I am not one to do a rant piece. It's just not MY personal style. I try to find the silver lining in everything and now as I look back, this experience wasn't as bad as I thought it was, but in the moment, it was a bit hard to deal with.
{sorry for the lack of pictures!}
On preview night I happened to walk by the Lightspeed Fine Art Booth and see that Matt Smith was going to be doing a photo op! I about lost it! I stopped and just pointed and the guy was like can I help you? YES! He pointed me towards the back and I got all the info I needed.
The Hunny took The Gamer Geek's money and went back to the booth first thing on Thursday morning. It was $100 for two of us to be in a picture at 1:30pm on Saturday and get one print. Since it was SDCC and when will we ever see Matt Smith again, we decided to do it!
Come Saturday at 1pm we arrive at the booth to PURE CHAOS! The line up against the wall near the booth is capped and the walk way around the booth is packed with people trying to figure out what is going on. I find out that they are handing out raffle tickets. But have NO idea what that means. Neither did the volunteers. We soon find out that Friday's photo op didn't happen and both Friday and Saturday ticket holders are trying to get queued up.
Today's monologue is called "White Girl Crying at Comic Con b/c Her Matt Smith Photo Op Was Cancelled." #SDCC2014
— lindsay ehrhardt (@raptorlindsay) July 25, 2014
@LSFineArt Hopefully planning will be better next year. Matt Smith photo op was the most chaotic experience I've had in four years of SDCC.
— Joey Harris (@realjoeyharris) July 29, 2014
@thenerdygirlie and there was no way I could do a 130 photo. Plus, the company running it was a disaster. Took an hour to get a refund
— lindsay ehrhardt (@raptorlindsay) July 29, 2014
@thenerdygirlie They were so unorganized too! I tried to get one with John Barrowman, was told to come in 30 min but he had left already
— Ally Leigh (@Shadeslayer909) July 29, 2014
24 comments:
"THIS IS NOT A LINE!!!" As one volunteer kept yelling at us! Its already cray cray on the floor..but ya they should of known it was gonna be hectic...Matt Smith was PERFECT!!! Worth the chaos..id do it again,my photo is the best souvenir from SDCC and I saw you and your magnificent dress in all the madness!!!
Well at least the picture came out great and Matt Smith was amazing! Don't think a lot of people (certain volunteers included) understand just how much planning needs to go into these types of events so that everything goes smoothly.
EEeesh. What a mess :(
Sorry you had to go through all of that, but I'm super happy you got a great shot with Matt.
Ugh! What a crappy experience!! I hated how some of the events like that were run this year. Very sloppy and difficult to understand what was happening!
I couldn't agree with you more. When I ran into you at the booth, I was about at my wits end too! My understanding is that they had to change their line plan because the fire marshal wouldn't let people line up in those big entry ways like they had in previous years. That's why Funko was such a mess too.
AWW Ashley, it was so hard, but I'm so glad Matt was happy and accommodating! I wanna see YOUR picture!! xo
YES thank you Mia! Hope you got home quickly :) xo
Meli, it was NOTHING like meeting EW. That was perfect. This was crazy! But at least the picture is nice :) Thank you! xo
Sorry we had to meet under those circumstances! LOL Hope your photo is great! Would love to see it!! xo
Oh man that sounds terrible and makes me appreciate how organized NerdHQ's photo ops were even more! Glad Matt was as delightful as expected and that your photo turned out great regardless though. <3
Ugh, this sounded like the line of doom! Hopefully, the company will learn from this year mistakes & work towards something better! I'm glad it worked out for you both in the end. The picture looks amazing!!
Anika, thank you! He was amazing, wish it could have been a bit longer interaction time but you know how it goes!! xo
Usagi, he was great and so happy it happened, just wish they can learn from mistakes! xo
This is how it is every year at Seattle's Emerald City Comicon-and being that it's smaller, they should be better....but they aren't.
I did LSFA during my first SDCC for "Spike" from Buffy and it was just as crazy then! It's a shame they can't get it together!
I had a horrible experience with Lightspeed last year... They changed a time for a photo op I had paid for and I told them I couldn't make the new time (I had Nerd HQ tix) so I said no biggie just do a refund and I'll try again another time. They were total jerks. Said they couldn't do a refund "because it wasn't their money to refund" as if they don't profit from these photo/signing ops.
