Somehow AX has gotten so crappy that there are already thousands of complaints, many of which were made within a 30 minute time period. But I’ve got some other complaints too.
First, the ticket pricing – as in for the convention itself. The price was raised, and yet we are now finding out that we’re getting LESS of the LACC as we did in previous cheaper years, and less content as well. More importantly though, the tickets for EVENTS, these were raised by a LOT. Now the pricing is based on where you sit, the cheapest being $20 (still higher than the previous 15), and the most expensive being $40. This is bullshit, but fine, whatever. Then you find out – AFTER paying for the tickets and selecting your seat from a very clear seating chart of the Nokia Center (specifically made for concerts, great place) that the tickets are for events being held in a shitty (and flat, so all seats are awful, and non acoustically set up so sound is awful) room in the convention center itself. So you just paid 20-40 bucks for a terrible seat for a terrible performance in a terrible room while being lead to believe it was for the actual concert hall. I’m really amazed this doesn’t fall into false advertising or something, but apparently they never ‘claimed’ it was in the nokia center.
AX staff’s given excuse for the pricing on both of these is “so we can make things cheaper for you and give you a better experience!”. Really? A better and more importantly “cheaper” experience is charging higher prices for less content? Last I checked paying 40 dollars for a ticket in a tiny rectangle room was not “better” than paying 15 for a ticket in a pretty new concert hall made specifically for real concerts of all varieties. Hell, they even used some no-name ticketing agency to sell the tickets, which just made people even more angry because their servers went down in about 1 minute.
Aside that, look at the guest list. It’s terrible. Yuki Kajiura is basically the only worthwhile person there that they’ve announced so far. Everyone else is insignificant or some minor person. Someone who worked partially on directing a random episode of some show? A bunch of people who nobody knows who worked on yet another shitty type moon series? Some random cosplaying white american slut? Are you fucking kidding me? Where are the seiyuu? Where are the big name directors and animators? You can say I’m just unhappy with them personally, but even objectively take a look at previous years and then this one – there are literally only one or two names (again, kajiura being one of them) that are actually a big deal, and hell there are literally zero female seiyuu if I recall and none of the big name male ones either. While previous years there’d be so many you’d have to skip out on ones you’d really want to see for higher priority ones you want to see more. This is fucking pathetic.
Where the hell are people worthwhile? Seriously STEVE FUCKING BLUM and LITERALLY some RANDOM WHORE who cosplays oh and some model for a fucking goth lolita store in Japan? THOSE are the guests of honor? Where the FUCK is miyuki sawashiro? Nabeshin? Kugimiya? Kamiya? SUGITA? ANYONE GOOD?
NOT HERE.
Clearly, all the money they are getting from us is going directly into – yet again like we’ve seen proof of in prior years – buying the staff nicer hats to wear and fancier little vests along with a lot of it probably going into their pockets. CLEARLY the money is NOT going into bettering the con – it’s got less space this year, doesn’t have the nokia center or plaza, has barely any guests of honor and half the ones they do are extremely unimportant (and thus cheaper cost to bring). The only thing ‘good’ i noticed was the stuff they will be airing – all of which is pretty much old and been out even in the US for a long time now.
Already disappointed. AX has always been shitty since they moved out of Anaheim, but then there was one good year at the LACC, but then it’s pretty much declined to the worst it’s ever been this past year and now very likely this year. Yeah – even worse than when it was in Long Beach, at least there was shit to do.
In good news – I probably won’t be there this year anyway, so I’ll get to miss out on the clusterfuck it always ends up being – thanks to the staff not bothering to prepare a single day prior even though they get paid for ‘working’ the entire year.
24 Frames Per Second 
Ugh, AX is terrible. It never used to be this way. I’ve only went once before, in 2003, and I had a great time. Finally, in 2012, I was able to return–with friends! What a lousy idea. Day 0, badge pick up — we got a taste of what it would be like. Lines. Lines lines lines lines lines. Horrible staff members who like to shout out their authority. Yes. We know how to stand in line, now go fucking do your job and stop people from CUTTING in line. I’ve seen groups of people just merge in at the corners or one person holding a spot for a group of 6… This is what makes the line take so long!
