Yeah the AA at AX was terrible regarding ventilation this year, I think they'll improve next year though.

I already got my table for next year, so I damn sure hope so! I heard people were fainting from the heat and swimming through the crowd of standing and sitting people to get into AA (as an artist) was just miserable.

People have been saying AX will get better for the last 4 years and they have yet to provide. That's why I completely wrote the event off from going ever again. But hey maybe they won't fire all of their tech staff right before con again. Who knows.

That sucks! Let's burn down the con hall.

I'm just gunna stick to smaller cons for a while. Califur was a great time and I want to experience that again.

now I wanna hear some animecon horror stories

They kept the gaming area open all night (which is in the same room as AA) so I didn't trust my stock of prints to be there since LAST year someone stole a bunch of stuff from AA...so everyday I carted in my heavy box of prints and things from the parking garage and through the hall.
None of the staff knew what was up. Like, no one. EVERY SINGLE DAY they would usher me and my artist friends to take a different path of entry. So one day we might have an easy 5 minute walk through the hall to an elevator...the last day we had to take this path with a shit ton of stairs with all of our luggage for closing down our booth....took us 20 minutes to get to our table.
There was an outbreak of strange bug bites in the B area. People said they might have been fleas...but I walked by one girl at the far end of our row and her poor legs were covered in these little bug bites. Must have been very uncomfortable but I thank the higher power watching over us that the bites didn't spread to our end.
There was also a flood. And 0 ventilation until the last day.

oh god, the staff ignorance comment brought back memories of day 1 staff not having any idea where AA badge pickup was. We got directed to go between the first and second floors at least 5 times by STAFF saying it was on the other level.

Yeah, that happened to me too...and when I got there, there had been a mix up with my badge. I had originally purchased a "AA helper" badge because I thought I had missed out on a table, but they reopened table reg after about an hour and I managed to snag one. I emailed them about canceling my 1st $70 badge and explained why i got it in the first place, they said they refunded. I didnt get refunded and they only had my name at reg as a 'aa table helper' so I wasn't supposed to have the $350 table that I know I paid for!
Luckily the guys working at the aa reg were nice enough to hear me out and make the switch. It's still $70 down the toilet but at least I got my table.

Honestly, I don't blame the volunteers for not knowing things. I know a few people who worked staff at AX for a long time and as of late they have been constantly changing things. One year things are at one location and then the next they just decide to arbitrarily change the location of registration ect. Any wonder their staff doesn't know where something is when you tell them one thing and then there is little to no consistency on things. I understand things need to change based on size of the con but they shouldn't be throwing staff out there without even a map to be honest and it wouldn't kill them to print those out either just for staffers.

The volunteers aren't getting paid either. I don't blame them for being misinformed. It's the organizers fault and whoevers at the front collecting money from tickets, vendors, and artists. They really don't give a shit. They just want the money and anything that goes wrong they'll apologize for but won't actually do anything to fix it. This always happens when something gets too big and popular.

Were you there for the year they fired all of their technical staff two days before con for no reason and then left people outside in 100 degree weather for eight hours. To which their twitter was a celebratory "we passed out 100 water bottles." Literally I watched staff give water bottles to everybody at the start of the line IN THE FUCKING SHADE and then all of the people in the sun got the wonderful treatment of the occasional water bottle being chucked at them, or you know watching as people carted in the water bottles. They also got on everybody for doing friendpasses while in line that stupid 3ds thing. But frankly as I told my friend they can fuck off with that shit I've been in this line for eight hours.

Basically, Anime Expo's life is amazing it has rapidly reduced itself from one of the greatest cons I've been to and enjoyed to the absolute levels of garbage. I mean it shows something when people literally don't give a shit that others are making fake badges. :|