Convention Feedback

Orbital 2008 turned out to be a really good convention, but no convention is perfect, and we're sure you have some constructive feedback for us, and for future Eastercon committees. So we're collecting them here.

What's here comes from a lot of different people, and it chops and changes a lot between submissions, because your friendly webmaster has gathered them somewhat by topic (but not by good/bad - there's a mix of that).

if you'd like to share your thoughts with us - what was good, what wasn't - contact us via website@orbital2008.org, and we'll collate them here.

Do let us know whether you'd like to be credited, or whether you'd prefer it just goes into the general melting pot - so far, though, it's just a bucket of anonymous stuff.

Hotel Matters

Hotel Staff

The hotel was great with excellent friendly staff.

Generally, the staff were individually very good; but some of their managerial policies seemed a bit authoritarian, and this seemed to be the problem. Tommy, though, was a Star.

I found the hotel staff to be helpful, interested, and very nice.

The hotel ("Radisson Non-Euclidean" will now stick!) was part of the fun. however, it'll be used again in 2010 (all being well) and I would be reluctant to get into the habit of making it a semi-permanent Eastercon venue, the way the Brighton Metropole (spit) and the Adelphi in Liverpool ended up a few years ago.

As a late registree, kudos to Rita for her hard work on facilitating our attendance. Of course, after all that, the hotel gave us the wrong room on arrival, but they sorted it it efficiently and quickly on the day.

I felt that the hotel staff treated the fans very openly as second-rate guests. This was my eleventh hotel convention in Britain, and although every single con hotel before this has also had mundane guests, I've never experienced that degree of exclusionist treatment before. It was particularly annoying on the Tuesday morning, when the convention was over and we were still not allowed to sit in the real breakfast room but were rather rudely pointed to Newbury 2.

To be fair, most of the staff were quite friendly, but it did seem as if the hotel policy which they had to follow was, well, exclusionist. The housekeeping was also not as good as I'm used to at British hotels, one day the new towels we got were dirty, for instance, which also felt like something that wouldn't have happened if we had been 'real' guests.

We were supposed to leave the hotel on the Monday, but my son came down with a fever on Sunday, which meant we had to change our plans. My husband went down to reception, hoping to keep the room for two more nights at the con rate. Instead we got to keep the room for the next two nights at a lower rate. Kudos to the hotel!

The express checkout bill was accurate. This isn't always the case at hotels I've stayed at, so it deserves a mention.

Catering

Set meal prices for dinner were excellent and the breakfast very good and filling.

"Snack" and lunch food was...well...not very good.

I loved the late night bacon baps and felt they were really good value for £2. Also found £1 for a pint of orange juice to be great.

The buffet was good value for money (for us adults).

Cold lunches. (Not just the sandwiches - but the burgers and beans, too!)

The meal on Thursday for early arrivals was a great idea. But it would have been good to have been able to register on Thursday evening too.

The hotel didn't have a clear policy on who paid for the buffet or not. On one of the nights, we had to buy dinner tickets for both of our children. Another night, we were told that children under 5 ate for free at the buffet. This policy should have been clear to all employees from the beginning.

There was a marked difference in the selection of food in the real breakfast room and the Newburies.

It was unfortunate that when I wanted a healthy and reasonably-priced lunch, McDonalds was the better option. I bought a jacket potato in Newbury one day, and was told that I would have to pay £5 for a side salad. I thought that was very expensive, as it meant the whole meal would come close to £10, and chose not to go that way. In addition, I felt the salad bar had a very limited selection. I was pleased to see fruit on sale, though. Still, I'd like to see more reasonable pricing of side salads in the future, and more healthy options in general.

We wanted to join the group for the Thursday buffet, but £15 per head, including our toddlers was too pricey. I wouldn't have minded paying £15 per head per adult, but not for young children who eat very little.

