Re: The terrible Pre-Reg line

[baka.livejournal.com]

Why doesn't Dragon*Con send out badges before the con?
Does anyone know? I'm just thinking "you know, why bother to register when you can just walk up and get a ticket next year" besides it being cheaper, I think I'm willing to opt out of a 3-4 hour line for 50 bucks.

Comments

[eoywin.livejournal.com]

Dragon*Con doesn't send out pre-reg badges before the con because if they send them beforehand some people would counterfeit them.

[acciochocolate.livejournal.com]

If you read down you will see that other conventions mail out badges. The badges do need to be less able to be counterfeited, that is true.

[critus.livejournal.com]

My assumption is because of the fact that they are constantly battling fraud. I don't now how bad it was this year, but I know that last year there were apparently several folks set up in a hotel room with a color printer and a laminating machine selling badges.

[critus.livejournal.com]

The flip side to that is that Gen Con sends out badges well in advance. They have bar codes on them, though. I have never actually noticed anyone SCANNING one of those bar codes, but I assume they mean something.

[seferin.livejournal.com]

1. People could duplicate them
2. People could attend the con with fakes you can't tell apart without checking by hand
3. Security to prevent me giving my badge to someone else, claiming I never got it, and getting a second membership free
4. Post office might actually lose it
5. The cost of postage for 50,000 is prohibitive, and I pity the mailman who unloads that mailbox

[keita-yuki.livejournal.com]

could you imagine that mailbox... some poor soul would put in 1 letter to many and BOOM letter explosion and a horror of papercuts.

[auroraceleste.livejournal.com]

I'm not a con staffer in reg or any area that has any effect on this, but I'd bet the reason is that it gives people more time to counterfeit badges. In reality they're just paper and a lamination that can be had for about $200 in materials, all told, so all that potential criminals are missing is time to use a high-quality scanner to make enough badges to turn a profit on their investment and totally screw over the convention.

[everyinchofme.livejournal.com]

As someone who's worked Reg and Security before in a minor capacity for other conventions I would cite this as one of the Top 5 reasons why.

[mommy09.livejournal.com]

I understand that they are worried about counterfeits, lost badges, and other issues.

But given the huge popularity of the event, they really need to find a better way to register people. I stood in line for hours Thursday evening and almost got turned away mere feet away from the door leading to the maze. Then it turned out that there was no line for last names A-B, so I was able to skip ahead and get out of there at a reasonable time. That long line was murder, though, and if I hadn't been able to get in that night, I would have missed the Shatner/Nimoy panel I wanted to see so badly the next morning.

I think I'm just going to show up much earlier next time. Or have an early-arriving friend pick up my badge for me.

[rayhne.livejournal.com]

We went over at 2:10 and they were already registering. Got through in 50 minutes.

[wiebke.livejournal.com]

I think I heard this very questions asked about 800 times while I was in the line. All I know is, the one thing I miss about being staff (opted out this year) is, duh, NO LINE for a badge!

[baka.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I miss being staff too, but that's it's own set of problems.

[plastisine.livejournal.com]

I must have gotten extremely lucky then. I went over about 6 PM Friday and waited for maybe two minutes. I'd been worrying the entire week about standing in that awful line and if I'd have time to make a 9 PM photoshoot.

[paradisacorbasi.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that if we had our photos on our badges, that'd make it tougher to counterfeit them.

But only a little.

[arasirsul.livejournal.com]

I cannot begin to imagine the line to pick up badges if they had to shoot a picture of us as well. Yikes!

[wicked-swann.livejournal.com]

It took me two and a half hours to get my badge on Thursday, and the volunteer who gave the badge to me was a complete and utter jackhole. He saw where I lived (a tourist destination) and immediately became insulting and rude.

At Comic Con it took me two and a half MINUTES to get my badge. They printed it out right there and popped it into a badge holder. Why can't Dragoncon do this?

This was the only way that Comic Con was better than Dragoncon, however.

[return2zero.livejournal.com]

They printed it out right there and popped it into a badge holder.
That's rather brilliant.

And they can keep track of who already got his/hers.
In case.

[meowwl.livejournal.com]

If they'd simply split the line into names at the door, instead of sending everyone through the human hamster maze, it would have gone a BUCKETLOAD faster! The human rat maze zigzagging around creates corners....people STOP at corners to yak and whatnot! Stopped people slows down the line. Also, if you know a line is going to be longer, due to the number of pre-registrys in that name group, split the line further, maybe even on a floating basis. Have one person going from line to line to take a chunk of each pre-reg book as needed and register a cluster of people...like I noticed the C-D line was the longest when I came in...so have the floater grab Dav-E and split the line partly, then when that line is shortened, move to the next problem spot.

