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.

Comments

Re:Oversold?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are doubting, but that's a good thing. No need to lie about it

Follow the ticket links on their page and you'll end up here: http://www.ticketmaster.com/rhode-island-comic-con-sunday-providence-rhode-island-11-02-2014/event/01004B9BF599505C?artistid=1743904&majorcatid=10005&minorcatid=105&tm_link=artist_msg-0_01004B9BF599505C

That ticket is for Sunday. All the Saturday tickets end in dead ends, but it's Sunday now so I don't know if they turned them off or if they expired due to the date. The main site also still lists a few packages for sale. If the tickets mention that only a certain number of people can be at the convention at the same time and that having a ticket does not mean you will get in, then fine. If not, then they really screwed up and should have never sold more than the capacity amount of tickets.

Re:People are desperate for culture

[lucm]

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.

Like those rave parties, when one had to bring a blue sock to a specific parking attendant to get the address of the convenience store behind which a midget dressed like Mickey Mouse sold a map to the event that could only be seen under uv light.

What did they expect?

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Rhode Island is tiny.
Next time maybe they'll have it in a larger state.

First hand report

[Okian Warrior]

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.

Re:First hand report

[grelmar]

20+ years ago I put myself through U working in nightclubs, and had to deal with prickly fire marshals on a semi regular basis. Time marches on, but people don't change. That wasn't a fire marshal being ignorant and inflexible. [i]That sounds exactly like a fire marshal who wasn't sufficiently bribed.[/i]

Re:First hand report

[hey!]

That sounds exactly like a fire marshal who wasn't sufficiently bribed.

Well, you're probably joking but we are talking about Rhode Island, the most notoriously corrupt state in the Northeast, after maybe Pennsylvania. Some say that on a per capita basis it's the most corrupt state in the country.

I had a colleague whose father was an electrician in Rhode Island. When he saw what the state was paying to maintain the lights on a bridge near his house he figured he could easily do it for less. The contract came up to bid and when he found out the amount he'd have to pay in bribes, he realized he couldn't afford to do it.

I personally like Providence quite a bit. I think Federal Hill is great,Waterfire is a blast, and many times we drove down to take our kids to the zoo or the Children's Museum. But I wouldn't do business in the state. It's not worth the hassle.

Firemans logic

[M0HCN]

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).

Re:tipping point

[TubeSteak]

Rhode Island is neither a road nor an island. Discuss.

The original Rhode Island settlers (kicked out of Massachusetts because of their religious beliefs) settled on an island that is now called Aquidneck Island.