Everyone claimed they didn't know what was going on and I had to talk to someone else... I think I they finally gave in and did the refund because I was being a very loud pain in the butt ;)
Just very obvious they are only there to make money... Not to provide a fan experience.
WOW this is extremely enlightening! Thank you for the comment and I will never give them my money again!
B, wow are they really this clueless!! xo
Good for you Lisa! They deff are in it for the money not the fans, I will now give all my money to Nerd HQ who are there for the fans!! xo
I wonder if this was the same company that was doing photo ops for Wizard World. I volunteered at Philadelphia CC this year and some of the WW employees were telling me that on Saturday they way oversold the photo ops/autograph passes for Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, and Norman Reedus and that the lines were ridiculous and had no order. Someone said that while Matt was signing autographs he was being very gracious but then someone behind him said "Ok, time to star power signing." I also heard from a few people that even though the floor closed at 7PM Saturday, people were there until after 9PM trying to get their printed photos and that Norman Reedus was there until 11PM signing autographs. I don't know how much is actually true since I was hearing this after the fact but based on the chaos it could be the same company.
I was told to come at 1 also but talked to other people who were told by the Lightspeed people to come at other, earlier times, so I went a bit early to check it out. Many people had come "early" (some of whom had been told to do so by various Lightspeed people) and were told there was "no line yet". Since they weren't supposed to mill around they quietly formed an orderly line against the wall. It was pretty long when I got there, but orderly and and calm, and nice.
There was one guy trying to do as his bosses told him, and then I guess one of the bosses at Lightspeed in particular who went ballistic and basically started screaming at everyone. He yelled, "you are NOT IN LINE" and decided to go ahead and make his own line out of the people who were then crowding around him trying to figure out what was going on. Which was, like, hundreds of people it seemed to me. He randomly pointed at people and made us get up against the wall, shoulder to the wall, nose up against the person in front of us. If you didn't take off your backpack, or tried to step out a tiny bit, you would be thrown out. All of this was to people who had "followed the rules" and by the way, paid $100 EACH for a photo op or an autograph. The line was doubled around so that those of us squished against the wall were hemmed in. It did not take long before I began to feel unwell.
I was with my cousin and my 9 year old daughter. They screamed indiscriminately at us for about an hour while we stood so close, the guy behind me was right up in my business. It was worse than any drill sergeant in any movie I've seen. Seriously. At a 9 year old who was holding up well and trying hard to do what they said, although she was quite shocked to be treated like that and pretty scared at some points. I was very close to leaving.
Then they decided that line was for photo ops, which was lucky for us as we had that particular ticket, and the poor folks who had stood there patiently enduring all this who had autograph tix had to come back later. There were other things too, I won't go into it all here. Suffice to say, it was a MESS MESS MESS MESS MESS and was sort of heartbreaking. Matt was super sweet and I think we were with him about 3-5 seconds? Maybe? If it weren't for him and the one nice lady at the booth, well it's hard to imagine going back to them no matter how much reason they had to be stressed out. I did hear they were selling tickets right up to the end too. Yeesh.
WOW! I am so sorry that your daughter had to go through that! So sad. Thank goodness Matt was on his A game, but $20 a second is too much for me to handle. Thank you so much for the comment!! xo
Lightspeed Fine Arts has been going to SDCC since at least 1998 (probably earlier under some other name) so it's not like they can claim "Well it was our first time..." SDCC 2013 they sold tickets for a photo op with Matt Smith and then claimed he was "ill" and canceled. The photo op was to be on Saturday 2013. I don't believe they ever had any kind of agreement with him then and I'm not sure they had an agreement with him for Friday 2014. I almost feel like they just took money on the off chance they might be able to work something out with Matt Smith at the 11th hour. I'm sure this is Lightspeed's opportunity to make money. I mean, who is shelling out money for fan art from Babylon 5 in 2014? I would hope they would change their policy but by next year, fans will have long forgotten this situation and it will happen all over again. Maybe not with Matt Smith, but with some popular celebrity and hearts will be broken all over again.
Thank you so much for this awesome comment. I know that next year I will still remember and hopefully I can warn people then of the situation. It is completely unprofessional and for $100 not an experience I will let them ruin again.
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