[drunkencritch.livejournal.com]

This is one of the ideas we talked about in the C-D line. If the books they used had been pre split into smaller folders to reduce the mass in any one collection of labels, then resplitting the line could be easier. The woman handling the line right next to the C-D was constantly yelling for her group of letters and no one was in it. With smaller pre split groups, she could have easily just added the latter portion of the C-D line to her line and started pulling the people from there.

Similarly, if they did gross splitting of the names near the door, and then the fine splitting closer up, it might make it easier to get through. Consider that most people didn't mind as much standing in line once they made it into the building. So if you had 2 rooms, split the list into 2 groups and place them in different rooms for the Thursday and Friday rush. Then in those rooms do the finer splitting and smaller folders like I posted earlier, this would allow you to still handle the group with the same number of people, but maybe allow you to identify the problems easier and manage the smaller check-in folders easier.

I know one of the biggest complaints as I neared the end of the line was the font used was so frilly that you could not reliably read it at 20 feet. Anyone wanting to get obnoxious over vision impairment could have had a wonderful field day with being required to read a fanciful font that was too small from such a distance. How was one supposed to read it from one side of the room. Big block letters, reduce the logo if you need to. Move those signs away from the people at the desk, or duplicate them so we can read them when we get into line.

[wolfchylde.livejournal.com]

Trust me, there ARE better ways of handling registration... but sending badges out ahead of time is absolutely NOT one I could envision them using. Fraud is a very GOOD reason not to do so, as are the problems (and expense) of mailing badges back to the attendees.

Some form of automated check-in would probably be FAR superior, and could allow the volunteers to work on printing out labels for badges rather than looking through books hoping to find a pre-reg. I've been to conventions where you check in by putting in your email and a confirmation code and they print out a checkout stub that you scan and then your badge gets printed for you... however I am not sure how feasible that would be for the sheer volume of attendees.

[morganskye.livejournal.com]

I would be in total support of an automated system. There's bound to be a way to do it. Shoot, just putting a barcode on the pre-reg postcard and using that would help. That's what they did for Ticketmaster. The line still sucked (only two ppl working it!), but when you finally got up to someone it only took a moment.

[earendilgrey.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of time could be saved if they broke up the alphabet and put like A-K in one room and the rest in another. That would help a bit on the lines.

[wicked0witch.livejournal.com]

Last year I got in line around 3:30 on thursday, and got through in a few hours... this year, after being kicked out of line after being in it over an hour thursday night around 9:30, I got up at 6 am friday, got some coffee and got in line. Yeah, It was early, and they didn't let us in till 8 am, but I had my badge by 8:20.

Plus, I got to sit there in my PJs, glasses, and ponytail (the most comfortable I was all con) and made some friends that looked exactly the same. I think it was an awesome way to kick start the weekend (even though I was working on about 2 hours of sleep). I'm going to do the exact same thing. It's worth saving the $50 and putting it towards costumes or fun stuff from the dealers room, and I still got back before any of my roommates were even awake.

[hxcpunkchick.livejournal.com]

I tend to do the same thing to unless I have a friend who simply must get their badge Thursday night. Not like I actually need my badge for wandering around that evening anyway...

[dijitao.livejournal.com]

In my experience the biggest problem with the pre-reg line was in the last 50-feet. Once you had to break apart based on last name whole thing just became a big mess. This was further complicated by the attempts of the staff to keep all of the booths busy by calling out letters and asking people to come to the front. Too many people would come forward, things would backup and then you couldn't actually get to the booth you needed to go to.

The remedy is to make all booth able to process all names.

There are many ways to accomplish this, I recommend the following: Put computers and label printers in each booth. Keep a ridiculous number of backups available in the event that a device fails. Write software that can look up a person and print the label for their badge. Print out an additional label and stick it in the book where the person signs for their badge and have them sign beneath it.

I believe this will work since the software would be fairly simple, and while printing out the label will take time the time will be made up by more efficient use of the booths, and the faster look up time.

If this all sounds too complicated, I suppose another solution would be to just make the point where you break off in the sub-lines by last name happen much earlier.

[lilithschilde.livejournal.com]

I agree with this.

They could easily put a binder in each line and print out 1 tag for the badge and one tag for the binder. People could sign the binder page just like they do now to show they've gotten their badge, and on the computer it would be set up to show that badge has been picked up so duplicates aren't given out.