Day 1, the ticket printer died so we couldn’t get the AMV tickets until 3 hours after we stood in line. So… we were in line for 3 hours to get tickets. -_- They were letting groups of 25 into the ticket area at a time, Understandable, since it would be crowded in the hallways, but you know how they were distributing the tickets? A guy passing it out…. It would’ve been a lot FASTER if HE just walked down the line itself and passed out tickets. They just don’t know how to organize themselves. The girl (access staff) was very unethical too. A random Miku cosplayer was just lurking near the front of the line until she hopped up to a guy and said, “Hey I know you! Can I step in?” And he allowed it. The girl access staff allowed it too…. Uh no. That was just a blatant cut in the line. There were multiple cuts, the same as Day 0 to get badges, as well.
More lines before the AMV… more cutting, more ignorant staff members chatting at the corners and NOT doing their job. Every 5 minutes, a girl would shout “Line back here!” and then go back to chatting with her 4 friends… wtf. DO YOUR JOB!
After the AMV, that started late as well, all the staffers were telling us basically to gtfo. Most-likely because they wanted their job over with. We exited and I went to the bathroom. My boyfriend waited for me outside. Apparently, during the scant 5 minutes I was in there, 3 staff members came up to him and told him he had to leave. He told each and every one of them that, no, he was waiting for me. So I guess NOW we can’t even use the bathroom without staff harassment. Like he wants to loiter outside the bathroom because it smells oh-so-fresh huh. Fucktards. It happened a second time too. -_- They shouted that we can’t be in an area and had to leave when it was OBVIOUS that we were heading into the restroom. There’s nothing in that area EXCEPT the restroom and we were like… seriously 4 feet away from the restroom entrance, facing toward it in an obvious “I’m going in there” manner. They allowed us in, but we had to gain their permission to use the restroom. Wow, talk about losing basic human rights. Thank you AX staff for promoting restricting access to a basic human need.
That’s not the end of it either. What just blew my mind is that after we got food, we saw two people sitting on the stairs against the wall. A guy and a girl. I think they were eating or looking at their stuff, but it’s obvious they were there for awhile. We decided we should sit on the stairs against the wall too, out of people’s way. The staff at the top of the stairs told us we couldn’t sit there because he needed to keep the stairs clear. Uh what? There’s a guy and girl right there in front of his eyes and he tells US we had to leave. I glance back to the two people on the stairs, who are obviously ignoring the situation because they KNOW they’re doing something wrong, are getting away with it and won’t voice out about it, and back to the staff member. I do this 3 times, waiting for him to tell the two that they need to leave. He doesn’t. We leave. On the opposite side, there are 4 people sitting on the stairs. Wow, that’s a pure slap of discrimination if I’ve ever seen it.
Thank you, AX staff for making me feel like shit.
There have been a few that have been very informative and helpful, but for the most part, I’d say about 85% of staff do fucking shit and are just there for the benefits. Either abusing their authority or not doing anything. The rest are truly dedicated to making the expo a good experience… but that 15% can’t make up for the fuck ups the other 85% are creating.
So it’s goodbye to AX until they start screening their staff for IQs higher than 3 please.
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I actually had the opposite experience with the staff this year, they seemed as good as they were back in Anaheim for the most part which is amazing given how shitty they’ve been ever since it moved – not any less incompetent and stupid – but in terms of their politeness and how they treated me and who I was there with it was much better. Maybe you just kept running into the shitty ones – keep in mind they DID hire a shit ton more staffers this year, which was pretty apparent by the fact there were like 30 of them every corner. I’m almost done writing up a “review” of sorts of the con this year and I touch on that if you’re interested in reading it, but basically yeah, they were still mostly as STUPID as ever, but it seemed like almost all of them were much better about the whole power-tripping abuse thing that was extremely rampant the past couple of years. They would literally insult and threaten to kick you out over anything just to be dicks, but this year most of them were rather polite, and I actually noticed more (though, not nearly all, and probably mostly just the lower/new-hire guys as the good/nice/smart ones were new faces to me) acting intelligently instead of “I was told x or y so IT MUST BE FOLLOWED TO THE LETTER” and choosing the better course of action instead.
