I just wanted to say a big thank-you to the organizers of Hal-Con. When things went awry on Saturday you were the first ones to call yourselves out on it and try to make the best of a shitty situation. You did what you could with the mess you were faced with, immediately issuing refunds and swapping tickets to try to ease the sting of disappointment and frustration. I have to give props to the volunteers that directly delt with the fallout and kept their cools as much as possible – that’s not easy. I know there will be lots of people complaining about Saturday’s debacle, but I just wanted to let you know that there are some understanding people out there, that despite being frustrated and inconvienced, will continue to support future Hal-Con’s. After all, Hal-Con is still relatively new to the scene, so to speak, so there’s bound to be a few hiccups along the way to what will surely be one of Canada’s biggest and best sci-fi/fantasy cons. —An understanding first-timer
This article appears in Nov 7-13, 2013.
The volunteers work hard and are a dedicated, lovely band of brothers(and sisters). Thanks to them Hal-Con has become one of those annual signposts in Halifax life.
Excelsior!
So what went down on Saturday..?
And they didn’t bring malatov cocktails and disrupt suppertime traffic…….
overselling/making people with pre-purchased tickets wait in line just like those that hadn’t bought any yet/etc…. or so I hear.
Glad I didn’t bother though to be fair, I only remembered it was this past weekend because I ran across some ‘villagers’ downtown.
I think it’s starting to surpass their wildest dreams (and occupancy capacity)
which is GOOD!
I am pleasantly surprised at the love to bitch ratio regarding this incident. From my understanding of the situation, that of a mere attendee (who happens to know some people “on the inside”), this is what went down: For the first time ever this year, Hal-Con received funding from the city. They used this money for advertising, so more people were aware of the con. This funding came with the condition that the first floor of the con (the vendors room) be open to public. This increased the amount of people in the convention centre. Perhaps the biggest thing that led to a massive influx of people, though, was that day passes were sold as a general thing, and not for specific days. Because Saturday is when most of the big stuff happens, way more people showed up on Saturday than could fit in the building. The fire marshal was then called and the con was essentially put on lockdown for most of the afternoon. I’ve also head stories of people buying passes at the door being allowed in before people who had already bought passes (which is super not cool), but I have no way of confirming this. The organizers have definitely learned from their mistakes this year and will be implementing some changes next year once they’ve looked at all the options.
As somewhat of a side note, even though I’m still skeptical about the long-term business case for it, I’m really looking forward to the new convention centre.