Breakfast: It was the apartheid of location: not only was the quality of the breakfast different in Newbury, but the whole idea that con members would automatically want to be dragooned to sit on communal tables met with disapproval. Now, normally that's true; but not always and not for everyone. Hotel staff seemed unable to cope with the idea that some of us might be prepared to hang around for five minutes to get a table in the Brasserie for ourselves. And there was no explanation as to their policy of reserving tables in the Brasserie at breakfast, as one member of staff told us rather abruptly was the case.

The evening buffet meals were good value, the late night snacks weren't. The food service generally was a bit spotty - things like supplies of milk or tea/coffee running out - but the staff were helpful whenever I mentioned problems like these. Breakfast was advertised as finishing at 10.30 and that meant that food was removed just after that time, while in many hotels you can turn up just before the advertised close and still have time to get fed.

The catering. There weren't enough places to buy just sandwiches and snacks like crisps and chocolate bars. I only wanted sandwich lunches, but the two food points had run out of most fillings by lunchtime on Sunday. The staff at the points didn't show off what was under the silver lids on the big containers - was it food? Couldn't tell! And there were no menues to say what was on offer, or what the prices were. 4.00 for a meat pie was a bit of a shock.

Only problem was food. That the MuckDonnalds round the corner was visited by apologetic little groups of Fans in the late evening, looking for somewhere to feed their kids, was a low point. The sandwiches (Which were actually excellent and one member of catering staff gave us a free orange, just for fun) had a knack of disappearing whenever it was a mealtime. Gradually we trained our kids to to the Con Thing and just eat bigger breakfasts.

Bars

Suggestion re the real ale bar: the staff were unfamiliar with the frothiness of the beer and hence gave a lot of short measures at the start of the con - later, they seemed to have picked up better technique. Maybe some pre-con training for them would be a good idea next time!

Lager from Commonwealth foyer/ Atrium bar was of variable quality... as they rarely got the gas mix right (glass of froth or headless pint served more than once), and when draught lager was gone (which I think happened after midnight, every night!), they were serving only bottles - but still charging con-rate pint prices.

(Minor quibble: one of Atrum bar staff wasn't briefed about accepting groats.)

Nice to have the real ale bar. Requests for next one - Can we have some Thatchers Cider. And some soft drinks from the same bar. It allows non drinkers to socialise with the drinkers.

Navigation and Room Usage

Good signage in the hotel from the Con...I had no problem finding my way around.

Kudos to Chris O'Shea for the map.

Venue had lots of "hanging out" spaces.

Confusing layout, with some of the committee / gophers not knowing where some of the rooms were.

The Tetworth and Winchester rooms were a nightmare to get to.

The maps, with You Are Here prominently featured, really helped. They were well-thought-out and well located.

I also really liked the labyrinthine hotel layout.

There were plenty of meet and hangout places. Nice.

The Atrium area needed more tables for eating from.

There weren't really enough cosy places to sit and eat in the hotel - ended up having lunch standing in the atrium both days. Could there have been more tables/chairs around in various corners?

I like to help. It wasn't all that clear where to sign up though. Didn't spot anything in the readme. Wondering if it might have been an idea to separate the gopher area from ops (Even if just by a strip of tape).

you've probably heard this from lots of people, but some of our friends who stayed at overflow hotels would have liked somewhere to hang their coats when they came to the con in the mornings - especially the last two days when the hotel was a little warmer

The video room was almost impossible to find for non-cartographers. Once there, the room was small and uncomfortable, in a peculiar layout, and the screen was on the small side. I was there for an hour and that was quite long enough.

I could have sworn it was more 'Maze-like' last time we had a Con here. I really didn't get disorientated once. I put this down to internal restructuring rather than our improved awareness of Magnetic North. A bit more signeage would have helped (Things like Newsletter and Toilets) but I fully understand how awkward this hotel is about sticking things to walls. Lots of excellent rooms and lots of really nifty places to hang out. The Atrium was a thrill and a wonder to behold.

Heating

Terrible. Too warm in the Royals and missing in the Commenwealth. It was fixed towards the end but on Friday & Saturday it was a real pain.

temperature control was all over the place (someone passed out after sitting in Royal for 40 minutes on the Friday night) and we had a few problems with getting the room comfortable.