However I did see some familiar dipshits and a LOT of stupid shit going on, but with so many staffers around this year it wouldn’t be surprising if we just didn’t even run into the same ones at all. And as a small side note – you MIGHT be mistaking LACC staff with the AX staff as well in some of those cases. And also, yes, the lines were awful – and some made no sense (such as, which I’ll also get into in the next blog entry, the line for the Kajiura concert…which had tickets with specific seat numbers so it didn’t matter who was in first at all), but that’s kind of just how AX has always been since around 2005 and up. I’ve been going since 2001 or 2002, and while it was better back then in terms of lines at least…it was still pretty bad, so it’s kind of expected at this point.
Also, I have to say I’m a bit confused on some things you mentioned – such as the ‘ticket printer’. As far as I was aware you had to print your own main event tickets this year and were supposed to way before the convention even began. I know entirely for sure that was the case for the Kajiura concert, and heard it was the same for the AMVs. The broken issue sounds more like a problem where you should have printed it out prior anyway – not to defend them but that wasn’t an issue I’ve seen come up and nobody I know who went even knew of the existence of one as they just printed the tickets at home the same night they bought them when they first went on sale or at least a few days before the con.
Oh and another small note – this one to make you hate them more – the majority of those in the red vests are actually year-round employees. Yeah, a real job that only matters a few days of the year and they STILL don’t do it right.
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I think we were just insanely unlucky for running into the incompetent staff members. Yeah, they WERE AX staff–they had the vests that stated they were Access Staff. I didn’t see what kind of staff member was on top of the stairs, but I’m pretty sure he was AX Staff too. We also saw that they had the AX Staff badges because I suggested the same thing (that they might be LACC staff) to my boyfriend but he pointed out all the AX staff indications, so that’s how we know it was AX and not LACC staff. :(
I AM glad you were able to enjoy the staff better this year at least. But for us, it was just horrible. The worst treatment I’ve ever experienced at a convention. >__<…. Ugh… nice "fair chance" AX Staff….
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Bleh, my post got cut. I think it’s the face. Anyway here it is again:
I think we were just insanely unlucky for running into the incompetent staff members. Yeah, they WERE AX staff–they had the vests that stated they were Access Staff. I didn’t see what kind of staff member was on top of the stairs, but I’m pretty sure he was AX Staff too. We also saw that they had the AX Staff badges because I suggested the same thing (that they might be LACC staff) to my boyfriend but he pointed out all the AX staff indications, so that’s how we know it was AX and not LACC staff. :(
I AM glad you were able to enjoy the staff better this year at least. But for us, it was just horrible. The worst treatment I’ve ever experienced at a convention. I just can’t believe that they were going to turn us away for going to the restroom too. My boyfriend was pretty much almost in the men’s bathroom doorway and I was heading toward the women’s doorway… it was a CLEAR indication what we intended to do and it’s rather embarrassing being put on the spot like that–having to explain that you’re going to the restroom (which is just plain obvious).
Yes, the concert lines made NO sense. We were discussing the same thing for the Yuki Kajiura concert too. Why did we have to stand in a line when they could’ve opened the doors and allowed people in earlier than the “Seating” time. It would’ve been a lot less hectic, more organized and the concert probably wouldn’t have started as late as it did.
The AMV tickets couldn’t be printed out online. You needed to stand in line at the convention, on Friday at 9:00am, to get those. Then we heard that the ticket machine (someone said the “ticket printer”) just… broke. They were those nice tickets that actually look like concert tickets (long, strips with a gloss to them), so I’m assuming the “ticket printer” is the ticket machine distributor… thing. We TRIED to find a way to purchase them online, but there was a part on their site, that I’m trying to find now, where it stated that AMV tickets could ONLY be purchased at the ticketing booth in West Hall on Friday at 9:00am. Here we go:
http://anime-expo.ticketleap.com/amv/dates/Jun-29-2012_at_0900PM
Read the Description part. “ATTENTION: To give everyone (including at-con registered attendees) a fair chance at securing an AMV ticket, tickets will only be available onsite on Friday, June 29th, for all attendees at the Main Events Ticketing Booth. Thank you and see you at the Convention!”
