I was talking with the desk clerks as I checked out of my room at the Sheraton this morning. As we all noticed, the walkup lines seemed never ending. In commenting on the ATM at the end of the hall near the front desk being labeled as out of order (another patron had been looking for an ATM), the discussion turned to how quickly it ran out of cash. The clerks explained that they were totally shocked that the machine had been loaded Friday with $45,000 and was empty by Saturday morning. I commented that that was entirely normal with the convention in town and two or three thousand people descending upon the ATM. At this point, the clerks brought up their conversation with Mr. Savage, who had apparantly talked to them about the same issue, and told them that they had expected two to three thousand attendees, but had in fact received over eight thousand. So, not direct, but Savage doesn't reveal the attendance numbers directly and never has. iI's as close to an official count as we seem likely to get, and I have no reason to doubt the desk clerks on their statements.
I can beleive those numbers, there were sooo many walkins this year that they could easily have hit that much. kinda surprised with those numbers the exclusive stuff didn't sell out.
The dealer's room on Sunday afternoon was as busy as you'd normally expect on a Saturday morning. It was ridiculous that at 1pm on Sunday there were easily 300 people still in line for tickets.
I would like to know where he got those figures. If they came from sales I can understand that but if it came from the staff that were at the main door... They had two staff members who were counting people as they entered the room. If you left to said go to the bathroom and returned they counted you twice. Now this could be for the fire code (which was violated I'm sure) then disregard but if not then those numbers are way way off. I find it hard to believe that the numbers were that high. Now I know about the lines and such but that is an incredible increase. Think about it.
Over 8,000? That's insane! The last time I went to Botcon was in 2004 and it was in Pasadena as well. According to the archives the total attendance was approximately 1,365.
Yes but that Botcon was not the officially sponsored one. That was when the hartman brothers and glen split and Glen had the officially sponsor convention (called OTFCC at the time) and the Hartmans did one last "Botcon". So that year a lot of people had to choose which one to go to. And most people went to the one with all the exclusives.
There weren't that many at one time. I was talking to Pete at one point, and he was saying that people were lining up as fast as they were registering them. I believe it was just a constant stream of people. Of course, kind of hard to tell, given how slow the lines move there.
Oh, including general admission, forgot about that. Yeah, if there was fairly steady stream of in/out people on Saturday or Sunday, I could see them reaching that number.
A friend and I were talking to a certain someone from FunPub and he even acknowledged that the turn out seemed to be more than they had expected. This seems to be a good thing cause perhaps (as in our conversation) this could somehow bring the G.I.Joe Con down to L.A. as a potential venue location in the forseeable future as well. And the best thing about the turn out is that even in this difficult economy, people still made the effort to travel to SoCal for a convention. Hopefully this shows that SoCal has a lot of potential in providing a successful turnout for any convention. **Hopes for JoeCon to be next in line**
8,000? Maybe. Personally I'd like to know what the split was between those who preregistered and those who came in as general admission. Either way, good for FunPub. Besides the horrendous lines, the convention was excellent!
