Comicon Montreal 2011 - Major Disappointment

Love Comicon. VERY disappointed by Montreal organizers! Went today, Saturday September 17th, and arrived at 1PM (they opened at 11AM). Paid for parking and gas (on top of the great Montreal traffic - should of took the metro). Guess what?

THEY WERE SOLD OUT!

Spoke to a few people over there. It seems 3 years ago, they welcomed approximately 800 fans. 2 years ago, 3000 fans. Last year 8500. They were EXPECTING (this is the key word) 20,000 people this year !!!!!!

So here we are in the 21st century. You can e-mail, chat, twit, facebook, and whatever else exists to communicate, and yet, with their pre-sale by internet, they could not warn anyone that we could hit our noses on a closed door when we got there!!!

COME ON. I have to give Comicon Montreal organizers a 0 out of 10 for this year's reunion. Really not sure I will go next year. They could have easily seen this coming and let us know on any venue to beware. Worst, they could have offered devoted fans something, anything, when we were on-site. Some entertainment in the entrance, a stand with some Comicon people and certain mascots, a free poster?, a special link to their internet site where they would give unlucky fans access to a special surprise, ANYTHING!!! I was there with my 2 kids and people in costumes did a better job than anyone from Comicon organization to entertain my kids.

Bad organizers! Bad, bad organizers!

Are you disappointed as well????

Organization sucked big time... No instructions once on site. Got there at 11h30 and finally got the Stan Lee autograph I had paid for little before 16h!

Rest of the time was running around to find where to go, get useless bracelets, and wait in line! As someone said on their Facebook page (on which they had time to have complaints removed all day!!!) it was Inception, a line in a line, in a line toward a line.

There was not even any food available on site, they sold out of sandwiches and chip by 12PM.

Very few panels, and among them, mostly uninteresting.

I wanted to meet Stan Lee, I did, but I'm mostly glad I got tickets for New York Comic Con...

@pb: although I agree that the organisation made a major mistake in refusing people at the doors around 13:00. I spoke to the ticket counter around 1630 because I had some friends and familly that were coming over, and they told me that there was a lost of communication to the servers and the ATM machine for 3 hrs, they could not process anything, no network connection to anywhere. After they fixed the problem you could buy ticket,, I had to recall back friends and familly at 16 35 after the girl told me conenction just returned,, she could connect to server,, ATM was a bit more frisky,, conenction was intermitent. but they managed to process and get their tickets .

its too bad that the 2500 people that were waiting at the door before ticket counter got dismissed. But in overall, as my first comicon I think it still was a succes. they will have to prepare for that kind of missap for next yr.

Besides the lack of organization and the long lines (seems to be common in CCs), how was the convention? I've just moved from San Diego, where I went to SDCC each year. Now I'm half way between Montreal, NYC, and Boston, and I'm trying to see which local comic cons are worth checking out. I was just up in Montreal a few weeks ago (it's closer than NYC or Boston for me now from VT).

20,000 people? That 19,999 more than I prefer to deal with at once.

@Archngel: Hi. Curiously, this is what is posted on the Comicon Montreal Facebook page:

Montreal Comic Con

We apologize for the long delays yesterday. We reserved a hall 3 times bigger than last year to accommodate the larger attendance expected. Unfortunately, it was not enough. Ticket sale was halted for a couple of hours to ensure the security of attendees inside the hall (City of Montreal rule). Ticket office opens at 10:00am today.

So they told you loss of communications, they say they didn't reserve a hall big enough, and they told me that they were simply sold out. Looks like there was MAJOR confusion in the organization.

Plus check this out. I posted a message on the Facebook page saying what I wrote earlier here and they REMOVED my post. Looks like they don't like criticism on top of it all!