This way there's no "people with last names Ga-Ra come with me to the front of the line" and 60 people suddenly rush forward and cut off all the people who've been waiting for hours. Given, I was one of the mass rushing forward, but I did feel slightly bad about it.

[jemmafey.livejournal.com]

I concur. My sister and I registered before the con and arrived to pick up our badges. OMG! The line went on and on like thread pulled from a spool. Even if we had stood in that line and waited, we would have missed the panels we'd hoped to attend. We ended up not even going to Dragon*Con. How could I ask my sister to stand in such an insane line for me? I mean, they were selling popcorn! I was so disappointed. I'd kept my suitcase packed since last year. That's how much I look forward to attending this event. I don't know why the lines were so much worse this year. Clearly someone should rethink the system. I wasted the money my dad and grandmother had given me to buy tix. But either way I wasn't going to be able to participate in the scheduled events as I'd planned. :( I don't think I'll be going next year. My heart breaks each time I see people's pics from D*C on their journals. It's silly, but my costume is staring up at me with sad, neglected eyes.

[britty-kitty.livejournal.com]

So you bought badges but skipped out when you saw how long the line was? yikes. The line wasn't that bad (2.5 hours for me), and there was a lot of friendly people as well as a really talented balloon artist behind us. You should give it another chance next year.

[dustagorn.livejournal.com]

I have to say, a LOT of confusion could be cleared up by MORE clearly labeling where you're supposed to be, rather than having not large enough print PAPER that is backlit by a sign with writing on it, 40 feet away where it's harder to read is pretty poor when you're looking. There were two lines for the same letter group I was in. We couldnt figure it out. it was ridiculous.

[archersangel.livejournal.com]

yeah. those signs were a major pain to read from a distance

[baka.livejournal.com]

Gee whiz.

I go to dinner, come back and there's 30 comments.
So I mean like the obvious safeguards like barcodes, magic fairy dust. I know it's partly because of fraud.

It's also PARTLY because they don't want to get rid of (pay money to) upgrade their super outdated "look dude up in a random binder" system. It is old, it needs to go. Comiccon doesn't look people up in binders. I assume PAX doesn't. Blizzcon doesn't. Dragon*Con has grown to that level.

[paladyn.livejournal.com]

They have a choice between a tried and true system that is annoying but works with minimal training vs a system that is extraordinarily expensive, requires in-depth training, and is difficult to test prior to deployment. While I agree that they need to upgrade, could you imagine what would happen if the registration system crashed during the con?

[whiteladyeowyn.livejournal.com]

You mention "Buying a badge on site and saving all the time."

You didn't wait in line with anyone that did that, then. Try five hours because of poor directing of people. We wound up waiting in the ticketmaster line because it went into the same room that contained on-site.

And no one told us any different.

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

The last time I went, in 2006, I went for one day. Got into the line at 7:30 AM. The doors to registration opened at 8AM. I didn't get a badge until almost 11:00!

Maybe you could just make the line virtual

[vrimj.livejournal.com]

I think the problem might not be the line, it is a reasonable way to allocate resources. The problem for me is that we all have to physically stand around in the line.

People get bored, and they take up a lot of space and at dragon*con they could almost surely be having more fun.

So you could maybe keep the line, but keep it on a computer. Have people check in for badging and leave a cell number. Send an sms message 5 to 10 minutes before they should show up for badging.

Then people can unpack, go to a concert, catch up with buddies or whatever around the hotel and still be waiting in line for their badge.

And the people who do the badging will not have to deal with the sort of cranky that comes with standing in line for hours.

There are details to work out, like how long do you have to show up until you get sent to the back of the line and can you put a termial to get people in to line in the lobby of each hotel, but they seem workable.

This would not take any new tech and there are services that send free sms messages so the cost shouldn't be outragous.

It is like the take a number -- now serving number system, but streached out over a bigger area by using cell phones for the now serving messages

Re: Maybe you could just make the line virtual

[jarissa.livejournal.com]

I think this is a good idea, but I foresee two smal snags:

1: Not all D*Cgoers have text messaging. Or even portable communications devices. Luddites! I know! But we love 'em anyway.

2: This past year, it sometimes took upward of an hour to get a text message from someone who's not just on the same network, but in fact on my same phone bill.

If we can figure out a solution/workaround for those cases, I'm completely with you. Any ideas?

Here's a solution I'm willing to support bodily:

[jarissa.livejournal.com]

Registration needs a Costumed Cheerleader Corps.

