Did anybody else attend?

I attended on Friday and Saturday. Friday was fine not many people no real queues I was able to get the couple of autographs, Mitch Pileggi and Nic Lea, with little fuss and both seemed very pleasant and were willing to have a quick chat. Also had time (and space) to have a look around the sellers with little hassle. My only gripe was that it would have been nice to be able to purchase tickets beforehand rather than queue up to 6pm with general admission.

I hadn’t planned to go to the preview but I’m glad I did as Saturday was a bit of a nightmare. I had a standard ticket for the 11am entry and was probably in the first 25 waiting. I got in quickly and went straight to get virtual queuing tickets for Gillian Anderson, Hayden Panettiere and Anthony Head.

The only auto I ended up with was Gillian Anderson. This VQ moved quickly and it seemed to be organised with the more experienced/seasoned staff sorting this one out. I had a ticket in the high 700s and probably saw Gillian at around 1ish. She was very pleasant and a big thanks for Showmasters for arranging her to be at the event.

I still have the VQ tickets for the other two. I left at approx 4:30pm having been at the event for 5½ hours and the Hayden queue was still 1-400 and at 11am it was 1-300, it just didn’t seem to move. This to me suggests that people have picked up tickets but hadn’t gone to join the queue hence the staff were waiting or thinking they were going to want an auto but never actually queued for it. Therefore they VQ never moved much. Why couldn’t it have moved to 200-500 and then 400-600? When I went back and checked the queues were never that great. It wasn’t helped by her for whatever reason not coming back from lunch on time. However she did look stunning!

Similar for the Anthony Head queue this just didn’t seem to move. I started off at 1-300 and then it moved to 1-350, but at no great speed. There were no signs or info up and I felt I was bugging the young lady who was handing out the VQ every time I went to check so I just gave up in the end. I was surprised on how busy it was since he attends a lot of these events.

Also got some comic artists to sign some comic covers. The Spanish trio seemed very nice and happy to be there. Had a slight mishap with Gary Frank autos as he used some odd pen that didn’t dry very quickly and ended up with major smudges.

In the end with the queues and the Gary Frank mishap and the amount of people I just wanted to go home.

Some pluses but some major minuses.

Looking at their forum, there were some major mistakes made:

Letting in some early-bird people (ticket price £12) before Golden Ticket people (ticket price £175)

Moving photoshoot times. This ment that some standard entry people missed their paid shoot because it had been moved to the early bird window. The organisers retort was that people should upgrade their ticket to early bird. Who would have known? Only those in there would have been privvy to this information.

This show attracts top-notch guests but it seems it's gone beyond the knowledge and know-how of the organisers.

There a few issues at the weekend. I managed to miss all the fun with the enterence queue on Saturday as I was gold ticket so knew I could just walk in and did not need to be there early for the VT's.
I got all the signatures that I wanted and quite like the venue but did not stay as long as I had expected to as there was no where to sit at all. Normally I wiould use the talks as a bit of a rest spot but the sound was so bad (event with me sitting on the front row)I gave up after two early ones. I had planned on going back on Sunday to meet Bernard Cribbins but could not face the journey and crowds again just to see him.

Hope fully it will improve a bit for the next one.