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DeathJester

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Posts posted by DeathJester

  1. I don't think that schedule is final since they haven't made any announcements and haven't pushed the Guidebook public yet.  Its almost a guarantee that panels will get shuffled around before the start of the con.

    • Thanks 1
  2. 18 hours ago, marii said:

    That would surely upset a lot of people who pay to be at the Marriott specifically for the tunnel entrance.

    I am only posting this here since the amount of people still watching these forums are minuscule... but you do not need to stay at the Marriott to use the tunnel entrance.  Most people are just unaware that the tunnel entrance exists.

  3. From https://www.otakon.com/info/general-policies/ (with bolding on what I feel like are the relevant lines)

    Permitted Prop Weapons

    • Staves, bo sticks, boken, shinai, and wooden swords will be permitted as long as they are handled responsibly and meet all other criteria.
    • Resin cast or solid rubber model guns (such as red/blue training weapons) that are easily identifiable as toys/props, or are clearly marked with a non-removable orange tip.
    • Fake, prop, or made-up weapons (i.e. made of tissue paper, plaster of Paris, cloth) are permitted if they are safe and not dangerous to others around you.
      • Examples of dangerous conditions include, but are not limited to, items that may trip others, items that can snag on people or surroundings, items that obstruct doors and hallways.
    • Prop weapons shall be limited to less than six feet six inches (6'6") in height and less than fifty pounds (50lbs) in weight.
    • Any chain must be less than three feet (3') in length regardless of material. This includes, but is not limited to, chain wallets and non-costume chains.
    • Bows may be carried in the convention space, provided they are NOT strung with authentic bowstring, and any alternative material used (e.g. twine, yarn, any other non-functioning material) is not attached to the bow in a taut (tight) fashion.
      • All bows must comply with all other general policies - no live steel or sharp edges, and not more than 6'6" in height. Prop or toy arrows clearly marked as such are allowed. If our staff feels your bow or materials do not meet all of these criteria, you'll be asked to remove the prop immediately from the convention space.

     

    Sounds like a baton is well within the written guidelines.

  4. 3 hours ago, Attendee7000 said:

    9th & L (the road that splits the convention center in half): Registration and badge pickup. They finally have the registration line completely separated from the entry lines.

    I just hope they do proper line management on the outside streets so that the Entrance #1 and the L Street Entrance lines don't run parallel and inevitably intersect. 

  5. On 3/20/2023 at 10:33 AM, Daniel Perales said:

    I don't think any hotel rooms is worth the price they're charging. Especially if you're only going to be in the room just to sleep and take a shower.

    Unfortunately we are not going to see convention hotel prices drop, likely ever.  Even with all the new hotels the demand is still far outpacing the supply as evidenced by the majority of partner hotels being sold out a full year in advance.  The reality is that if the Otakon hotels wanted to charge "market rate" based on demand we'd likely be looking at $300+ per night.  You certainly could find a cheaper option outside the Otakon block if you're willing to stay 1+ miles away, but then you have to factor in the cost of the taxi and the inconvenience from not being able to walk back to your room for a quick refresher / cosplay swap / etc.  If staying near the con is not a priority, I would highly suggest booking outside the Otakon block to find something that is more in line with your budget.

     

  6. 19 hours ago, WorldisYours said:

    I am not trying to be condescending here when I say this but: if you think it is “easy” to enforce mandatory masking of 40k people throughout an entire weekend, I really don’t even know what to say to that. Yes, you can visually tell if someone is wearing a mask or not. That still requires an awful lot of staff time and manpower to enforce to any real degree, especially again when many of the people who wear masks in a situation where they are “required” do so in a completely ineffectual way (go in to a doctor’s office or a hospital lately and count how many masks you see below the nose or even on the chin- it’s a lot).

    What no one wants to admit when it comes to masking is it’s ultimately a voluntary compliance thing- it is very hard to enforce a masking requirement on people who do not want to do so. That’s why you end up with a situation like Katsucon where masks were “required” but everyone could see that there was no actual enforcement, so a sizable minority simply chose not to wear them. If your answer to that is that Otakon staff should simply enforce their masking rules, besides the practical reasons why that is difficult I do not think it is fair to ask a volunteer (read: unpaid) staff to take on this burden. I have many friends who work in retail and they pretty much universally celebrated the end of mask mandates, because it meant they no longer had to take on the extremely unpleasant business of constantly confronting people about whether or not they masked. And these were by and large not people who were personally against masking themselves! But it’s a tough ask for even low wage workers to play “mask police”, nevermind volunteer convention staff.

