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Rhode Island Comic Con Oversold, Overcrowded
New submitter RobertJ1729 writes The Rhode Island Comic Con (RICC) is in the middle of a complete meltdown as hundreds are turned away at the door or denied reentry due to the event organizers selling far more tickets than the venue can accomodate. The Providence Journal reports that "According to Providence Fire Chief David Soscia, too many people were being let in at a time and the organizers were not correctly counting them. That led to over-congested areas in the building which has a maximum capacity of 17,000 people." Meanwhile the Rhode Island Comic Con Facebook page is being flooded with comments from angry attendees describing chaos both inside and out of the convention center. RICC initially posted, "Hello RICC fans! WE ARE NOT OVERSOLD!," and promised to honor tomorrow tickets sold for today. That post generated several hundred angry comments before eventually being deleted (though it survives in part on RICC's twitter feed). Commenters are alleging that RICC is deleting negative Facebook comments. Users are tweeting at #ricomicconfail2014 to vent their frustration.
Comics are stupid, manga is where it's at.
It's only an island, whaddya expect?
Table-ized A.I.
You can always sell more tickets... In fact, they still have tickets up for sale.
I went to the Maker Faire last year and it was insanely crowded. It was the most crowded place I had ever been, hour long waits to get food or do just about anything. I have been to healh and wellness conferences where they charge $1500 for three days and they were extremely well attended. It seems like any bad art or artisinal toothpick festival with beer and parking will be mobbed.
The peak of insanity for all this was the San Francisco Ramen Festival. People stood in line for multiple hours to eat a freakin' bowl of ramen. Just check out this ridiculous reddit thread:
http://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/2b5z1a/at_japantowns_ramen_festival/
Seriously, I've just given up trying to go to events. If it's advertised and doesn't have a huge entrance fee and/or absurdly niche audience it will be a madhouse.
Ever!
RICO Mic Con
They could offer something to those turned away at the door. Do they have a ball pit?
Rhode Island is tiny.
Next time maybe they'll have it in a larger state.
I was *at* the con when this went down, was in the rotunda where the marshal/police were, and listened in on all the conversations. The fire marshal is completely to blame for this, he's an idiot.
To reduce the number of people, the fire marshal ordered anyone leaving the con could not reenter for any reason, and decided that going to the ground floor constituted leaving the con... despite having con functions on the ground floor.
Volunteers and con workers who went to the ground floor to connect with the main desk couldn't get back in, vendors who went to their cars couldn't get back to their stalls, program participants (celebrities with scheduled appearances) couldn't make their appointments, people who had paid $$$ for a photo-op with the celebs couldn't make their appointments, and so on.
I innocently went down the escalator to check out the [ground floor] kids area and was marooned. No jacket, no cell phone, and no car keys to get into my vehicle and it was 'friggin cold outside. I saw one woman who couldn't get back in to her special-needs child, I saw one man who came down for wheelchair and couldn't bring it back up.
A better solution would have been to stop letting new people in, while letting the steady stream of outgoers reduce the number. There was no fire, no emergency, no need to be a complete prick to people who were already at the con.
This was the fire marshal being ignorant and inflexible. He's an idiot.
I imagine representative Hank Johnson (D-GA) is very concerned about the number of people in one place in Rhode Island.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v...
There are counties of some states that are larger than Rhode Island.
San Bernardino County is bigger than Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts combined. You could squeeze in Delaware as well.
What if #8?
"This crowd takes up an area the size of Rhode Island. But thereâ(TM)s no reason to use the vague phrase âoean area the size of Rhode Islandâ. This is our scenario; we can be specific. Theyâ(TM)re actually in Rhode Island."
... my con experiences demonstrated why a managerial class exists.
I wonder what kind of Oreo you get with #ricomicconfail2014.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
As if thousands of angry nerds had suddenly cried out in anguish.
The news readers will have a hay day with this story...
#DeleteChrome
IOW, they're both hot and you want them and you can't have them... so you talk shit about them instead.
So I'm guessing you're about 14, right?
But I just google'd Brianna Wu and she kind of looks like a Grey alien.
Brianna Whu? Never heard of her.
Ezekiel 23:20
That could well actually have been the CORRECT thing to do.....
Don't forget that the fire marshalls job is NOT to be concerned about the paticular event, he is being paid to be constantly asking himself "what if a fire breaks out in the next 5 minutes", can we evacuate in time? Separated people and unavailable car keys rate some way down his priorities!
