ACen Registration Sucks

[Roark]

I'm going to type up a full "report" of our ACen experience, but suffice to say that we're not attending this year. Over six hours in line to give them money is just ridiculous. I mean, it's like they didn't want to take our money or something. You'd think showing up at 7:30 a.m. the day of the con would mean we could get in before 2 p.m the same day, but no. When we left, we had at least another hour to go. The entire morning movement came exclusively from us cramming closer and closer together in line, not from any actual line movement.

And don't even get me started on no at-con registration the night before...

[LakiDash]

Oh me and my friends were pissed. Couldn't reg thursday night, and friday monring we got in line at 5:30 AM and didn't get badges till damn near 10:30. Uh-uh girlfriend I don't think so. But we already thre money for the hotel so it's not like we were gonna leave.

I ended up having a great time still, but that registration lines were the most BS I've ever been through. The rave and Masquerade lines or nearly as bad, they even had us lining up outside in the cold near rainy weather for no goddamn reason. This didn't happen last year, but I don't know the difference in people.

[Roark]

Were you in the express registration line or the register at con line? We were in the latter due to press pass snafus, so we had to wait for all the express reg people.

Edit: Wait, outside for the rave and masquerade lines? wtf? Why stand in line for the rave anyhow? I've always seen people just walk on in 30 minutes after it starts.

[LakiDash]

We were in express. Well, except for one of our group members, who dispite us telling her months and weeks ahead of time to reg, did not, and was in line for about 5 hours compared to our two. (This is excluding time in the line before doors opening)

There were lines to the events last year too, but this year they were just horrible. And me and my friends kept attempting to get into the rave an hour to two and a half hours after it began and there were still lines, long ones too. We got in eventually but it took a half hour after our decision to finally get in a line.

[Baka Neko]

Man, just when I was making a fuss about the 3-4 hour wait I had to put up with in pre-reg last year, this year is a whole league of its own. I was lucky enough to get my badge mailed and my boy's badge was a panel badge, so I was able to dodge the registration completely this year, but man, I've heard some people were in line for 10 hours even. I'm hearing something about 420chan doing some pre-meditated hacking job on the system, but then I also heard something about only one printer working or something like that, so I don't really know what happened. In any event, I feel so bad for everyone that waited in those lines. I don't know how they put up with it. Had I been in line for even 3 hours, I would've said "Screw this" and left. I don't attend enough panels/events hosted by the con to want to waste an entire con day away in line (again). I can still have plenty of fun with my Chicago friends without my badge, thank you very much.

I'll probably be out of the country for ACen next year, but I don't think I'll be missing out on much. ACen really needs to get their act in gear if they want to remain a large convention. There were SO many people missing this year, you could just feel it. The cosplay was not nearly as awesome as usual. It just seemed like all of those people did not bother with ACen this time around, and boy were they wise to do so.

My experience was a blast, but that was because I didn't have to deal with this nasty part of the convention. I helped run a panel that had a successful turn out, and the rest of the time I actually got to relax with my boy and some friends in our cosplays. The only thing I missed out on was the masquerade thanks to my idiot self for leaving my badge in my room when going to get the tickets for the masquerade, but I hear that was a big disappointment, and so far haven't seen anything I really liked from the videos AC Paradise took of the skits. (However, I see that that is were a lot of the good costumes were that I didn't see all weekend!)