    While I certainly see your point RE: fake vaccine cards, I can’t imagine that represents a significant portion of the population. But that aside, I’m really not sure how you would think though that constantly, vigilantly checking an entire attendee population throughout the course of the weekend to make sure they’re wearing a face mask (and again, wearing it properly!) is easier than simply checking a vaccine card as they first try to enter the convention. It just very self-evidently is not.

    Convention staff are already at checkpoints such as dealer's entrances / panel rooms / autograph areas checking for badges, wristbands, and the like.  I won't pretend that its not stressful to enforce because of attendee pushback, but we never complain about having to enforce badges throughout the convention center either.

     

    Besides, by your own example you consider Katsucon a failure in enforcement but even you admit that it was a minority of attendees that disregarded the rules.  As an attendee, if I am concerned about health exposure I would rather see clearly when someone is breaking the rules (we can avoid the people not wearing masks) rather than have them break the rules I can't see (Did they have a valid vax card?  Did they come to the convention with a fever without testing for covid?)

  7. On 3/4/2023 at 3:20 AM, WorldisYours said:

    but I think requiring the vaccine at least would have been prudent given how long we’ll all be around each other. It’s also easier to enforce than masking, since it’s basically just approving or denying people at their point of entry- on the other hand. any masking requirement that isn’t going to be completely toothless requires constant vigilance from staff throughout the entire convention

    Huge disagree on this statement.  The vaccine check is the toothless requirement at this point since you can flash a 15 cent cardstock printout from Staples and get your Covid bracelet for the whole weekend.  Masks on the other hand are very easy to visually inspect at all times.  Besides, after two years of requiring vaccines its not like the Otakon demographics are going to flip overnight and suddenly the repeat attendees are going to be outnumbered by first time anti-vaxxers.

  8. 3 hours ago, Ikano said:

    If you need a quick/rapid/personalized answer about a certain situation/question the better way would be through Help Desk or private messaging on Facebook (when prompted), etc.

    Clearly the Help Desk and Facebook messaging did not work in coordinating the Saturday entrances this year so Otakon needs a better system to rapidly address mass groups of attendees.   It was a really bad look when all the convention socials were blowing up over the long lines and the only official word out of the Otakon Twitter was a scheduled post advertising the Masquerade happening in the evening.  Having volunteers with megaphones trying to shout out up-to-date information can only go so far when everyone else is relaying unofficial info across socials.  Even something as basic as the 2022 attendance figures- I got that info from Aresef tweeting from the closing ceremonies rather than any direct Otakon source (Luckily I know he is a trustworthy source).

    If another entrance wait mishap happens again next year, does staff really want to field thousands of individual Facebook messages to answer the current queue line status updates?  Also, the main Contact Us page: https://www.otakon.com/help/contact-us/ is not at all built to handle rapid at-con questions.  I just worry that if Otakon themselves don't step up on the communication front (eg "We hear you, so therefore we have opened a No Bag line at L street for rapid entrance!"), then you will have a mess of unmoderated digital voices telling people to go to the wrong place, or worst case scenario telling people were the loopholes are ("the entrance at XYZ is unlocked and you can skip the queue there!").

  9. 15 hours ago, Clutch said:

    I have said this before, but I will not be joining any social media sites for Otakon content. They will need to post all updates on Otakon.com for me to see them.

    Yeah, I'm not suggesting that they do away with the actual website since that is the primary source of information regarding the con.  The problem right now is that Otakon.com is only capable of one-way communication.  If attendees have questions or comments they are currently spread out independently among Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Discords, etc which resulted in bad information being spread like wildfire this year (See the conflicting information about the Saturday afternoon entrance queues).  It is a dangerous game of telephone when an attendee posts information they overheard from someone next to them on the line and that 3rd hand info becomes gospel on a Facebook thread.

    I feel like they should pick at least one of these platforms to handle rapid updates and more importantly moderation so that we can reduce confusion in the future. 

  10. I love this place and it always fires up in activity during the summer when the Otakon crowd is rolling in... but other than archive posts is there really a reason to keep this as the official forum platform?  There is only a handful of us actually posting here which means it is no longer any very good at answering questions or disseminating relevant information to the general attendee base. 

     

    Is it time to retire the BBS and make another platform the social media forum of choice?

  11. Add a big win on the GOOD SIGNS column:  New York City announced that it will fully reopen (no restaurant, venue, or business restrictions) on July 1st.  Given that we were the hardest hit last year, this is optimistic news for when we can expect the attendance limits to be dropped.