The temperature variations. The Royal suites, with the big chandeliers at full whack all the time, were roasting. So was the dealers' room. The main session room was freezing, with a dreadful, curtain-rippling draught - though somewhere during Neil Gaiman's session, heating suddenly came on. So warmth was a possibility: why didn't we have it from the start? Also, the Real Ale bar was icy the whole time. I suspect this may be part of the reason I've now got a Con Crud cold.

Somebody told me that the temperature in the real ale bar was deliberately kept Very Cold to keep the beer cool. Am hoping that wasn't true, though - and am certainly hoping that they won't use that method to chill the beer if the real ale bar is in the atrium next time!

Heating was a problem (either freezing or boiling), and probably led to both of our children coming down with fevers (at the con and just after the con).

Disability Support

Disability access at the hotel sadly lacking. I think we can do MUCH better, even with the given parameters of the hotel layout.

I echo the comments from those criticising the disabled access, however; but that's always a work in progress for any establishment as theory bumps up against practice.

Bedrooms

My room didn't have tea and coffee making facilities.

There was no drinking chocoloate in the bedrooms.

Despite receiving confirmation from Rita on Monday the 17th that our family of two adults and two children aged 2 and 4 had been allocated a triple with a cot, we arrived, only to find that the hotel had no knowledge of this and wanted to give us two adjoining rooms at the 2 x double room rate. Luckily we had brought along our e-mail from Rita, and were eventually given a room with two singles. After waiting for several hours, a rollaway and a cot were brought up. We were also told that our 2-year old daughter would have to pay for breakfast, as the room was for 3 people.

Wi-Fi

The free Internet access in the hotel! Though there were only 4 terminals, it didn't get crowded and it made all the difference to my peace of mind to be able to check my email. Lots of other people were doing that, too - "Oh, goody, home's still there!".

Overflow Hotels

I stayed at the Marriott and it was fine; a boxy hotel with no character, but comfortable and efficient. I had a huge double room (for me on my own) with a triple sized bed for 80.00. The staff were nice, breakfast was fine, and the place was *quiet* at night - no noise from other rooms or the corridor, which I gather can't be said about the Radisson. Because of family illness I had to leave on Sunday, a day early, and they were nice about it. I'd certainly recommend using it as the first overflow hotel the next time.

The Marriot wanted a credit card upfront for Internet access. :-(

Programme Matters

Programme book and ReadMe extremely well done!

Plenty of strands to choose from...lots of different options.

After spending days complaining that the Programme grid wasn't displayed in a public place, so I never knew what was going on, I discovered it on Sunday in the hall between the two entrances to the dealer's room. [ It was? --Ed.] Either it should have been placed in the reception area or atrium, or there should have been a note in the readme as to where it would be. I suspect I wasn't the only person who tended to go in and out the same door to the dealer's room, without looking at anything other than my purchases.

The guest were great and the panels interesting.

it seemed unfortunate to have programme items running from 10am which no one would know about due to not having their Readme yet!

I was very impressed with the number of programme items, all the panels I attended were great and there just wasn't the time to fit it all in

The children's programming was very good ---as we haven't attended for so long, we don't know whether this is usual now, but please can it continue!

There was children's programming for all age groups, including my two! This was a great bonus for us.

The programme was possibly the best at any Eastercon I've been to. Many kudos for that. All the panels I went to were very enjoyable. I enjoyed the masquerade and cabaret, and Mitch Benn of whom I hadn't heard before was just really wonderful.

How about making Mitch Benn as regular feature?

Make the programme with a built in 10 min break for setup. ie. for a 1hour item make it 50 mins programme & 10 mins for setup/teardown which will save Tech-ops from going bananas.

The two programme books were excellent, and the A5 size really worked.

I know that there have been some grumbling about some of the programme items, bondage workshops etc, but my take on it is this: There was too many programme items that I was interested in for me to fit into my schedule, so why on earth would I mind there being programme items that didn't interest me, as well?

Programme clashes are inevitable, but there was one day when three things I wanted to see were on simultaneously! I wonder if running fewer strings in bigger rooms might be better.

