Comments, Compliments, and Concerns for NDK 2010

[Zils]

This may seem like a weird one, The water was never filled Friday or Saturday morning. At one point i went to 6 (or more) places for water and nothing. I HAD to go to my room to get something to drink, it felt very annoying to be forced to go up. Now i understand when i was walking around at 4am and theyre empty cause whos gonna be working that late.

But it was a good con like always. As a NDK vet for 8 years now its nice to see improvements every year. 

[Blade Blue]

Late night was totally awesome! You should definitely give those guys some serious props. And more time! If they want to stay up all night and do awesome games like that let them! But seriously, they were really good, kudos for them. ^_^

Cosplay chess was just as awesome. Even if I died like, immediately in the first round -_- still! It was fun! lol I am definitely looking forward to participating/seeing that next year.

The games room was a lot of fun, first time i was there and first time i played munchkin. That game is addicting! A round of applause to all those people there who brought those fun games!

The Giant Robot Rumble was siiick! Gurren Lagann for the win! First time I went to that and that was a lot of fun too. Overall, I gotta say NDK was a blast, just like always!

[Jaqi]

my only gripe was with the video rooms. while I was in there on Sunday it was a little annoying having to hear some of the staff barking out orders about the dealers room over and over again every 15 seconds. Also,  some people like to have conversation right outside the doors for some reason when they can tell there's a viewing in progress, then you have the people who like to yell of that balcony all day  :/  gets a little aggravating when it's drowning out the the sound of your show for 2 hours. I remember the video rooms use to be on the first floor in the back hallway near the Mall Events, that was find because it was more quiet back there then anywhere else.

There are still two video rooms, Primrose and Lupine, that operate in the back hallway past main events and have fewer problems with noise but due to the current limitations for available rooms, it is necessary to maintain one video room on the Peak level. Unfortunately, there is a tremendous amount of noise bleed in that location.

We did substantially improve our speaker setups in all rooms this year as a means to compensate but with quieter titles and especially busy times at the dealer's room it doesn't always help. We'll continue to look into other ways to improve the video experience at NDK however we can.

[Skrae]

The dealers staff apologize about all the yelling over the course of the weekend however much of it was necessary to keep things moving. The dealers hallway gets amazingly congested and many people aren't aware of how many problems it causes when they have their badges in their pockets, camera's out and on and don't pay attention to the line and just stop and chat in the middle of the hallway. Please keep in mind we can only do so much. If people don't read signs we put up and ignore the line control staff when they speak to them quietly The dealers staff will work on a way to resolve the line problems in a quieter way for next year!

[nemisis47]

The idea of giving out tickets for the large events is great idea too!!  The ticket themselves don't need to be something fancy- it can be just a small piece of paper with a stamp that a volunteer had just put on and gave out to the person that state the event (which can be changeable), the time of stamp, the number of ticket (help to keep track of number of attendees for the event, too!), and maybe a seating number? This can solve the horrible wait in line (3hours), allow attendees to go to other panels and such, and the huge wrap around the hotel of people trying to get in.

I second that idea.

One other suggestion is could we have the cosplay chess on a Saturday or after check out time next year? I was awefully stressed due to the worry of being charged, roommates keep asking me if I checked out and telling me to hurry to do so etc. (but was relieved afterwards) and somewhat dissapointed I couldn't participate like I wanted to at cosplay chess due to this.

[Alitain]

Well after this last con, I'm looking forward to seeing the effects of the attendance cap.  It was definitely more crowded then last year, and sadly having the crazy lines for almost any of the good panels like the mythology panel and such, kept me from getting to most.

But it was still a good con.  Maybe a suggestion though...as much as I hate to say it.  Maybe consider either cutting out a dealer or two, shrinking some space for some dealers, or either expanding the dealer's room without increasing the number of dealers.  That may help some of the congestion at least.

I will say though I was pretty much dumbfounded when me and my two friends came in Friday to get our badges.  I walked right up to the desk, since no one was in my line.  My two friends were in the same line but it took like 5 minutes.  Don't know if it was just because we lucked out or what because we got there about the same time we always do, but still it was great to just get out badges and get on with things.  The line to get our room on the other hand...but that isn't NDK's issue and the hotel staff looked like they were working hard as well.

[Katie]

I second that idea.

One other suggestion is could we have the cosplay chess on a Saturday or after check out time next year? I was awefully stressed due to the worry of being charged, roommates keep asking me if I checked out and telling me to hurry to do so etc. (but was relieved afterwards) and somewhat dissapointed I couldn't participate like I wanted to at cosplay chess due to this.

