My review of the Fright Night Film Festival/Fandomfest convention

The best thing I can say about this convention, is that it was held in a beautiful hotel.  The Galt House Hotel and Convention Center in Louisville, KY was really nice.  The staff was friendly and helpful, the hotel was clean and in a fantastic location; right on the Ohio river!  The view from our room on the 8^th floor was quite a site to behold.  The convention itself, however, was lacking.  I guess I do have to give them props for one thing, and one thing only; they were able to book Bruce Campbell!  The downside?  He was only there for one day.  And not even the entire day!  I realize he’s a busy guy, but he was only there for a few hours, and with hundreds of people wanting to see him, that really suckedL  So, first things first: our tickets.  The convention heads do not mail tickets out, so we had to get in a long line to pick them up at will call.  (the first of MANY long lines!)  After we got our tickets, we were told to go round the corner and get our VIP bags.  VIP’s paid $150 bucks for their tickets, and here’s what we were SUPPOSED to get: 1 hour early entry all 3 days, VIP horror themed goodie bags, a special VIP badge to wear, special VIP lines for autographs/photo ops, a free autograph from a list of celebs, guaranteed seating for Q&A’s, film viewings, etc, a commemorative color program, and a few other things.  We got to the table where the bags were being given out, and the volunteer said they sold out.  Ok, so you know exactly how many VIP’s you’re going to have, and somehow, the VIP bags sold out??  So she wrote us an IOU, and said they’d be in the next day.  We were leaving the next day, in the afternoon, so we asked when exactly there were supposed to be there?  and she said sometime in the am.  So that was fine, whatever, so then we did a quick once over of the vendor room to see what everyone had.  My friend decided to go ahead and get in line for Norman Reedus’ autograph, so we walked down that way and got in the VIP line.  The volunteer at the door asked us who we wanted to see (as there were several from walking dead and boondock saints in there) and we said Norman Reedus.  He said just a minute, cause there’s a line in there for him, so we waited.  About 2 minutes later, he lets people from the regular line go!  We’re like hey, wait, we’re VIP’s, WE go first!  And he said, “I was told to take from both lines”.  So my friend said, then why the HELL did we pay 150 bucks for a VIP pass??!  And he got all shitty with us and said he was just doing what he was told, and we didn’t have to be there if we didn’t want to follow the rules.  Omg, I almost punched him!  Yes, he needed to take from both lines, but there were just two people in the VIP line, and tons of people in the regular line.  So what he SHOULD have done was let us go, and then like 5 people from the regular line.  What a dick!  Norman Reedus was…interesting.  He was wearing clothes that looked like what he wore on the walking dead, and dark sunglasses.  I think he was on something, but he was SO nice!  When we were done there, we went back towards the goodie bag table, and they had some.  So we turned in our IOU’S and got our bags.  Well, we were severely disappointed in them, to say the least.  The only “horror themed” item was red rubber ice cube trays from fear net, shaped like tombstones and skulls.  Here’s what else we got: the color program, a 15% discount coupon for a deli down the street, a ticket which we still don’t know what it’s for, a mini Louisville slugger bat, a tiny magnifying glass that looks like one of those things they use when making movies (“take one!”),  a coupon for a vendor’s online store, a ticket for a free autograph from a list of 5 celebs (4 of which we didn’t even know) and a note to pick up our free t-shirt.  We asked if this was really the VIP bag, because we thought there might be bags for the regular people too.  And she said no, that’s it.  We didn’t get the dvd with 10 movies on it, or a fright night poster like they promised!  And when we went to get our t-shirts, the nightmare continued.  They had these really nice black t-shirts with the artwork for the show on the table, and we thought we were getting those.  But no, our t-shirts were in a box under the table.  They were white and SO generic.  And they didn’t have my size or my friend’s size!  She’s a small, and I wanted a 4x (cause she said they run small) and all they had was large – 3x!  my friend asked what she was supposed to do with it, and the lady laughed and said she could sleep in it!  Yeah, that’s real funny.  When we looked closer at it, it even had a typo on it!  “fan’s” instead of “fans”.  Spell and grammar check people!  After that, we said forget it, and went back up to the room for the night.  Surely tomorrow would be better, right?  Not so much.  The convention heads decided, somewhat at the last minute, to sell tickets to see bruce Campbell, starting at 8am on saturday.  This is ok, as it is nice when we don’t have to fumble with our money at the table while trying to talk to the celeb of our choice.  Since bruce Campbell was only going to be there for a few hours tho, they said people could buy tickets for a professional photo op OR an autograph from him.  This sucked, because if you get the autograph, you couldn’t take a pic with him, only a pic of him signing your item.  And if you got the photo op, you couldn’t ask him to sign it.  I’ve never been to a convention where you couldn’t take a pic with the celeb!  But anyway, we knew the line to get tickets for him would be nuts, so I planned on getting up early and getting in line.  I got up a half hour before the alarm went off at 5:30, showered, dressed and went downstairs.  Only to find out that people had been there since 1am!  They brought pillows and blankets and slept in line!  So there were about 150 or so people ahead of me.  I called my friend and said, get down here now!!  So we were in line about 2 hours for that.  No VIP lines were allowed for this.  Afterwards, we went back upstairs to finish getting ready, and eat something, then I went back downstairs by myself to tool around the vendor room, and see where sean astin was going to be signing.  I then found out that I had to buy tickets to see sean too!  So I had to go get back in line for that.  I swear I spent most of the time I was at this convention in line!  By that time my friend came down, and we got in line for sean.  The volunteer at this room was a real bitch, and she obviously had no idea what she was doing.  We asked her where the VIP line was for the people in this room, and she didn’t know.  She said, just stand to the right of the other people in line.  So we did.  But she kept letting other people go in front of us!  finally, we said look, we’re VIP’s and we need to go in next.  And she got all shitty about it, but finally let us go in.  as I was talking to sean, my friend was taking pictures of him signing my item, but this chick next to him kept talking to him too.  I’m like, seriously, what the hell?!  She’s in all my pics of him, and I had to crop her out.  After that we got in line again for bruce’s photo op.  we decided to pay the extra 10 bucks for that so we could actually SHOW that we met him.  He was actually on time, which surprised all of us, and looked really snazzy in his black and white suit and shoes.  But again, we got screwed.  All any of us had time to say to him was hi, and goodbye, and then we were bussed out out of the room.  They got our tickets all messed up too, so no one knew whose picture was whose!  When we came back an hour later for them, they were so damn dark, and he and I looked red as lobsters!!  On my friend’s picture, they didn’t even center them in the frame, and it was dark too!  I could have taken a better quality picture with my outdated crappy cell phone!  Hell, a 4 year old could use my phone to take a better picture!  I had to scan the picture to my computer at work, and use a photo editing program to lighten it, and take some of the red out.  we still look really shiny tho:(  40 bucks, completely wasted!  So the reasons I will NEVER attend another fandomfest convention are:  Greedy convention heads, rude, unknowledgeable volunteers, VIP privileges not honored, and money wasted on supposedly “professional” photo ops!  Shame on you people!