CVII The Official Celebration Anaheim Feedback Thread

It was a wonderful con - the best I've ever been too.

I know that this is a difficult point due to the controls that Disney has over the franchise, but I really wanted to see more fan panels, fan art, and smaller fan craft vendors. Fan panels don't have to be bad (they can be easily screened before being accepted), and more panels on fun, niche subjects would have helped even out crowds. They could have been held in the hotels! Same goes for fan art tables, like a classic anime-con artist alley.

A few video rooms would have been nice. When I would go to anime conventions, these were my favorite activity in the late evening. Why not run "The Clone Wars" all day? How about all those hilarious mashups and poops that are out there? Fan films? I would have loved to see the films being shown in a smaller room where fans could shout out comments and have a good laugh with each other.

 

One of the main reasons that you didn't see more fan panels or video rooms is that there really wasn't room in the convention center. Pretty much every single upstairs room was in use, whether for stages, or for the family room or R2 builders room, or the Force Awakens exhibit or as queue rooms for the stages. As the one who organized the bounty hunt, we were very luck that Reed got us a room big enough for our race HQ at the Marriott, but as far as i know, we were the only programmed event that was not in the convention center. i totally agree that they could have probably had more fan panels. but they already had a big track of fan panels, mostly done by the costume groups. At previous celebrations, they did have video rooms where they showed the movies and SW-in-pop-culture and random fan film type stuff, but again here - just no room.

As for fan craft vendors - yeah.... not so much. unless they already had a license from Disney/LFL to create SW crafts, Disney/LFL is not going to allow people to make a buck off their intellectual property. But the cool thing about Celebration's artist alley is that it brings a variety of artists - from well established ones to up and comers.

 

Honestly, I really wish they had utilized some of the meeting rooms in the Marriott and/or Hilton. A good chunck of the complaints for the convention would have been eliminated. Moving just TFA exhibit to one of those locations, for example, would have made the second floor much less congested.

 

Yes, that's what I'm wondering about too - why not utilize the hotels more?

 

It could also be that some of the hotel space was already booked with other users as well - some related to the convention (such as the 501st party on Friday night in the Marriott, DK's party in the Hilton on Saturday night, and Verizon having a small conference room in the Marriott, possibly connected to their livestream sponsorship) and some not (the dance troupe competition on Sunday in the Marriott).

 

That was a great show.