Great show, and thanks to all involved-- I really had a fantastic time. All of the folks who worked the event were friendly and helpful, and it was really well organized. So please don't take the comments below as criticisms, but rather as friendly suggestions to help improve things...
- Change the rule regarding machine removal. On Friday afternoon, I unexpectedly bought a machine (the Fish Tales that was near the front door). I could have removed it after 8 on Friday without penalty, but I really wanted to leave it out so that people could enjoy it... and doing so meant I was "stuck" until after 8 on Saturday (or had to pay the penalty). I would suggest a time stamp system-- for example, that machines have to stay in free play for 24 hours or pay the early removal fee, but not tie it to the time of day that a machine can be taken.
- Get a better system of tracking who owns machines. After I purchased mine, I went up to the registration booth to turn the keys in and change the game into my name, and I was told that there was no way to do that this year.
- I can see both sides of this one, but I would suggest spreading out the EM games more. It will relieve some of the congestion of the center aisle where lots of people were crowding in to play the more popular titles.
- Move those couple of vendors out of the free play area and into the vendor area-- that's a lot of space that could have been used for more games.
- You may want to add a notification that players should not turn on games that are turned off. I turned off a game that had a flipper locked on, and went to file a repair ticket. When I brought the top half of the ticket back to put it with the game, someone had turned the game back on, and was attempting to play-- locked flipper and all.
- I agree with the others-- do away with the auction. There were really only a couple of interesting pieces (a box of used rings? Seriously?), and it's a lot of space taken up for the entire weekend for an auction that lasted about an hour. That space could be repurposed for the flea market, and would get both more foot traffic and get the vendors out of the elements.
- At some point on Friday, the hotel ran out of pint cups, and switched to a much smaller cup (12 ounce maybe?) and didn't correspondingly adjust the price of the beer. I noticed quite a drop off in the number of people walking around with beer after that.