Out of Steam

[kevin_standlee]

As we had to cancel out on going to the World Fantasy Convention, Cheryl and I planned to go to Steam Powered, the California Steampunk Convention. Imagine our surprise when I went to the web site this evening to buy memberships "VIP Event Passes" and found them labeled SOLD OUT. Having a convention actually turn people away wanting to give them money is a rare and odd experience for me. I know ComicCon has run out of space at the jaw-dropping 125,000 people, and OryCon at one point had to impose a membership cap while out on Hayden Island, but this is surprising, especially for a first-year, start-up convention. I certainly didn't expect it.

Comments

[cynthia1960.livejournal.com]

WisCon has also gotten to the point where they've hit the 1000 cap.

[trinsf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I guess I don't get to go, either. Nor does ewhac.

[dinogrl.livejournal.com]

As I posted earlier, I'm not happy about it either. Harrumph.

Seems they just don't need our money.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not a huge hotel. Only 136 rooms, 9000 sq. ft. of function space, and that's in only 3 or 4 (the largest room can be divided) function rooms. Figuring one or two of those is the dealer's room, and I can see a relatively small cap on the numbers.

[twilight2000.livejournal.com]

The other option is to just show up -- it's quite possible they'll have at the door tix and if it's not far...

[bovil.livejournal.com]

We'll phone you on Saturday with an update, but I've got some theories as to why they sold out and why they're not doing day registrations.

[dinogrl.livejournal.com]

What I find interesting is that they have a relatively large dealers room with many folks selling the same things. I will be very interested how it all pans out for dealers in all of this.

[redneckotaku.livejournal.com]

This seems to be a rare case of a con where they have alot of demand and too little space. Zenkaikon (a metro philly con) had this issue this year. They sold out during Saturday though. I am amazed that in these times an Anime Con can double in membership in one year.

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

The first Anime Boston had a similar problem -- when the demand exceeded their wildest expectations. They didn't know in advance how many people would show up...they hoped for 800 and would have broken even with 800. They had to close the doors on Saturday at 1 p.m. when they hit the hotel's fire marshall cap (something like 2,200).

But Mike points out that a steampunk con should only be taking reservations by telegraph...

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Check out the website, DJ Neshemah just mentioned that there are a few passes available now. I expect they were finally processing cancellations...

Scratch that. It's 98 available passes. They must have just revised their capacity numbers.