Never mind polite, underspoken Hotel Security folks trying to get everyone into one of the lines and (more importantly, to them) out of the way of road traffic. They mean well, but they have their own priorities, and at least a few times Thursday night I recognized that deer-in-headlights expression on their faces as they realized this crowd would only get larger.

Now, Registration Cheerleader Corps shouldn't come with a Staff badge, and a requirement to work a certain number of hours; I think it should be an attention-keeping contest. Every batch of costumed bellowers should bring along an identifying symbol on a stick, maybe, to symbolize their group; something that goes with their costume set would be nice, but something very unique. These people show up and get their own badges, then make sure they know what line is which, and then head out to the juncture points to {chant/sing/charade/mimic those awesome people who use the glowsticks to direct jets taking off from an air carrier} in an informative, entertaining, non-misdemeanorial way.

And when the directed (or misdirected!) finally DO get their badges, they can then place a single vote either FOR or AGAINST any one CCC group, sort of like the way the Hall Costume Contest is run ... except three "Not Helpful" votes cancel out one "Helpful" vote (to a minimum of zero).

Winners get ... I dunno ... a pat on the head from just before Duck Dodgers Time? Interviewed on the Late Show? A token for one free line-cut* the next year? A sparkly Gold Star Sticker on their badge, or their next postcard?
Maybe the definition of "winner" should be "all groups who earn a net of more than 100 votes".

What do you folks think? Do I need to quit drinking Tang again, or am I on to something here?

---

*applies to any panel or registration line, but not valid with autographs/photo lines. Hell, I'd cheerlead half the weekend if I can get a single free linecut into the Time Travellers' Ball next year. That looked wonderful!

Re: Here's a solution I'm willing to support bodily:

[ydnic.livejournal.com]

OT, but you can volunteer on my staff *just* for the TTB if you really want to, the more folks doing line-wrangling the better, and you'll get in :) (although I am hoping we'll have a bigger room next year and there won't be issues with anyone getting in!)

[bazorkin.livejournal.com]

I've been going for twelve years now and I've NEVER pre-registered. The first year my friend and I decided to go last minute so we bought on site. Seeing the pre-reg line I was glad we did!
After that, I've always either bought on site or gone through ticketmaster. Its just not my idea of a good time/vacation to stand in a line for hours.
(That should indicate I'm not there for the big-big panels with lines around the block either. :D )

AX registration

[treoeng.livejournal.com]

I also attended AX this year, which has roughly the same attendance as D*C, but they had a much more efficient badge pickup system:

* The registration confirmations included barcodes.

* When you got to the front of the registration line there was a bank of computers & bar code scanners. If you had your registration confirmation you just scanned your barcode; otherwise, you typed in your name and other identifying information on the computer to locate your registration.

* After you scanned your bardcode or selected your name on the computer, you walked over to the registration table, where a badge printer had just printed out your badge. You just show your ID, get your badge (which they don't have to look for, because it just came off the printer), and you're done.

Total interaction time: 15 seconds (with barcode) to 60 seconds (look up name on computer). Another bonus: no need to divide up by last name, so the queues are much more efficient.

Why can't Dragon*Con do something like this?

Re: AX registration

[britty-kitty.livejournal.com]

love love love this system. I've never had to wait in line at AX

[deborak]

Cost of new technology + the labor/training involved in such a switch is a major roadblock to any significant changes in the pre-reg pickup process, IMO. Please, please change what is easy and will make a huge difference: change the maze into chutes and let people get into CLEARLY LABELED alpha segment lines IMMEDIATELY.

[morganskye.livejournal.com]

I used Ticketmaster this year (never again!). When I got there I got in the green line because that's what the sign outside said. However, within 20 minutes they were moving us to the YELLOW line. People were running back and forth because of so much conflicting info. I gave up and came back Friday morning.

[pktaxwench.livejournal.com]

Those that are considering eternal memberships, consider this... the line for eternal members at 8 pm on Thursday was less than a minute... there was one person there ahead of me.

Just sayin.

[owynn.livejournal.com]

and I'd have to go to Dragon*con for 20 years to pay have the eternal membership pay for itself. Add to that the time value calculation for monetary transactions and inflation, and my money today is worth more than my money tomorrow, and its more like 30+ years. Sorry, just doesn't seem like a good deal for me, unless someone has a spare $1k they just want to give me.

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

You've got it correct - it's a for-profit business and it seems all they care about is money and more money. From what I've heard attendees say at a post-Dragon*Con discussion (at an Atlanta science fiction club), the lines are getting markedly worse. What's worse is that when the lines are the longest, with 18 stations supposedly available to process registrations, only 6 of the 18 were open.