Suggestions for Future Fan Fests

[Orphan_Benn]

Though they only had 1 till they were able to do two customers at a time, one cash and one card. We Queued from roughly 5:30 to 7:00. Managed to get everything I wanted minus the moogle postman, who for some ungodly reason was NOT restricted to 1 per person like the Vegas ones were. So it was extremely dismaying to be told there were 60 left when there were 40 people in front of us and we had to watch as some people walked away with 2-3 of them. Hell one guy had 5! Around 6:40 another staff member did arrive with another card machine, I suspect they had taken it from the cafeteria because it was then closed for the day.

I will say a big thanks to Yoshi-P and Foxclon as around 6:20 they turned up and stood outside the merch room and did signings and photos with people. Which was a really nice thing to do and made sure that the people behind us who would probably not get much at all at least got to meet them and get something signed from them.

[Draziel]

The merch queue was insane from the get go what was a shame and as me and my friend saw how little it moved we thought we would try it a little later and it barely moved still so we did 3 of the handicapped hard mode fights (musical chairs Gilgamesh was awesome!) to find they stopped people queueing for the merch store and were practically sold out so we pretty much spent the rest of the day going for Odin, (if you saw me with my "Party Finder" was good to see all the fun reactions to it) getting the Tee at the end was great. Fantastic event otherwise just horribly marred for a lot due to the store issue.

I agree with the rest of the comments here the merch queue seemed a super popular choice. Would've loved to prepay for the art book or moogle but unfortunately it wasn't to be.

[yazpanda]

They also should not have taken payments before people even got to the tills to receive their items if they were able to reserve them somehow. I wasn't in the queue at the time but my friends told me they started taking card payments in advance to speed things up, but then people would get to the front and find out that things they'd paid for had gone out of stock. It's not as simple as handing them the money back if they'd paid by cash!

Also, spreading it over 2 days would have been much better. Europe is a huge continent with so many people wanting to attend, and it's ridiculous that the NA one was 2 and a half days but ours was barely a day when most people spent it in that queue.

[yazpanda]

[cont]
Once the whole queue fiasco was over for us around 2-3pm, my group had an awesome time. We met some really nice people and took part in a fair few activities/challenges. But it would have been much better if we'd had those extra few hours to really savour the experiences of the fun parts and try everything at least once, rather than rush from place to place to try not to miss anything too big.

Also, the venue was awesome. The way they laid is out was cool, and I was quite impressed by the aetheryte! We used it as a meeting point many times! Then again, they needed a bigger area for the keynote so they could fit seats for everyone. Most of us are adults and starting to get a bit stiff! Plus my jeans are still kinda new so if nothing else, they were the stiff ones! I couldn't even cross my legs!

[yazpanda]

OH ONE MORE THING (darn these comments having character restrictions so I can't type these all into one single post anyway)

The art contest was a bit of a shambles! The NA prizes were an in game item for the top 10 of everyone category and then the first place of each one got something worth $50.

Ours had no prize for the top 10 of each category and then the winners got their own art back on a canvas but signed by the dev team.

At the end of the day my partner asked if we could take our work home and they let us. So even though we didn't win, we still got our own work on canvas :/

[Mithent]

I didn't attend, and also agree with the OP. My partner and I live within a reasonable distance of London, and could have afforded tickets, but the price was too high for us to decide to attend with such little information. Had the prices been lower that would have been less of an issue, or if there was more information when tickets went on sale, we could have made a decision based on what we would be getting.

[LorenzoMoranta]

Firstly, I really, really, REALLY hope there's a Fan Fest next year. 'cos I'd love to go. Everything (except queueing) was really fun and I'd love to do it all again next year.

But I do have a couple of issues... I'd have liked it to be at least a two day event. Even if I had to pay a bit more for entry. I decided to skip the first dev panel so I could actually get in to do Odin a couple of times without waiting all day. At about 2, I decided to queue. In the end it took almost four hours of standing in queue to get to the merch. I feel sorry for people who queued that long only to find that all the merch was gone... But what annoyed me the most was that there were far bigger rooms in Tobacco Dock just sitting there empty, unused. They could have used one of those and put more cashiers in. Two cash tills and one card till, for thousands of attendees? Really? Why in Eorzea did you think that was a good thing to do, SE? Some of the poor staff seemed quite stressed as well...

[LorenzoMoranta]

Another thing I'd have liked is seating during the keynote. That way you're not shuffling and jumping to try and see the stage, and you don't need to break your neck craning it skywards to look at the screens. Also possibly another room set aside with tables and chairs that people can use after getting food. Luckily I found a spare table but had to steal a chair from someone else's table after I got my lunch. And I felt I had to rush my food because I saw another group of people waiting for a table so they could have theirs.

(Sorry, this is gonna be part two of a triple post because of character limit. -.-)

[LorenzoMoranta]

In the end I enjoyed the Fan Fest a lot, although I missed out on most of it due to queueing. I did the Gridania battle roulette, Odin challenge, opening ceremony and cosplay contest. That's it. :/

If a few issues could be fixed, I'd definitely be up for attending next year - even if the ticket price goes up in order to make it a two day event. In fact, it'd probably be even more likely I'd attend if that was the case. I think I can happily put the issues this year down to "teething problems", but I'd certainly like to see them fixed for next year. And as I said, I really do hope there is a Fan Fest in London next year. The decor, the ambience, everything was great. It really felt like I was in Eorzea. Eating my dodo noodles in the Carline Canopy, watching Y'shtola and Kan-E-Senna come in for lunch... It was awesome. :P

[Nemausus]

Seating for the keynote would have been great. I was in an awkward position standing between two screens and out of sight of the stage craning my neck from one to another. I didn't realise at first that one was being used to display game information while the other was showing what was going on on-stage.

So I was late to the joy of the EU data centre, wondering why everyone was going nuts when very little was happening on the stage itself. A 160 degree head turn finally revealed what everyone was clapping about.

I felt very sorry for a girl dressed up as a Miqo'te who sat on the floor close to me during the speech and couldn't see anything going on.

However its all over now, perhaps it was teething troubles and next year will be better arranged. The great joy was finding my VIP tickets had arrived from the Royal Albert Hall. So next weekend I've got the Final Fantasy A New World concert at St Johns and Distant Worlds the next night. I can't wait to meet Nobuo Uematsu!