Husband and I bought tickets to Anime Expo this year because there were a few panels we were interested in. We never made it to any panels. Why? LINES FOR EVERYTHING. I am about to go into a long and detailed discussion about how Anime Expo can be improved. Note, I do not work with or for any one associated with Anime Expo. These are my personal opinions about how the event could be improved and better technology solutions to implement. I have attended cons across the US and in Japan and I’m the least satisfied with my experience at Anime Expo.

Ticketing for Anime Expo

We purchased our tickets online a few days prior to the event. The purchase itself was easy through Eventbrite. Digital tickets on our phones in the Eventbrite app were very handy. Both my husband and I went the day before to get our badges (July 3) and didn’t wait more than 30 minutes to get through the line. During the event, the Event Bright tickets did us no good, but could have – as you will see my suggestions below. Day 1 however, is a different story. Ticketing and entry took for ever according to many people. An acquaintance of mine from Disney mentioned her husband and children went and waited three hours to get badges then get in the door. We overheard many people talking about how long it took to get in and three to four hours was average time spent in entrance lines.

The Entrance Lines and entry

There were three entrances and exits to the event. Two on Figueroa and one on Chick Hern Court. The lines in front of the main convention center entrance were massive. The lines by the Staples Center entrance were a little shorter and the Chick Hern Court entrance had the shortest lines. Each entrance required a bag search and a walk through metal detectors. Anime Expo is the only anime convention that deploys metal detectors in the US. The bag searches delayed entry and were extremely slow. I haven’t had my bag as thoroughly searched at the airport or other events. Getting through the line fast meant leaving nothing in your pockets and only taking a tiny bag with only your ID cards, keys, phone and money.

The badges were RFID enabled – just like every badge I’ve had for my job since the 90’s. So after you went through a bag search and metal detectors, you then had to swipe your badge to get in. There were also other areas that required badge in/badge out of to visit.

All of the entry points were outdoors with very little cover from the sun.

Lines for events and panels

Every large room at the convention had an entry line to get in. All the lines were outside and while most had some cover, it was between 80 and 90 degrees each day, so super hot t be outside for a long time. Lines formed for each event and then when the event was scheduled to begin, the people in line were escorted to the room. I’m not a huge fan of lines; they suck some of the fun out of the event and makes it impossible to go see something on a whim. There are much better ways to handle event attendance which I will detail below.

The external lines created choke points in the heat – you couldn’t get easily get through some areas because of lines at food trucks and stalls. It took us 20 minutes to get through this:

The event areas

The dealers room seems more crowded everytime we attend. People are shuffling about without paying attention and stopping in the middle of the isles is common. The isles are just a little too small for cosplayers in full battle armour and regular peeps to move about quickly and easily.

Artists Alley is normally one of my favorite places to visit at any convention. Anime Expo has dedicated more isles to it over the years but the isles don’t accommodate the number of visitors and the number of people who stand and gawk for long periods of time. It was so crowded that you couldn’t really see any artist’s work well unless you fought through the press of sweaty people.

The entertainment hall was a nice break but it was also an area you had to badge in and out of. The hall was open and not super crowded though. Several special events like the Good Smile 1000 Nendoroido exhibit and the Fate/Grand Order US Tour were housed in the hall along with all the card gaming and video game tournaments.

Suggestions for a better Anime Expo

I understand from a marketer and advertiser perspective why some of these issues exist, you want/need the data to better understand attendee behavior so that you can charge your exhibitors higher rates based on what you know about everyone. Some of the issues were generated from a few, very specific decisions made by the convention organizers.

Entrance to the con was congested – part of the congestion was the restriction to three entrances with the extremely heavy security. I kind of understand in today’s overly security conscious culture why they have metal detectors, a lot of events in Los Angeles use them, but in reality there isn’t much trouble to get into at AX. Nerds of the anime bent aren’t very violence prone and even if they do own weapons, we’re all pretty rule abiding bunch. It made people irritable and sweaty to stand in line for hours.

Badging in also took extra time and constrainted the entrance flow. Touching your badge to a scanner isn’t neccessary. If you are trying to stop badge forgers or see who went to what parts of the convention center, there are better ways to do it. The organizers splashed out for RFID badges but not for passive reading, which would have made movement between area more fluid. Passive reading allows people to flow through, into the area instead of making each entrance a drudging line. The convention also could return to QR codes and use high def cameras read the badges – only stopping people who don’t read on the cameras.

The convention team already has a ton of data on each attendee. I was required to provide:

• birthdate
• address
• gender

Even with that information, if you wanted to attend an 18+ event or go to an 18+ area – you had to go to a special place and show ID. An odd move when, at check in, the person prepping your badge should have been able to flag as you as verified 18+. Any event could have a badge scanner to flag minors as “unable to attend.” Again, speeding up the lines and making it a little less onerous for staff and attendees.

The mobile app for Anime Expo

Not sure who developed the mobile app for the convention <from the contact us email address, it looks like aloompa.com>. Since I have made a few mobile apps for the various companies I worked for, I’m pretty opinionated about how they should function. I may put together a separate post about all of my issues with the app but these are the primary problems I had with the Anime Expo app. Before the convention started, the mobile app seemed like a really great resource. At the event, the app fell apart. The AX app was not connected in anyway to the live events, you could not use it get into events, the app displayed the full schedule for the entire event – making users scroll through everyday of the convention schedule to see the day they wanted to check.

Let’s talk about that first and second items – connecting to the live events & using the app to attend. Now, you have to make a log in for Event Brite when you get your tickets in the app. If there was a connection for the Event Brite log ins to the AX app, the app would know that:

1. you have ticket for the convention
2. you are attending for <X> days
3. your age

Theoretically, a user could have signed up for ANY non-paid/ticketed event this way. This is a VERY high level overview of the flow and I’m SURE there are technical limitations BUT…. The in-app schedule, connected to your Event Brite log in, could have acted as a virtual line for each event. Add an event to your schedule and you are added to the virtual queue. If you are under 18, you can’t sign up for an 18+ event. Each event has a “sign in” QR code for people who added each event to their schedule. The volunteers at the door to the event can then scan the code and refuse anyone who doesn’t have a valid scan for the event in their app. No lines needed.

The last one – the full schedule for the event on display for all four days of the convention is the easiest problem to solve. There is a way to detect date and time on a device. you simply remove anything in the schedule display from previous dates and times. At the end of the event, display a “thanks for coming” message to attendees.

One minor nit I have to pick with the app overall was it’s slowness. It took a long time to load information. Not sure if it was a data connection to access the schedule and guest data or if it was just a big app that took a lot of phone resources.