I was scheduled on panels which were outside the times I'd previous said I could manage. If you were going to ignore that, why did you ask?

I heard nothing back when I said I couldn't make the panel I was scheduled on.

Panels were scheduled far too late in the evening - that's the time for socialising, fun stuff, and hanging out. A friend had to run out on dinner to make a panel which was practically empty.

Please schedule more things with genre relevance, instead of indulging fans' other hobbies...

I like the format of the ice breaker.

Science/Maths panels are really interesting. Liked the one on knots. More!!!

Never did find the video room.

The people running the masquerade were fantastic. Well organised, inventive, eager to help.

Those of us taking part in the masquerade don't get to see it. Any chance we could have a TV screen outside, or a view of the stage from the marshalling area?

There was insufficient "holding room" space for those in the masquerade (a corridor!).

Please ensure Masquerade staff are well armed with gaffer tape and safety pins and the occasional paper clip.

Disco: Glad to see peope were dancing. I'm just a bit worried about what every con in the country is going to do if Marwen retires:)

I love Eclectic21!

"Voodoo Board" was not really in an obvious place. There was a small easel set up at the top of the stairs to where the main programme was being held. I suggest a MUCH larger board for posting notices, changes, announcements and etc.

One tidbit I wanted to feed back to you though was about the Gaming Room -- board games have become increasingly popular, and that became quite apparent on a surprising number of occasions, when I walked into the Gaming room and found every available table filled and some of the floor space too. More room, if at all possible, would be terrific for 2010!

No VCR for the video programme, at least for the Saturday lunchtime session we went to.

I'd very much have liked more literary panels, and fewer belly dancing / tai chi / bondage workshops.

Pre-con information

Lots of helpful info on website and it was updated frequently.

Yahoo group very easy to use and informative.

Registration easy and painless.

Organising the memberships alphabetically would probably have been easier than by number, since most people don't memorise their numbers.

Registration on Thursday would have been very useful.

It would have been good if registration had been opened a bit earlier so that we could have made it to 10 am sessions.

Newsletter

Strangely humerourless, oddly 'empty' and utterly useless in the job of passing vital info on about events being organised at the time. This is a vital part of the Con. It keeps folk informed of what's happening and thus allows us to make it happen. This time, any such article (And we always write 'em so they're fun to read... looking more like jokes than bulletins) was dropped.

This meant that certain events didn't happen, and meant we were wasting our time organising them. It also confused people at the closing ceremony, as they didn't know what we were talking about.

Convention Staff

Con staff helpful and friendly.

kudos to the Ops team for their help when someone was taken ill

Tech in the Commonwealth talked too much/too loudly through all the programme items.

Generally, techies did a great job in the main hall, but I assumed they were extremely overworked...

Lack of microphones on panels in the larger rooms made interaction with the audience rather difficult on well-attended items.

Thank you to the Green Room staff (all welcoming, and always helpful), who made my first con - as a panel participant! - run so smoothly. What could have been a frustrating and hectic experience, was very well-organised and almost leisurely, for me.

Our Gopher dad did an excellent job after being left as a single parent.

Pre-Con Liaision: Exemplary!! I've never known such a brilliant team for actually sorting out stuff Pre-Con (With absolutely NO fuss)! Everyone knew their stuff waaaay before and - even when on holiday (You know who you are) - gave us instant answers to any damn question. This allowed us to just turn up and Do Stuff without faffing about asking for the Right Department to ask Small- But- Vital- Questions. Whatever caused this to happen this year: Please do it again!!

Childcare

Fantastically equipped and very well run. That it was pre-paid was awesome, allowing those of us who were running many events to get on with the 'job' without faffing about filling in forms. That many of the kids voluntarily took themselves to the creche is a testemonial to how good this place is. I'm sure some non-parents were happy that a little of their money had gone towards providing the occasional moment of peace from kids too.

Childcare was excellent. We only used it for 2 hours a day, but were very pleased with it. Rainbow Creche also made sure that we had a babysitter the one evening we wanted one, even though this meant that Lydia herself babysat for us.