That's totally understandable. I'm sorry you had to take off early and were stressed by it. We can try to see if we can get a later time on Sunday. Unfortunatly I don't have anytime to run it Saturday, too busy with costume contest stuff. If someone else wanted to try and run it on Saturday that might work, I just wouldn't be able to be involved. V__V

[Alitain]

I second that idea.

One other suggestion is could we have the cosplay chess on a Saturday or after check out time next year? I was awefully stressed due to the worry of being charged, roommates keep asking me if I checked out and telling me to hurry to do so etc. (but was relieved afterwards) and somewhat dissapointed I couldn't participate like I wanted to at cosplay chess due to this.

Well you know, certainly understand trying to plan around check out Sunday but you could always have someone else check out for you unless of course you haven't paid or something yet.  I mean I always check out our room since I'm the one who has the registration for it but they don't ask for IDs or anything.  Just give a friend the cards and you can go do the chess or whatever may come up.

[nemisis47]

Well you know, certainly understand trying to plan around check out Sunday but you could always have someone else check out for you unless of course you haven't paid or something yet.  I mean I always check out our room since I'm the one who has the registration for it but they don't ask for IDs or anything.  Just give a friend the cards and you can go do the chess or whatever may come up.

I never thought to do that lol. I always thought that the person who made the reservations has to do the checking out. If I knew that I would've done the event as I wanted to.

That's totally understandable. I'm sorry you had to take off early and were stressed by it. We can try to see if we can get a later time on Sunday. Unfortunatly I don't have anytime to run it Saturday, too busy with costume contest stuff. If someone else wanted to try and run it on Saturday that might work, I just wouldn't be able to be involved. V__V

Hey no prob Katie. Stuff happens as they say.

[Roguebelle]

it.was.awesome!  Thanks for allowing pre-reg to pick up their badges earlier on Friday   also, i know there was some discussion earlier about the menu at the restaurant and I just wanted to say that the changes were fantastic (as well as the prices).  Thanks for another great year!

[Nogardous]

I think the biggest thing I noticed this year was it was way mellower compared to the other years I went... Granted the whole Butt Scratcher was old and never really started up this... Far as caremelldensen I only heard of a total of 5 times it happened and one of them was at the Wendy's... and the groups was never more then 5... it was kinda sad... Also far as picking up prereg on thursday I liked that and made it where I didn't have to wait in line for it on friday... Also I notice more people more courtesy about taking pictures and moving out of the center of the walk ways and into door ways or the side of the halls... Far as the staff goes well you guys are always great... Also sadly most of the panels I wanted to do was full and the lines for the AMV's and Cosplay contest was started so early... and honestly with my eyes sucking not to badly but where I can't see details from far more then 10ft away kinda sucks... so I ended up not going to them... But I like Cosplay chess and how from now on is unscripted :3 even if I was 0-2

[shs]

There's probably a better way to handle the elevator lines, maybe not separating them by floors. When the lines were being enforced riding the "floors 9 to 11 only" elevator usually involved stopping at several floors on the way up and then stopping at just about every single floor on the way down. I doubt any other elevator had such long round trip.

[D]

NDK is a great con as it always is and kudos to the staff for helping to create that great con.

However, I have to say that I was extremely upset at booking a room almost as soon as the room reservations went up, booking an interior balcony with two beds and getting to the hotel to check in early Thursday to find out that we had been given a single bed room and an outdoor balcony.  If you are going to continue to use the 3rd party booking site (which I would absolutely rather you go back to us booking through the Marriott site) you need to make sure that it is VERY clear what it is we are getting when we book it.  My group was not the only reservation that had this happen to them, so I think it a rather widespread issue.

Also, insofar as the costume contest line goes: we understand that things happen and set up takes longer than you intended and you have to start late.  However, PLEASE do not start moving the line until you are absolutely sure that you are going to be seating us.  When the line moves forward, you cannot back it up again - that line is way too long.  So when you move us forward, we get squished together, then you force us against the wall so as not to block traffic and all that does is cause us to overheat because we are packed like sardines.  Please wait until you are sure you are ready for us so we can breathe. ^^;;;;  If we have to camp out in our original spots in line for an extra 30 min, we won't care - especially if you send a staffer down the line to just let us know you're running late and you will seat us as soon as you're ready.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU people who wanted to hug me and asked and then were careful when I asked you to be - I love you all and would love to keep hugging you XD  I really appreciate that courtesy that has been lacking at NDK and you helped make my con!  I'm always happy to give hugs when asked and when people are careful, so I cannot tell you how much I appreciated that.  THANK YOU!!!!

