Earth to Organizers: Montreal Fandom Actually Exists
By Angela Roberts
Sept. 19, 2011
I wasted my time on Sunday. That’s the simplest way of describing my experience of going (or really, not going) to Montreal Comic-con this weekend. That’s because I never made it in. Like a lot of people, I promptly left when I was told that upon purchasing a ticket, I would have to stand in line for three hours to enter the show floor. Frankly, I have better things to do with my time, and any reported wait time like that is unacceptable at a con. Certainly at a still pretty small con like Montreal Comic-con, still holed up in rickety Place Bonaventure. It smacks of unprofessionalism. It’s amateurish. It’s bull, is what it is. I took the Montreal Comic-con to task last year for its amateurishness, and they haven’t changed my mind. Instead, they did a worse job than last year. Last year, you could at least get in. This year, the organizers seemed to have taken fans’ comments to heart, bringing in top notch guests and improving advertising. And then what do they do? They don’t properly expand their venue rental to accommodate the extra traffic, and they create a tiered ticketing system designed to keep out the bread-and-butter ticket holders. Yes, I’m serious. But more worrisome is how this type of thing is indicative of the general attitude about Montreal fandom.
I’ve been going to conventions for some years now. One of my first was when the Torontonian organizers of Fan Expo (then still called, I think, Canadian National Comic Book Expo) decided to try a con in Montreal. They never came back. And it was because they deemed it not successful enough to continue. It was true. It had been poorly advertised, and wasn’t fantastically busy. They had a little Q&A about how the con could be improved, and I still remember how they voiced several of the concerns that seem to plague the public perception of Montreal fandom even today. They had trouble attracting vendors because there was a perception that Montrealers spent less money at conventions. There was also this idea that the language barrier meant that there was a smaller fan base in Montreal for Anglo entertainment. And it’s true, this was before Otakuthon or Worldcon. Montreal fandom wasn’t completely aware of the possibilities. Fans were probably still going to Toronto or the States rather than putting together their own events. So that dream died.
So, it was kind of cool when cons started popping up to prove those Torontonians wrong. They were small, but they were growing. Otakuthon is one of the hottest anime cons in Canada. The Montreal Comic-con was popular enough last year that they actually took a stab at improving programming to attract more people. They advertised widely, in the metro and all over the place. They had a full page treatment in The Gazette, the city’s major stuffy English-language newspaper. Major guests were lined up, including Stan Lee, Adam West, Burt Ward, James Marsters, etc. It really looked cool.
And then they screwed it up. They got greedy. They didn’t take any of that sponsorship money and rent a larger space, or move to the Palais des Congres like I said they ought to last year; a place with more modern facilities and more professional staff. They invented a complicated tiered ticket system that pushed out the regular ticket holder in a greedy attempt to get them to pay more next year. They made up probably fake wait times to lighten the attendance without having to refund anyone. Consequently, they lost a good deal more attendance than they should. Losing any is pretty bad; losing them on purpose is unacceptable. In fact, most of the stuff that went on was unacceptable.
Sources within the convention (friends who actually stood in line and got in eventually) were abuzz with tales of the disorganization rampant at the con. One friend found herself stuck in the line with one-day pass holders despite having paid for a weekend pass. Another waited a total of 1 hour 15 minutes to get in (less, you’ll notice, than the 3 hours the ticket sellers had been told to advise people of). This kind of wait would be unacceptable at Fan Expo in Toronto, especially on the last day, when con staff are supposed to have gotten their stuff together. The convention also sold out by noon on Saturday. This sort of treatment of fans says one thing: the venue isn’t large enough. They made all these improvements and then didn’t think to prepare to accommodate the increased attendance. It’s like they didn’t really think that many people would come.
Last year, Fan Expo experienced similar problems with space and traffic problems. They responded with a public apology and an expansion of both venue and schedule, adding an extra day. I didn’t get to go this year to see if the changes made a difference, but they still showed an intelligent effort at addressing the fans’ concerns. Montreal Comic-con, I think, has a very full inbox this weekend, and well it should. Yes, you can chalk some of it up to growing pains, but it’s not like these people have never been to a con before. Some of it is just plain unprofessional.
If you were a fan and you didn’t get in or you had to wait an exorbitant amount of time to get in, write a complaint. If you were a vendor or exhibitor, please write a complaint. I guarantee you didn’t get half the traffic you should have. This is the only way they’ll know why they’re wrong, and the only way you’ll get the problems fixed.