This year was a mixed bag for me...
The positive:
1) The selection of games was pretty decent, though there were certainly less games than in prior years.
2) The seminar schedule was fantastic-- I spent most of yesterday in that room. Congrats to Dave M. and anyone else who had a hand in making this schedule.
3) And due to unfortunate circumstance, I learned how excellent and responsive the tech team is (see the neutral).
The neutral:
1) The game I brought was badly damaged sometime between 1am Friday and 10:30am Friday. I brought a really old game with me, the type that uses a lever to push a metal plate under the playfield to drop the balls from the top of the playfield back into the trough. Someone pushed on the coin slide so violently that it broke that metal level in half. It's fixable, but not something that I could repair on-site. Game sold anyway (for less than I wanted, but the new owner was willing to make the fix, and was excited about the game, so I let it go).
The bad:
1) If you bring little kids, keep an eye on them. I hurt my leg and a little kid ended up scraping his knees when he and another kid came tearing around the corner in the free play area and smashed into me. It's not the kids fault, it's the parents fault that their children are misbehaving.
2) The food situation was completely unacceptable, and had we been made aware of that, we would have prepared better. I saw a lot of people eating pop tarts and cheetos from the vending machines as meals. In the past, the hotel had two restaurants to feed us. One of those was open for breakfast-only on Friday and Saturday. We ate there friday, and I was charged $19 for a cup of coffee, a scoop of scrambled eggs, a grocery store bagel, and two tiny sausage links-- outrageous. Lunch and dinner were non-existent unless you wanted pre-packaged, paper thin burgers or steamed in the bag and a little soggy hot dogs. Just awful. If the hotel can't find staff to work, they shouldn't be taking on bookings for such big events. There's *NO* late night food options that will deliver to the hotel. The latest is Domino's which will deliver until midnight.
3) Our room was... less than sparking clean. We were all the way in the back, in the room next to @forceflow. Everything smelled a little musty, and the hallways in between the buildings smelled like someone had taken a dump in them (literally-- it was wretch inducing).
4) Just call the show closed at 2am on Sunday morning (or whatever). This morning, there was very little left in free play, and all the vendors were already gone (and a doll show was setting up). I'm kinda pinballed out by Sunday anyway, but I know of at least one person who was planning to travel to the show just for this morning. I haven't talked to him yet, but I'm sure it was a huge disappointment and a lot of wasted fuel for him.
5) With regards to the vendors... the roster was too thin. Mayfair was the only parts vendor there, and they don't really bring much in the way of parts. The rest were people with some neat mods and tchotchkeis... but not a bottle of Novus or an LED light in sight. Cointaker is listed as a sponsor, which I assumed meant they were also a vendor- that was a poor assumption on my part.
6) Either give up or try to go all-in on the outdoor flea market. Only two vendors there, one of whom I will have no dealings with.