So… in other words, those whom you were talking about who didn’t complain, got to attend and print these AMV tickets out online regardless of the description didn’t have to wait in that ridiculous line while those who actually read it were stuck for 3 hours foregoing a good chunk of the panels and exhibition halls? … Ugh… nice “fair chance” AX Staff….
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For some reason it won’t let me directly reply to your comments, Chorus, so maybe you’ll see this (Maybe it only lets it get to 3 tiers before only letting you reply to the first one or something, I dunno, well whatever). Anyway, I wouldn’t take the stuff about people doing just fine ‘printing them out on their own when they got them’ too seriously, it was people online, so they could have been bullshitting, guessing what they were ‘planning’ on doing, or whatever else. It’s just hearsay and could have been misinterpreted, me misremembering, or just plain made up. Chances are they at least did THAT much properly and it was misinformation on my end.
As for the other stuff, AX staff is pretty well known for being some really shitty retards, it’s especially bad probably in your case where you aren’t used to it after having not been there for so many years. I’m comparing their “good” work this year to their awful shit of the past years, and I have gone every year since 2002 or so, so there’s lots of that “awful shit”. So while some of it is likely just me being lucky this time around with the newer staff being more competent and less of assholes, I think some of it might also just be me being used to their bullshit by now and the noted-in-my-wrap-up-post better mood I was in.
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I live in Florida where we get the same four shitty English voice actors over and over again from the beginning of time until the end. It’s actually amazing what they get away with in terms of presentation. Total shit pit filled with weeaboze and no guests. Dealers’ Rooms filled with bootleg merchandise. This is why I don’t go to these fucking things. That, and I’m not an edgy teen looking for random stinky con sex. Sorry to hear that AX is starting to suck so bad. I’ve always perceived it as an example of a “good” convention. Well, for what it’s worth, I guarantee it’s better than what we’ve got over here.
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Usually we get a lot of great guests, one year there was so much to do that the worst part of the con was having to decide which panels or events or whatever to miss out on in place of going to this other one or whatever instead. And the dealers room has usually been damn huge and pretty awesome…but I heard from some of the dealers me and bro were friends with saying they raised the cost to them as well as started adding on random bullshit charges, so a lot aren’t returning. But we’ll see if they actually do that or if they are all here again this year. Usually though the dealers hall is pretty fucking good.
This year though, yeah, not sure at all how it’ll be. I probably won’t make it anyway but if I do I’m hoping it doesn’t end up as bad as it sounds. Though, the whole lack of any worthwhile guests is a problem either way.
If you ask me, the biggest problem is that they continually raise prices to absurd levels (it’s like 75 bucks for a 4 day pass now and 30 bucks for awful seats in a room they conned you into thinking was the nokia center but is just a flat room in the convention center instead – which is more than we paid FOR the nokia center) and don’t give us shit.
The first year this new guy was put in charge we had a shit ton to do, it was great actually if I recall aside the higher prices. And then the next year…it started declining. Still alright, but not all that great, not nearly as much to do or as great guests or concerts. And then it’s just kept falling, and with the ‘guest’ list this year – ti feels like this is one of those cons with like 1,500 attendees, not 80,000. This list better get updated in some big surprise before the con because it’s just pathetic. It’s short AND nobody really is on it at all. The “new guy” i mentioned who took over the convention originally worked with Universal (you know, the movie studio) so I think it’s his retarded hollywood logic of charge more, give less, that’s becoming an issue – and the fact he knows nothing about and doesn’t care at all about anime or it’s fans.
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see if you can get a press/media ticket because of your blog. usually they knock the price off a bit and give you a ton of goodies
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Maybe next year, it would actually work too – even E3 lets you in if you just run a blog.
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