TF Con 2014 reviews/ Report

[jtkv]

On Saturday at about 3pm, at the sales table in the side isle, a buyer was continually yelling at the seller:
Give me my money back. This is a knock-off!!!
Until security was called in and I am not sure what happened after... the noise did stop though...

[FEZaid]

I have a headache after 4 days of fun.

Mission. Accomplished.

[The 12th Prime]

A great show and good to see all the regular peeps, meet some new ones and get to know better those I have seen for years and never really spoke to much. The con felt very huggy this year, lol. Maybe I should post the hugs in the hauls threads too.

I didn't really get to as many panels as I wanted or circle the dealer room endlessly. I spent a lot of time talking to a few of the dealers, which was quite enlightening learning about their backgrounds, etc. I think at the end of the day if we remember that we're all people and be chill things will go great.

One suggestion I will make is if at all possible eliminate or minimize tables for the dealers. Offer an incentive if a dealer has a booth kind of set up, I'm not sure if there is an actual rental fee for using the tables from the hotel but if there is it might save some peoples some money all around.

I really liked the booth style set up Kal and his buddies at Premier Toys had. It was like walking into a store (music playing too) and I really enjoyed not being in traffic or having people behind me or trying to get past or push me while I looked around. I think a set up like this will give the con lots of room for growth with out having to leave it's location. They also had sweet deals on those Impossible Toys Tetra Jets for $20 each for the last 4 Dirge, Ramjet, Thrust and Sunstorm. I have his card so I'll give him a shout and pick a few of those bad boys up.

Other than that an awesome time once again.

[Robimus]

Booths are great, but eliminating single tables would make it impossible for smaller collector oriented vendors to afford to set up.

[Knockout]

I don't think they mean remove the single tables, just give each dealer equal space to do as they liked. But make sure dealers don't overpower each other. Or try to keep similar tables together. Maybe put booth like tables along the walls and single tables in the centre.

[QuadESL63]

This is my first year as a dealer who tried to off-load some of my collection. Overall I have a great time busy selling and talking to people. Even Protoman bought a TF Kre-O book from us! How cool! Bought only a handful of things because I didn't have time to walk around - good thing for my wallet I suppose? You guys who organized this have done a good job! I don't know if things can be done better but I have two suggestions:

(1) I got overpowered by one of my neighbours with big black wire partitions/wall. I don't know if this is possible but instead of using tables to mark the area can we use tapes on the floor? Or may be some ground rules on how tables/booths/etc. are setup? I'm not looking at restricting others' creativity on how things are displayed but like others have mentioned each dealer should have equal space. I have seen some big dealers (e.g. A3U, TFSource, etc) that didn't overshadow the others so something can be done. I know we are bounded by the size of the dealer room but may be this is something that can be looked at next year?

(2) The cargo elevator is just horrible. I got stucked, twice, and one time it was in the dark on the Sunday morning (ok may be I shouldn't stepped onto a dark elevator car ). Can we have the hotel staff(s) to man the thing at least before the dealer room is opened?

I will be back (as a dealer).

[Malwave]

there's way too many pros to list, so I'll just list one or two cons.



1) The elevators broke. I dunno who had an elevator party in between the times I rode it, but having 1 of 3 lifts working on the Sunday was a lil annoying

2) The bar seemed a bit more swamped this year than years previous. I think I waited a good 30-45 minutes before Bruticus82 stuck his head into the kitchen to get us some actual service. Once we got it, it was fine, but that still tweaked us a bit.

[justprime]

Same thing Happened Saturday after the show caught between floors had to climb the wall to get out , really should be someone from the hotel staff there... this thing has been troublesome for previous cons and still is not right the staff should be dealing with this,.. matanance issue (micro/magnetic pickup for the safty switch) before somebody gets hurt,.. ended up we had to have someone top floor pushing against the doors from the outside so we could get it to travel,.. uncool and unprofessional not to mention unsafe,... also just to mention the back fire escape /exit doors were locked (Why.... fire escape... not legal) or we would have hand bombed the boxes down that way instead of the eleavator aggrivation again a staff member could have overseen this as well, line for the autographs I though was a better place than going down stairs liked the athenticity card for the signatures made the 20 easier to swallow the line however needed a barrier to stop peolpe from cutting trough and also pushing there way into the line as one lad did ,.. just let him go,.. no sence in making an issue but his mum should have better sence as she was with him not even an "is this the end of the line" question, no dam manners... again a roped off area to direct the folks traveling in both directions would have stopped this confusion other than that thought it was a good con

[edvc520]

It was my first year attending the Tfcon..
The impression I had was.. it was a flea market.
I have not read up on it, just saw my friend posted about it on facebook; so i decided to make a trip with my son.
I was expecting more of a "exhibition" type of convention like a car show or fan expo where I would see announcements of new toys.
Never the less, I did enjoy it, and have bought a few new toys.

[FreedomGundam]

Originally Posted by edvc520

It was my first year attending the Tfcon..
The impression I had was.. it was a flea market.
I have not read up on it, just saw my friend posted about it on facebook; so i decided to make a trip with my son.
I was expecting more of a "exhibition" type of convention like a car show or fan expo where I would see announcements of new toys.
Never the less, I did enjoy it, and have bought a few new toys.

You didn't attend the panels? That's where all the cool information is given.
The dealer room is just for buying/selling.