggage* is in the *car.* And I can't get to it. There's no
signs, no staff presence, nothing. And I didn't see or hear anything during the afternoon to suggest that people should expect the Center to turn into
Fort Knox at... I dunno, 9PM? 8PM?
And I'm not the only one -- there were at least a couple dozen congoers wandering around the outside of the Center (in the rain, many without umbrellas),
after dark, unable to get in. Several of whom I suspect were foreigners with poor-to-nonexistent English skills, judging from some conversations I overheard.
I eventually found a security entrance and talked them into letting me in. Whereupon I found myself the only living soul (as far as I could tell) inside a
huge Convention Center with most of the lights turned off, and all of the elevators and escalators shut down.
My car is parked 5 floors up.
Yep, that mile-high atmosphere really hurts when you're trying to climb five floors of stairs. I actually had a near fainting spell (again, all alone in a
completely abandoned Convention Center).
What cheezes me off about the whole thing is that there was no warning, and no help. If someone had *told* me that the building was locking up at xPM, I would
have made sure to clear my car out before that. And like I said, I wasn't the only one who didn't get the memo -- why wasn't there any staff
presence, or at least some SIGNS, to clue in the people wandering lost around the Center in the dark? I mean, COME ON! You've got people in a strange
city, late at night, locked out of the one building they know much of anything about, their stuff locked *in* the building, and no idea of who to call or what
to do? At least put up some signs. Put some BIG BOLD WARNINGS in the convention schedule and guide. SOMETHING. Right now, as far as I can tell, we were
just expected to *know* this somehow and plan around it. *I* had no idea, and I've been doing cons for business and pleasure for quite a few years now.
Gah. I'm ranting. I'm exhausted, hungry, and my nerves are *shot.* I won't even go into the way the functions are spread all over, or how the
Sheraton's internal layout is downright Escherian....