In September 2021, I released a video on my channel, The Attendee, on my thoughts on an anime convention, AniManga. I saw a lot of complaints about the convention so I decided to look more into it. After some research, I came to a conclusion and decided to make a video on it! The video is available here:
If you don’t want to watch the video, this blog will be a written version! It will be slightly edited to fit the blog format.
Events will never be perfect. No one can make an event that will make every single attendee come out of it happy. There are things that happen that are out of the control of both the show management and venue. But that also means there are events that were badly managed such as the infamous DashCon and Fyre Festival. From July 30th – August 1st 2021, an anime convention held in Ontario, CA called AniManga and the reviews were mostly negative. So what happened in this event? Well in this blog, we’ll discuss just that.
So quick disclaimer. I have never been to any Animanga event, not even the one that we are going to discuss. I’ve also never been or worked with Animanga nor work or been to the Ontario Convention Center. Everything discussed here are theories based on my knowledge working in the events industry, primarily convention centers.
I watched quite a few vlogs from people who went to Animanga 2021. A lot of my friends also attended the event and read their thoughts on it as well as saw some pictures of their experience. It’s not the same as experiencing the event myself but I think I got a pretty good idea of what went down expecially seeing different points of views.
The biggest complaint I’ve seen across the board is how long the line was to get into the venue. Now Animanga is not the first event to have what is now dubbed “LineCon.” Anime Expo has been notorious for having long lines just to pick up badges. There was one year when the line was so long that it wrapped around surround neighborhoods. And they’re not alone. Majority of conventions I’ve been to had long lines. Even back in 2007 when I went to Anime Expo for the first time at the Long Beach Convention Center, the line was long and under brutal summer SoCal sun. The only ones I remember lines not being long were events held in hotels. As for Animanga, well, it wasn’t any better. There were tweets from people claiming they waited 2 hours to get in. Some got in line at 10AM which was when the exhibit hall was supposed to open, only to still be in line at around 2PM.
And the wait wasn’t the worst part. That weekend, Ontario, CA hovered in the high 90s, almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit. There were reports that ambulances had to take a few people away due to heat stroke. I remember in high school, all sports were canceled when temperatures reach that high. To stand out in the sun for 4 hours in the head is ridiculous.
So what happened here?
There could be a few reasons as to why this happened and again these are all speculations based on my knowledge of the events industry. One potential reason is that the event didn’t hire enough people to process attendees and/or didn’t hire enough security at the door. Now this would be the responsibility of the Animanga show management team. For people processing the attendee badges, this is usually done by the show’s employees or volunteers. If they know how many people will be attending each day based on the ticket sales, they should be able to hire enough people to process them. In terms of security, this differs from venue to venue. It’s very common for the venue to require the event to hire an outside security company.
Depending on the venue, the show management can choose from any outside security company. Some venues are contracted to specific security companies that show management has to choose from. Now I don’t know Ontario Convention Center’s protocol in terms of security but I’m going to assume it’s an outside security company. This is based on two venues I used to work at. The last two venues I worked for required an outside security company. When I attended events at the LA Convention Center in Los Angeles and even McCormick Place in Chicago, I recognized that they used outside security companies and this is usually at the expense of the event not the venue. In most cases, the event has to submit to the venue that a contract has been signed with a security company. In other cases, if the venue contracts with the security for a specific event they will bill it back to show management. Typically the venue’s security’s purpose, like the actual employee on the venue’s payroll, is to just take care of the building like making sure no one is sneaking in the back area or whatever. They’re not really responsible for checking if an attendee has their badge. That is more on the event’s security.
There is a great video from TwistedDisaster who talked a lot about the issues with security. I guess they were pretty strict with food coming into the venue but not having that same energy for actual security issues, like a weapon’s check. There was on vlog from Lauren Neuzeth where they weren’t even checking for badges at the door. So basically anyone could have walked in without a badge. The vlog from Lunchbox5930 showed that people at the badge pick up didnt even ask for his email showing which badge he purchased. They just took his word forr it.