Also - while I love the fact that the autographs were moved to make room in the con center - putting them up on the 2nd floor wasn't the best idea, in my opinion.  It was difficult to get to our rooms, heated up the hallway, not to mention if we had slept in or tried to get to bed a bit early, the noise level was enough to get through in our room.  If you do continue to keep the autographs upstairs (as I can't offer a better suggestion, unfortunately, so I fully expect it to stay there) please do not schedule any autographs or allow people to line up Sunday morning until noon as it made check out a lot more difficult than it needed to be as there wasn't room to bring our luggage out.  For people standing in those lines PLEASE be respectful of the fact there are people in those rooms.  No, it doesn't mean that you have to whisper, but please don't spread out of the line so we can get to and from our rooms.  If you do step out of line a bit, please keep aware of the hall around you so you can move out of the way of those using the hallway to get to and from the rooms.  

Coschess I had a LOT of fun with.  Yeah, there were some issues, but you guys recovered well and I highly enjoyed the unscripted let's just play chess idea.  One suggestions (which I completely know you guys had a script and this info was in the script and you guys were improvising, and therefore wouldn't have had) but placing stickers on the chess board you are playing from on stage for the board squares would be awesome so there's less time spent trying to figure out how to give us directions and more time to play chess. XD  I'll make my other feedback in the coschess thread when it goes up, though.

Masq audio was atrocious.  However, it happens.  The fact that staff has already discussed how to keep that from happening again is awesome, THANK YOU.  The fact that most of the contestants who had their audio messed up just took it and ran with it was awesome THANK YOU.  However, please take 5-10 minutes to try to troubleshoot the audio if it messes up again and don't have anyone present their skits or walk-ons while you're trying to fix it.  And if it cannot be fixed, please announce this to the audience as we will be a lot more understanding when we know what's going on and the contestants can be a little more prepared to improv on stage.

NDK was great as always and the staff was great.  I look forward to another great year!

[Jinnie]

However, the ONLY problem I had was dealing with staff members and volunteers. Many of them were rude, and didn't know what was going on. As a result, their mistakes caused many others, including myself to suffer.

I'm very disappointed to hear this. We pride ourselves on our friendliness and throughout the weekend I had the pleasure of watching fellow staffers go the extra mile for attendees numerous times. After all, we're all here to have fun and enjoy Japanese culture. I would be greatly interested to hear of specific instances where you experienced this treatment so we can ensure it doesn't happen again.

As a side note, I'm really enjoying the constructive comments and kind staff praise that I'm seeing in this thread. Thanks, everyone! 

Two more complaints I have; the Marriott is incredibly understaffed during NDK. 3 tellers for an NDK convention is unreasonable, room service and needs are SLOW. (Which can probably be determined by being understaffed.)

Actually, I think the pace has more to do with the extraordinary amount of people that are inside the hotel. Every single hotel employee is required to work during NDK weekend (even hotel staff members that are also NDK staffers). It really is an "all hands on deck" situation. That included their front desk - it only has three stations, so all stations were manned throughout the weekend - as well as their kitchen, where the cooks worked much longer than a typical 8 hour day to try to keep up. I think it's the same situation as with the elevators, the more people that are in the hotel, the longer the wait. There's just no way to avoid it sometimes. And speaking of elevators...

There's probably a better way to handle the elevator lines, maybe not separating them by floors. When the lines were being enforced riding the "floors 9 to 11 only" elevator usually involved stopping at several floors on the way up and then stopping at just about every single floor on the way down. I doubt any other elevator had such long round trip.

What suggestions do you have? We're open to any ideas that help with elevators.

[Curucar]

A friend told me this:

"There are indeed still bootlegs in the NDK dealer's room despite their signs saying otherwise. I spotted fake mixed-style headphones selling for $25. First of all- the price was way to low, second- the box looks nothing like the real packaging they use. More information can be found here: http://magnetic-rose.net/2009/12/how-to-spot-fake-mix-style-headphones/"

[Foxdrew]

The main flaw that I noticed was having atrium balcony contest ballots available in bulk at the voting box. That makes it easy for dishonorable people to stuff the ballot box with several votes for their favorite balcony rather than just one like they are allowed. Ballots could be printed on red paper with grayscale (just one example) to make duplication hard, and then only one should be included with each registration packet. Anyone asking for a new ballot because they lost theirs could either be turned away or have their name written down and allowed only one replacement ballot.

Also, there should be a rule against "buying votes" by giving out bribes or incentives or personalized ballots.

I think you could recommend to people heading to or from the 2nd floor of the hotel to use the stairs as much as possible to save on wear-and-tear on the elevators and cut down on the floor-stopping annoyance. I, having a room on floor 2, rarely used the elevator at all after I discovered how much time it saved to use the stairs instead.

