Right, so, sorry if this isn't the right forum or place to put this, but I couldn't find a rant and rave/feedback post up yet.
I have a VIP pass, as does my friend. That entitles us to skip the lines and go right to the front, correct? Along with priority seating? When we went to the opening ceremony, although there wasn't a line seperately for VIPs, we were given the first few rows- the ones with blue covers on the back.
I can understand not having these blue covers on some of the smaller events, but the lack of VIP lines and the lack of VIP treatment overall has been disappointing.
When my friend and I headed to the Anime Hunters panel in Discovery Room B/C around fifteen minutes before it started, to make sure we had the right room, we saw that there was no line and that people had already been seated. Although I am hesitant to use the word 'seated', as seemed to be that people had just let themselves in, or that they had stayed there from the previous panel, since there didn't seem to be any staff around other than the ones actually setting up the panel. (Which, ah, is another story. The hour long wait for a simple cable isn't part of this feedback) We luckily managed to find a few seats front row, which still surprises me.
The next panel, Scenes From a Hat, was a few hours later, in the Oak room. We literally had nothing to do for around an hour beforehand, so we decided to hang out by the door. The line started forming to one side of the door, and, wary from the lack of VIP priority seating in the previous panel, we decided to set up camp by the other side of the door. Soon enough, the host finished setting up, and then opened the doors. But that was just that- she just opened the doors. When we pointed her attention to our VIP passes, she did say that we were to go in beforehand, but I doubt we would have been able to had we not been standing right there.
Next was Whose Line is it Anyway? in, again, Discovery Room B/C. We had to rush down to that panel, since the previous one understandably ran a tad long. We still got there a good ten minutes beforehand, and, once again, people were already inside. We were planning on standing/sitting by the wall due to the lack of good seats, but someone gave us one of his seats and moved forward a few rows to an empty one. Once again, we were lucky.
Finally, we were planning on heading to the rave, but last night's pre-party sort of destroyed my shins, so we chose to give them a rest. With the handy Kumoricon guide app(Which I absolutely love and am so happy and glad that it's here), we saw that the Slightly Anime Dating Game in, one more time, Discovery Room B/C, was happening in about twenty minutes. We went back to see, for once, a line. It seemed to be a bit chaotic, with a few staff/volunteers running around, but at least it was there.
Hope wasn't completely found, however. We got the attention of one staff who was directing the lines, showed him our VIP passes, and said, "VIPs are supposed to be at the front of the line, right?". He said that he didn't know, and pointed toward the front of the line and told us to go ask someone up there. We came up to the staff member closest to the doors, and, once he was finished with what he was doing, we got his attention and said to him the same thing. He told us to just go inside and ask there. Once inside, we had no idea who to ask, and no reason to just keep volleying from staff member to staff member, so we just took our seats; in the third row by the middle/alley, since the higher up rows were too far to the sides to our liking.
We did very much enjoy the panels we attended, so much that my face is still flushed from laughing, but the VIP treatment is very disappointing. Turns out that my dad, who is also VIP, attended Whose Line is it Anyway and the Slightly Anime Dating Game(who knew? His seats were so far from ours that we never saw him), and wasn't treated as he should have been either and faced the same disappointments as we did.
I sincerely hope that this is not how the following days will commence.