  12. 12 hours ago, TnAdct1 said:

    While things may be fine for the New York cons, there's still a lot of things that make Otakon questionable IMO. Among them:

    • Will there be enough of the COVID vaccine distributed that the Convention Center doesn't need to be used as a site by that time;
    • Possible new waves of the outbreak (especially if more people will be active in the summer);
    • Travel and guest situations (as a number of states are still high risk, and I'm not sure about Japanese guests attending this year).

    GOOD SIGNS:

    - Blerdcon is going full speed ahead with their event in July so Otakon is no longer the COVID reopening guinea pig.  As long as that event is not forced to cancel then Otakon will be able to operate.
    - The DC vaccine sites are switching to walk-in distribution which is a sign that vaccine supply is greater than demand so I doubt they will be still using the convention center for too much longer.
    - Most states are proceeding with their reopening plan because now that the vaccine supply is growing there is less concern about regional hospital system meltdowns.  Government is not going to force businesses and venues to remain closed for a 2nd year just because a percentage of the population is going to refuse the vaccine options.

     

    BAD SIGNS:

    - I'd be shocked if we get any international guests to commit especially since Japan is trying to clamp down on foreign travel during the Olympics.
    - Even if Otakon is technically allowed to run, any kind of DC attendance mandates will break the logistics and economy of the event.  I believe right now the venue limit for DC is the lesser of 50% capacity or 500 people, so try to figure out how to operate a con even half the size of Otakon if only a few hundred people can be in the building at a time.
     

     

    Fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong and we are in fully reopening mode by the summer, but I am still not going to bet on Otakon being a sure deal just yet.

  13. The Good:

    I was shocked that the Carole and Tuesday panel was live since it means those guys were in a studio at like midnight, so it was great that they took questions from the twitch chat.

    Twitch moderation was also great- the staff did their best to address issues on the stream.

     

    The Bad:

    The usual technical mishaps- audio issues, video drops, etc.

    The panel lengths were too short at 30 minutes.

     

    The Ugly:

    I'm not about to complain about you guys pulling an event together when the entire world is on fire.  You guys turned chicken poop into chicken salad.

    • Like 1
  14. On 7/6/2020 at 9:13 PM, GasparAKAShiggitay said:

     I really hope it's safe to attend cons in person again ASAP in 2021 (hopefully by the end of January for MaGFest? Please?).

    AMEN BROTHER.

    I think visibility was my biggest problem with the initial batch of online conventions.  Being 4th of July weekend I had already made plans to catch up with my family on video chat, cooking way too much meat for a single household, and then marathon gaming with my friends online.  By the time I remembered that these cons were going on I tuned into whichever one was running on youtube and saw they were just showing anime episodes so turned it back off.  So if I as an avid con-goer bounced off of the stream then I doubt they did any traffic with the general youtube / twitch / other streaming audience.

    I still think the online convention concept can work but I think the marketing and the presentation in a post-COVID world still needs to get figured out.  Repeat attendees and word of mouth growth gets stifled when there are no more events to physically go to this year.

    • Like 1
  15. 22 hours ago, Redeye said:

    Logging into my very old account to ask a question. The wording of the twitter announcement last week kind of made it seem like the Marriott was only available for the show dates, 8/6 to 8/8, and I was able to book a room there for Thursday to Sunday. I was hoping to stay through Monday, but Experient is saying that final night, 8/8, is waitlisted- is that because Otakon wasn't able to secure convention-rate rooms for that night, or did I just miss them all? What are the odds that I'll be able to secure that last night?

    You likely missed it.  The room block tends to be smaller for the days before and after the con.  The good news is that in general the waitlisted rooms almost always get confirmed once they clean up glitches and duplicate reservations out of their system.

  16. 13 hours ago, KellyMae said:

    Currently they plan on using it till the end of June. Then, even if they close on the day they say, there is a required 30 day takedown of the setup, which unfortunately makes it impossible for Otakon to function, as it would cut into most of the weekend. 
     

    Thats if they close on time. Open any later and it will start cutting Into other events as well 

    Here in New York, Gov Cuomo had a great counter to a reporter who was asking why we were still occupying convention centers as field hospitals even though the hospitalization rate was going down.  He reminded everyone that the hospital situation stabilized because of the state mandate to shut businesses down.  Until the hospital system can remain stable when businesses and travel are reopened, the state needs the additional COVID treatment capacity available.

    Using that logic I highly doubt that the WEWCC is only going to used as a hospital until the end of June.

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