Large buildings (Like convention centers) have a multi tiered structure of occupancy limits, it is in no way as simple as saying the capacity is 20,000 or whatever.
Typically what you find is that the ground floor has direct escape routes and thus can support a lot of bodies, but that there is a rather tighter limit on total occupancy for floors above ground because these are limited (Sometimes severely) by the available exit stair capacity.
Each floor then has a capacity, and each room has a capacity.
Now the kicker is that it is NOT a case that the number within the room is within capacity makes everything ok, but that ALL of the numbers leading to that room have to be ok.
Add to this that the fire marshall will have seen the Station Nightclub / Great White video nasty, and may well even have been involved in pulling the bodies out, and that he is looking at a conference cente with an uncommon fuel load in it, and I can see a fairly hard line being taken.
My guess is that he saw the numbers on the upper floors well above the available exit capacity from the upper floors even while total building occupancy was below the limit and got the numbers back to a safe level the reasonably fast way, not IMHO unreasonable, and no reason to stop more attendes arriving, as long as they stay on the ground floor (And as long as the ground floor is within capacity limits itself).
Sounds to me like blame probably lies with whoever was running the stewards who should have stopped people heading upstairs once the upper floors number was reached (Any, yes, I know stewarding these things is a pain in the arse), and on whoever did the planning for crowd capacity and occupancy failing to take the upper floor numbers into account.
Were there clearly defined show stop and area clearence procedures in place?
Regards, Dan (Who used to do major events professionally (In europe not the US so the terminology probably varies a bit, but the principles are pretty much universal).
Brianna Whu? Never heard of her.
After reading a few articles written by Brianna Wu she is certainly playing the victim role to the hilt. If she really is the Godzilla of Bitches, as she calls herself, the remarks of "mysognist and sexist" males, presumably, wouldn't bother her. She just comes across as a bitch.
It's actually news for nerds!
We’ve been seeing a lot of people have issues at RICC this weekend and wanted to reach out and extend a discount on tickets to our event to them. YourMiniCon is offering a 10% discount on tickets ordered between now and November 5th. Anyone who purchases a ticket in this timeframe and uses the code “itgetsbetter” during checkout gets the discount, and we do hope that Day 2 of RICC turns out better. Tickets can be purchased from http://yourminicon.com/tickets/
Find us on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/yourminicon
Find us on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/yourminicon
Find us on Tumblr at: http://yourminicon.tumblr.com
Mike Ferreira describes some of the chaos on the Anime Herald:
Some people on Facebook describe the conditions inside the convention center as unsafe. RICC has responded to some of the comments, saying, "There was no mess up. This happens a lot at large events. It is very difficult to predict the turnover flow of patrons. Sometimes, for the safety of all, we need to halt entry to let the crowd thin out." RICC Organizer Steven Perry of Altered Reality Entertainment has been unreachable by media and disgruntled fans.
People are being very supportive of the Fire Marshals who handled the mess. One Facebook user writes, "Fire marshal #9 guarding the Omni North Garage was awesome. Delt with an angry mob through the whole 4 hours." I personally witnessed that marshal do a really great job with a really bad situation. Rhode Island is the site of the worst nightclub fire in US history, and Rhode Islanders understand that the Fire Marshal was acting with restraint and responsibly.
I have not heard about the conditions at the convention center today. They have apparently already sold to capacity but are still selling tickets online.
Obviously the organizers of the the con were insufficiently generous in their "donation" to the "Providence Firefighter's Widow's Support Fund".
The only reason Providence city government exists is as an engine of graft.
Hot? Have you *seen* either of the beasts he named?
There are counties of some states that are larger than Rhode Island.
San Bernardino County is bigger than Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts combined. You could squeeze in Delaware as well.
Counties? Single cities can beat out the whole state in surface area and population.
Use some powder to make yourself a litle pale, rub fingers in dirt to dirty under fingernails real good, dirty hair a little. Smoke joint for some red eye.
Act sick
While standing in line act like you have flu but casually mention you and friend recently got back from safari vacation outside Liberia but you bright own food so you say its just a flu or cold.
Cough
Have friend make Ebola joke...
Watch place clear out.. :-P
Saying "cities" is a real push. The only real city in the US with a larger area is Anchorage Alaska. (I guess Juneau is considered a city as it is the capital but if you go there it is really just a town with politicians and extra land.)