In terms of food, it’s pretty common for venues to not allow outside food and beverage. All venues I’ve worked for had this rule. However, I’ve never heard it being this strict as described by TwistedDisaster and other attendees. Venues have typically been lenient with water bottles and sealed snacks. I’ve personally brought in granola bars and trail mixes to multiple events before. One venue I worked for even has a water bottle filling station at the drinking fountain. Typically they’ll be strict on things like bringing in a cooler full of food and drinks. Catered outside food is also usually not allowed as well but just based on what a lot of people said, it seems a little too strict.
We are still in a midst of a pandemic, whether you believe it or not. According tot he Animanga website, their FAQ page states, “Yes, attendance at Animanga Ontario 2021 as been reduced to 5,000 attendees per day which is less than 50% normal capacity if that number is based on the entire venue or based on the spaces they are contract to so let’s take a look at that.
In the video, I go into some math regarding the spaces and their capacity but I don’t want to go through that here. Feel free to watch the video on that but here is the conclusion:
So taking into account structures, exhibitors, artist alley tables and the increase of 28 square feet per person as recommended by the IAEE, the total number of the event should have had per day was 2,903. That is way less than the 5,000 listed on their website. My guess was the 5,000 was listed for empty spaces or noted for theater set up. The attendee cap itself was way more than what the space should have been able to hold, taking into account the pandemic.
Not only that, but there were reports that they even oversold that cap. TwistedDisaster noted in her review that they ran out of Saturday badges and were giving out Friday badges. And not only that but they weren’t even checking for badges at the front door and that anyone could have walked in for free, you know after waiting in a long line as we saw in Laura’s vlog. The overcrowding could have definitely contributed to the long lines we discussed earlier. Now for events like these, the show management usually have have to report to the venue how many tickets were sold. Based on those numbers, both venue and show management can adjust staffing on both ends. The venue, with the help of fire marshal, will usually tell show management the number of attendees to cap it at based on the event’s floor plan.
I can’t tell where the mismanagement or miscommunication of all this was. Did Animanga know to cap it at a smaller number? Were they told by the venue that that 5,000 was ok? Or did Anima know to cap it around 3,000 but still kept selling tickets?
Events are difficult to plan together. There are so many different moving pieces that have to be managed and planning usually starts months and months in advanced.
People seemed to have enjoyed Animanga 2019 but there’s on thing that I think may have contributed to this disaster. Animanga had planned and expected to be at the Fairplex Expo Center in Pomona, CA. This was where Animanga 2019 was held, where 2020 was supposed to be held and where they were planning to hold it in 2021.
If you don’t know, the Fairplex is a very large area with multiple event spaces from an expo hall to sports facilities and more. Again I’ve never been to any Animanga event but in a tweet from 2019, they were expecting their 2020 event to use 110,000 square feet of the expo hall. I assume this is the same as their 2019 event what they expected for 2021. The expo hall at the Fairplex alone is 20,000 square feet larger than the exhibit hall and ballroom combined at the Ontario Convention Center.
The last time Animanga tweeted that the event was going to be held at the Fairplex was April 17, 2021. One month later, after only tweeting one more time about ticket prices on May 18, 2021, they tweeted out that they were moving to the Ontario Convention Center. This was because the Fairplex was still going to be used as a vaccination site during the time of the convention.
After trying to find a new venue then contracting with Ontario, Animanga only had half of may, all of June and all of July to downsize the event to a smaller venue. I think is this where a lot of problems originated. They probably sold all their booths and artist alley tables and sold way more tickets than Ontario could have held. You can see that after they announced they’re moving to Ontario, there was one tweet sharing ticket prices and on retweet sharing family tickets from an Inland Empire Yelp Twitter account. They basically avoided advertising ticket sales as well as artist alley and booth sales after the change of venue.
The event was doomed the moment they had to move to a different venue.
But that is just my thoughts on it! I hope you enjoyed the read. Please take moment to watch the video if you want to get more into the capacity calculations and I’ll see you next time!
Content By Sheena 