LTX 2023 - Holy terrible organization Batman!

[TorQueMoD]

I was so excited to go to LTX for the first time this year. I bought the regular ticket that said doors open at 10 am, so I showed up at 11:30 to avoid lines... or so I thought. There's like 500 people in line and it's not getting any shorter.

 

I was told by the guy at the front door that all of these people have to register to get their badges. I bought my ticket back in February, why the heck do I have to register for a badge? You're telling me the King of Tech can't figure out a way to auto-register people for a badge and send them a link to print it out at home? Or how about stamps like they do at a nightclub? When I went to fan expo we were instantly let in the front door and it took 5 minutes to get a badge.

So sad! Even worse is we can't get refunds even if we don't attend

 

 

[saintlouisbagels]

Eh, not surprising.
The only convention I go to is PAX East and the lines can be like this too.

[Timme]

Holy cow, that is some Fyre levels of failure. But I do wonder what Linus' role was in all this since he isn't exactly running things right now.

[TorQueMoD]

I actually went to PAX West when they were announcing the PS4 and XBone and it wasn't bad at all. I'm gonna try again around 2:00pm

[bhaskett]

And that image just shows one side of the building. I arrived at 9:15 and was in the exhibit hall at 10:40... barely getting my Framwork t-shirt. Then there was the line for the bag check, the line for the registration line which many people missed as there was no direction, and the registration line.

 

And when I arrived, people had to wait in this line whether or not they already had their badge.

[_Canuck_]

How long did it take you to get in?

[TorQueMoD]

When I finally went back at 2:00pm I was able to walk straight in, but I literally saw 5 things the lines were so long. Such a let down for my first LTX.
Also, as much as it pains me to say it because I love RC cars, don't bother with the VR RC cars unless you can get in immediately. You get 3 minutes of driving, and after an hour 20 minute wait it really wasn't worth it. There's no reverse, the accelerator is totally dead until right near the floor where it gets crazy sensitive so you're jerking around all the time, and constantly driving off the track, and there's a complete disconnect from what you're doing with no feedback at all so it's really confusing. If you wait less than 15 minutes it might be worth it, but even though the line is really short it takes soooooo long to get to the end.

[rmf757]

Honestly, I was ready to forgive the really long lines preventing us from doing much but kicking out half the audience that was standing/sitting alongside the walls adjacent the the stage in the middle of the WAN Show was such a massive letdown. Words cannot express my disappointment. 

[CerealExperimentsLain]

8 hours ago, TorQueMoD said:

You're telling me the King of Tech can't figure out a way to auto-register people for a badge and send them a link to print it out at home?

1) Open PDF in Photoshop and make necessary edits.

2) Print a few hundred 'Free' LTX badges generated by one person, because badge self printing is allowed.

Bonus Round) Print Whale LAN badges and use it to steal an unattended PC from the Whale LAN area.

 

Def a big part of the badges is their large, physical nature, especially the material they're made from, which make it easier for any staff to rapidly glance and tell weather a person should be in the place they are not.  Obviously this isn't bullet proof against counterfeiting, if someone was  determined they could have gotten a badge on Friday and reproduced copies by Saturday.  However in the scenario of 'print your own badge', and people are just expected to print their own on standard 8.5x11 printer paper, and you'd have PDFs shared online and many counterfeits produced days or even weeks in advance.

[CerealExperimentsLain]

8 hours ago, Timme said:

Holy cow, that is some Fyre levels of failure.

No, it absolutely was not.  The Con suffers from some long lines and some bottlenecks.  Like queues overflowing into more common space and the repeated bag checks on reentry we're a bottleneck we're a problem, but no, this is not Fyre Festival at all.  The queue issues would be best addressed as they did clock certain pathways pretty badly, it as 'fine'. 'Annoying' but 'fine'.

[NovaNightmare]

1 hour ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

1) Open PDF in Photoshop and make necessary edits.

2) Print a few hundred 'Free' LTX badges generated by one person, because badge self printing is allowed.

Bonus Round) Print Whale LAN badges and use it to steal an unattended PC from the Whale LAN area.

 

Def a big part of the badges is their large, physical nature, especially the material they're made from, which make it easier for any staff to rapidly glance and tell weather a person should be in the place they are not.  Obviously this isn't bullet proof against counterfeiting, if someone was  determined they could have gotten a badge on Friday and reproduced copies by Saturday.  However in the scenario of 'print your own badge', and people are just expected to print their own on standard 8.5x11 printer paper, and you'd have PDFs shared online and many counterfeits produced days or even weeks in advance.

 

This is ridiculous. You can print plane tickets and sporting event tickets at home. It certainly isn't that simple to just edit them and make more. 

 

It would be unique to the person who purchased the ticket.

[CerealExperimentsLain]

9 minutes ago, NovaNightmare said:

This is ridiculous. You can print plane tickets at home.

