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RE: Emerald City Comic Con CANCELLED!!!
I've been to Megacon every year (except one) since 1999. I haven't bought tickets or reserved a hotel room yet this year. I plan to go if they don't cancel but it's hard to imagine that if they are cancelling (or postponing) one show that it won't trickle on down the line. MegaCon is only a little over a month away. I'm doubtful coronavirus will be gone by then.
On the bright side, MegaCon isn't run by ReedPop. I learned to hate them after the last Star Wars Celebration in Orlando...
That’s a shame about hating Reed Pop. I’ll say that as an exhibitor, they are a pleasure to deal with. Unlike the crooks under the Wizard World shows.
I've never been an exhibitor so I don't have that perspective. And admittedly my convention-going experience has been somewhat limited (MegaCon every year for a couple of decades, 3 different Star Wars celebrations in Orlando, and a couple of much smaller conventions). What I can say is, out of all of those, the last Star Wars Celebration in Orlando (run by Reed Pop) was pretty miserable from a fan perspective and by far the worst convention I've been to.
The problem is how they run the panels. With MegaCon (and the two Star Wars Celebrations I attended previously), you get in line an hour or so before even the biggest panels and you usually don't have a problem getting in. With Star Wars Celebration (and my understanding is that it is with other Reed Pop run conventions also), you have to line-up, often the night before, to get a wrist-band, in order to line-up again nearer to the panel time to hopefully get a decent seat. They seem to think this is a good way of doing things but from a fan perspective, I can assure you it is not.
I've heard this complaint about other Reed Pop run shows so I don't think this was unique to Celebration Orlando. I don't think the issue was attendance which was ~70,000 for Celebration Orlando. MegaCon has about ~100,000. That was a few years ago so maybe things have changed. That experience was bad enough that I won't attend any convention that does things that way again (though I guess if panels isn't your thing you probably wouldn't care).
Oh, and I almost forgot. The first day I attended Celebration Orlando in 2017, I got there about an hour before the doors opened. It was after lunch before I got in the door. Why? (rhetorical). I mean, with MegaCon I pretty much walk right in (any wait is minimal at any rate). The next day I got there a few hours early so as not to miss half a day waiting to get in. Only because I had already bought tickets. It's like they just don't know how to manage crowds and that's not a good trait for a company in their line of business. Did I mention I hate Reed Pop? :)
It looks like the previous two Star Wars Celebrations in Orlando were also run by Reed Exhibitions but they did things differently then. And better.
I don't think I've been to a Wizard World show so I don't know how it compares.