Have you ever heard the
expression, ‘if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all’? Well,
if I was to apply this to my opinion of the SFX Weekender 3 this would be a
very short post... Along the lines of: Arrived, saw dancing girls, went home...
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| *Insert comedy caption here* |
I can, hand on heart, say this
was the worst event I’ve ever been to.
I have to confess I’d not
really given SFX much thought before I actually arrived, I wasn’t even sure
what guests were going to be there, but the idea of it really was appealing, a
few thousand like minded geeks taking over a holiday camp for a weekend, what
more could you ask for?
Check in was from the Thursday
afternoon, however, if you’ve read part 2 of my Wales posts then you’ll know I
was busy climbing Snowdon that day, so we decided to get there on the Friday
morning and go straight into the event.
On the Thursday though the
little alarm bell in my head began to ring upon hearing stories of people
waiting hours to check in... Not too promising. Luckily when we got there on
the Friday there wasn’t a queue so we checked in quickly and then went off to
find our ‘Gold’ level chalet...
 |
| A couple of familiar faces! |
If our accommodation was gold,
I would dread to see what the silver and standard were like... Apparently the
site had been refurbished the year before; if this decor was a year old then I’m
a Dutchman!
But, let’s face it, as long as
there is a bed, what else does a room need to be? I put the quality of the room
out of my head and we went for a wander round the venue.
Midday saw the opening ceremony
take place where we had the treat of the Area 51 dancers. I have to say, for a
mainly dominated event the organisers knew their audience, I could of happily
sat and watched the dancers all day.
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| Dancing Girls, Woohoo! |
The first hitch of the day
also took place, there were massive rail delays just outside London, which resulted
in guests being delayed or not being able to attend at all. These things happen
as they say, however the communication and updates of what was happening was a
bit lacking, the main annoyance for me was the Anthony Head was meant to have
been there as a guest replacement, however he didn’t make it, this was fine,
but at no point was anything officially said!
Next on the list of ‘what were
you thinking’ was the virtual queue system, the idea was to give people a timeslot
for their autographs, this failed before it even started and was scrapped (it
was also to blame for the queues the previous day). My question is, why not
just do it like everyone else does, have tickets and get people to check when
they get up to their number, simples!
While on the subject of
autographs, the signing area was located in the canteen, this was never going
to be a good plan, especially at lunchtime when the autograph queue and food
queue all merged into one... the queues also didn’t have anyone managing them
as far as I could see so this resulted in multiple queues for the same guests
and all sorts of nonsense.
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| Winning! |
I’d purchased a signing pass,
but decided to just give the entire fiasco a miss and steer well clear of the
whole thing...
The event itself was split
into a number of rooms with various activities taking place throughout the day,
this in theory worked well, but for me I just wasn’t feeling it, the whole
venue just seemed cramped, just because a venue says it can hold 4,000 doesn’t
mean you have to put 4,000 in it...
Not been very positive at all
yet has it?
On the plus side I did bump
into the guys from Charity Daleks, who run the Corsham event, it was good to
catch up with the guys and just hang out, even if I was just dressed casually.
Next on the gumbles list was
the heat, yes, it was freezing outside but inside the venue was like a sauna!
It wasn’t helped by the fact that the ceiling fans were pumping out hot air.
Compared to the food quality however the heat was nothing...
As I type this I’ve actually become
bored of moaning about the event, I’m sure you’re also bored of reading me
moan...
Here’s some dancing girls, I
know they always cheer me up...
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