I would like to see the year of each convention on badges. I save them all and have had to mark the back with the year, but it seems like it would be an easy touch to add and wouldn't take up much room. Also, to help prevent badge duplicating (if that is an issue), you could add holographic stickers to the weekend badges and/or an image on the back.

Also, the $30 for weekend parking seems like it could have been a bit cheaper. And I hope NDK got a small portion of the $27,000 raked in by the parking lot folks. ($30 x 900 parking spaces = $27,000) It's revenue they would not have had on a typical weekend, so they should owe you a gratitude amount.

I would like to say thank you for adding convention-themed menu choices to the hotel restaurant menu. That was an idea well worth it.

Thank you all for a fun convention.

[colonelmasako]

NDK was run extremely smoothly this year, I'm glad the staff and hotel handled things so well this year despite the HUGE size increase we experienced.

I complain about the parking. I can understand charging for parking on Thursday, but roping off the lot Friday through Sunday is a blatent attempt to increase revenue by having people not park in their lot and forcing us to stay parked all weekend. Luckily I planned for this and didn't have to drive anywhere, but there were plenty of spots not available because they were roped off. I was involved in moving some equipment, had to step out for a bit, and then I found those stupid little white cones and simply moved them because they had no business keeping me from doing my job helping with the con.

I imagine the lost revenue they dont get for paid parking is what is causing them to charge parking next year. $2.00 is fairly reasonable, no complaints there, but if they do charge I do not expect to have roped off parking sections, if I'm paying I should be able to park wherever I want, wherever I can find a spot.

[Dr Kain]

I had a load of fun this year, as it seemed like most of what I had an issue with last year had been fixed.  Thanks for the great work guys.  This was also the most money I ever spent at NDK in the five years I have been going.  It was fun, got to see a lot of great costumes, and the lines were not as bad.  I also think the new autograph area was so much better, but it is still not without issues.  I understand the VAs are on a time limit, but there has to be some way of working around the schedule so that you do not have to be there 2 hours before the session to get an autograph.  Oh yeah, the biggest issue was the hallway though, as it was so hot.  Does the air conditioner just not work there???  Trying to get into the Resident Evil panel was a joke though, as that was one I missed out on thanks to the long lines.  Even the RE cosplayers could not get into the panel thanks to their photoshoot just before it.  That pretty much sucked.  On the other hand, using the smallest rooms for the art showings was a great idea, as it freed up some of the bigger rooms to use for panels, so that was a nice change.  

Overall, I had a lot of fun, almost as much as I did at 2008's NDK, so I definitely look forward to being there again next year (in fact, I just prereged for next year).

[darkshardsyuki]

The main flaw that I noticed was having atrium balcony contest ballots available in bulk at the voting box. That makes it easy for dishonorable people to stuff the ballot box with several votes for their favorite balcony rather than just one like they are allowed. Ballots could be printed on red paper with grayscale (just one example) to make duplication hard, and then only one should be included with each registration packet. Anyone asking for a new ballot because they lost theirs could either be turned away or have their name written down and allowed only one replacement ballot.

Also, there should be a rule against "buying votes" by giving out bribes or incentives or personalized ballots.

Foxdrew, please see the Balcony Decorating feedback thread here:  http://ndkdenver.org/forum/index.php/topic,5091.0.html

The voting was monitored, special paper was also used to prevent duplication. As for “buying votes,” rules are already being put in place for next year that will keep this from happening. This was the first year of the contest, some changes will be made and things will be even better next year.

[Alitain]

I would like to make one suggestion with the elevators.  I wasn't a real fan of separating the elevators by floors mainly because 2-5 tended to be the largest group and grew a long line while the other two elevators sometimes barely had any.  Yet, and this wasn't always the case, the Staff attendee wouldn't let people get onto the other two elevators and instead had to wait in the long line for the 2-5 elevator.

So if you guys are going to continue this next year PLEASE! make it universal among staff to let people get onto the other elevators as long as there isn't a group waiting for them.  Like I said this wasn't always the case, but sometimes it was so either there was no set guideline for staff, or some staff were just more understanding than others, not sure.

Um, and I know the stairs were sorta open during the weekend and this was the first year I ever took the stairs, which was okay since I was only on the 4th floor.  Anyway I know that generally the stairs aren't used due to fire hazard, especially since some costumes could cause congestion.  But I think having the stairs as another avenue would help the elevators out, like when the middle elevator broke down temporarily.  Is there any way to maybe have at least one staff member or volunteer whatever to work the stairs, keep things going smooth?  Maybe not the whole weekend but during some more busier times possibly?