And have you ever seen the multiple layers of security involved in going to the freakin' airport?  If you try to enter the security area with an invalid or 'already used' boarding pass, you will literally be arrested.  You have to pull your electronics and carry on out and run them through an X-ray machine while you walk through a metal detector.  You may even be selected for 'additional screening' and find yourself sniffed out for explosives and other hydrocarbon residues.

 

Oh, did you leave the security area?  Well guess who's going through X-Ray and metal detector queue again.

 

LTX, shockingly, does not have this level of security.

[SentryOmega]

11 hours ago, rmf757 said:

Honestly, I was ready to forgive the really long lines preventing us from doing much but kicking out half the audience that was standing/sitting alongside the walls adjacent the the stage in the middle of the WAN Show was such a massive letdown. Words cannot express my disappointment. 

While still disappointing to get kicked out, I feel like this is more on the convention center management, since most convention centers I’ve attended to seem to have ‘strange’ rules - most of which would probably boil down to safety.

 

It should have been called out in advance by Linus/Luke/the team that there wouldn’t be any standing after 6pm but I didn’t catch it if it was. My guess is that they didn’t know it would happen.
 

Although this still tells us we’d all love more main stage space for next year, maybe even a separate/flex space so the main area doesn’t feel small for other panels when the crowd size isn’t WAN levels.

 

I had a great time even with the crowd, it’s a testament to its success. The vibe at the con for Day 1 was awesome.

[Ultraforce]

10 hours ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

No, it absolutely was not.  The Con suffers from some long lines and some bottlenecks.  Like queues overflowing into more common space and the repeated bag checks on reentry we're a bottleneck we're a problem, but no, this is not Fyre Festival at all.  The queue issues would be best addressed as they did clock certain pathways pretty badly, it as 'fine'. 'Annoying' but 'fine'.

I was going to say a lot of this sounds like stuff that Anime Expo and some of the other conventions from May to July of this year have had where it's super crowded with massive line ups.

[ToboRobot]

Registration/processing can be hard. 

It needs to be planned, tested and iterated.

LMGs recent experience with production can be used to develop solutions for this, and maybe software from the Floatplane team.

Every step of the process needs to be timed, and parallel systems to eliminate bottle necks based on audience.  As much as people hate it, staggering start times ($$$ early access) is a good way to minimize the rush.

 

Events are really hard to pickup and restart doing, because it's typically highly variable and documentation is hard because it's constant chaos.

Ultimately this is a good problem!  QuakeCon had a really great system from memory, but I didn't attend many of the new professional type Cons.

[LeapFrogMasterRace]

How many of these people are LTT fans or just randos who ready the expo weekly flyer

[randy123]

On 7/29/2023 at 12:20 PM, saintlouisbagels said:

Eh, not surprising.
The only convention I go to is PAX East and the lines can be like this too.

Pax west mails you the badges lol

 

[the99er]

They have it open that you can register a couple days before the event so you don't have to be in this long line up on the day that LTX starts.  I will be doing that next year.

[Snail Jerky]

On 7/31/2023 at 12:16 AM, the99er said:

They have it open that you can register a couple days before the event so you don't have to be in this long line up on the day that LTX starts.  I will be doing that next year.

But that doesn't help if the Convention employee/security? at the entrance tells you to get in line with the other hundreds of people waiting outside..

So it could be lack of communication somewhere, or the info was given but the convention employee(s) didn't pay attention/understand fully or whatever.. 

 

Unfortunately there is no archive afaik(twitch & youtube), but UFD Tech streamed parts of LTX. And he was turned away by staff at the entrance during Day 1. He had his Content Creator Badge and was told to get in huge line outside. He wasn't absolutely sure about that but started slowly walking to the lines which I think were going toward Canada Place. Was joined/bumped into 2-3 other content creators and they talked for like a minute. Thinking it wasn't correct, they're trying to remember what was in the email that was sent to them and it should be okay to go.

 

Then they went as a group back to the entrance, and the doors closer to the street, so further away from the line. I can't remember if it was the same person, but they reinforced the fact they are content creators and was let in. (nice that this turned into a nothingburger. aside from a 2 min delay.)

 

 

This is stuff I remember happening going to conventions a decade ago. Paid more for a premium pass/ease of access, don't matter for crap if security doesn't care or doesn't know and tells you to get in the dang line.

(getting pushy in these situations can go fine, or can go really bad..   and the attendee may be in the right, but would you really want to make a scene)   

[Bi0]

I mean it all kinda stuff you deal with whe you have such a massive convention. I wasn't able to even get to see the wan show because everyone crowded it so hard I never had a chance. I think we should be understanding that allot of this Is also due to the poor planning of the convention center. Plus this is their first giant event, they have not seen a even like this at this scale so I'm sure it was overwhelming. While there are many things I was disappointed by over all this convention was amazing, and I would love to go again.