Thank You For Attending Bradford Anime & Gaming Con - Photos, Stories & Feedback

We run conventions and meetups throughout the UK. Check out our full calender at https://www.animeleague.com/our-events/

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LikkleMel
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Thank You For Attending Bradford Anime & Gaming Con - Photos, Stories & Feedback

Post by LikkleMel » 27 Sep 2021, 15:45

We'd like to thank all of you for attending our very first event in Bradford! It's fantastic to see you all, and we're very happy to see so many of you there!

A special thanks goes to all our crew, performers and staff who have worked so hard to make this happen - we are proud to have such a hard working team supporting our events.

If anyone wishes to post photos, wants to discuss the event generally, or has feedback please post it here.

We look forward to seeing you at future events this year and next, which includes the Leeds Anime & Gaming Con this November. You can get your tickets for now that at www.leedsanimecon.com/register.php

As a final note, we have a very busy few months ahead of us as all our events restart in all the major UK cities including Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Newcastle and more. You can read our full calendar at https://www.animeleague.com/events or you can see this also by downloading the app at www.animeleague.app

Once again, thank you all! Please leave any photos, videos and reactions in here!
~Let our bodies lay, mark our hearts with shame
Let our blood in vain, you find God in pain~


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CurryChips
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Thank You For Attending Bradford Anime & Gaming Con - Photos, Stories & Feedback

Post by CurryChips » 27 Sep 2021, 23:24

Gotta be honest, was really disappointed by this. Granted, the main theme was anime, but seen as though this was a "gaming convention" as well, I expected there to be at least some stalls dedicated to merchants selling video games, particularly retro games. However, there was just anime merchandise and nothing video game related at all.

The gaming consoles set up for people to play were located on the top (6th) floor and the lifts didn't work. This meant a long walk up the stairs, which left myself, and many others, breathless by the time we made it up there (imagine if we had been disabled!) Once we did eventually make it up there, we tried several consoles to find out many of the controllers and / or consoles weren't set up correctly and were therefore unplayable.

Further adding to our disappointment was the "entertainment", which included a "lip sync battle", which wasn't really a "battle" at all, just solo contestants miming songs on stage 1 at a time. I don't quite know what the relation between Queen and Harry Potter songs to anime or video gaming is, can anyone explain that to me?

And finally, the bar didn't serve alcohol for reasons that were not explained. The only drink available to buy at the time was coca cola, which was ridiculously overpriced.

For £14 a ticket, we expected a lot more.

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Thank You For Attending Bradford Anime & Gaming Con - Photos, Stories & Feedback

Post by Ferefire » 28 Sep 2021, 00:15

Thank you for your feedback, @CurryChips While I appreciate your frustration and apologise if you didn't have a great event, I feel there's a number of factors you need to take into account. Lifts and bar are the hotel's reponsibilities and not ours - though from my personal experience I had no issues whatsoever with the lifts (and indeed zero people reported these issues to us), so I'm not sure what happened with your personal experience here. The bar, not being open for alcohol, was as big a mystery to us as yourself! I understand it was Covid related given they'd only just re-opened a few weeks beforehand and didn't have the staffing available. We were as unhappy with this as you were, and this is definitely something we have fed back to the venue given they had told us this would be available before we arrived.

The consoles, from my own inspection were all set up and working throughout, you most likely had extremely bad luck on a very few that were out of sorts at the time. Please be aware that you're always welcome to report this to a member of staff, as we can not always be aware of these issues at all times.

Ultimately, and I will now be extremely honest with you, this being Bradford was always going to be our smallest event especially being the first time we've run here - hence a struggle to attract dealers of a wider variety. If you wish to see more events in Bradford then please do support the events that do at the least try - otherwise Bradford will remain with very few events if any - especially during these times.

Hope this clarifies matters. Ultimately I'm sorry you didn't have a great experience, but only so much we can do here with what we have to work with on multiple levels. Do consider supporting us going forward and I am sure we can put on something better in the future as we do elsewhere! :) We have many happy attendees and indeed community members on here and we'd love to see you be one too in the future as well!
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ATerry74
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Thank You For Attending Bradford Anime & Gaming Con - Photos, Stories & Feedback

Post by ATerry74 » 28 Sep 2021, 12:55

It was awful. I went on the Sunday with my young son. We arrived at half 10 and there was no staff at all in the entrance foyer. A young I think artist in a pink jacket was rushing about trying to help and direct people as best she could, including myself. It was all a bit of a farce. Later in the day when I interacted with staff who where in animeleague t-shirts they were all very blunt and quite rude in tone. One in a red animeleague t-shirt was asked by my son who is naturally quite shy about the location of the gaming area and he got a quick blunt reply, in an extremely obnoxious tone.

As for the event, I was told the main performance of the day was at 5pm for the cosplay mascarade

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Thank You For Attending Bradford Anime & Gaming Con - Photos, Stories & Feedback

Post by ATerry74 » 28 Sep 2021, 13:03

It was awful. I went on the Sunday with my young son. We arrived at half 10 and there was no staff at all in the entrance foyer. A young I think artist in a pink jacket was rushing about trying to help and direct people as best she could, including myself. It was all a bit of a farce. Later in the day when I interacted with staff who where in animeleague t-shirts they were all very blunt and quite rude in tone. One in a red animeleague t-shirt was asked by my son who is naturally quite shy about the location of the gaming area and he got a quick blunt reply, in an extremely obnoxious tone.

As for the event, I was told the main performance of the day was at 5pm for the cosplay masquerade, so you'd assume that the whole event would be on till atleast then, but by 2pm a large amount of the stalls had either packed up and left or where mostly packed up and ready to go. The staff of animeleague where taking down signs and collapsing tables. Which I thought made it all the more disgusting when I watched people enter the building and made to pay full price for entry tickets even though half the entertainment and shops had left.

All in all it was a disgusting cash grab event.

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Thank You For Attending Bradford Anime & Gaming Con - Photos, Stories & Feedback

Post by LikkleMel » 28 Sep 2021, 13:18

ATerry74 wrote:
28 Sep 2021, 13:03
It was awful. I went on the Sunday with my young son. We arrived at half 10 and there was no staff at all in the entrance foyer. A young I think artist in a pink jacket was rushing about trying to help and direct people as best she could, including myself. It was all a bit of a farce. Later in the day when I interacted with staff who where in animeleague t-shirts they were all very blunt and quite rude in tone. One in a red animeleague t-shirt was asked by my son who is naturally quite shy about the location of the gaming area and he got a quick blunt reply, in an extremely obnoxious tone.

As for the event, I was told the main performance of the day was at 5pm for the cosplay masquerade, so you'd assume that the whole event would be on till atleast then, but by 2pm a large amount of the stalls had either packed up and left or where mostly packed up and ready to go. The staff of animeleague where taking down signs and collapsing tables. Which I thought made it all the more disgusting when I watched people enter the building and made to pay full price for entry tickets even though half the entertainment and shops had left.

All in all it was a disgusting cash grab event.

Apologies if you experienced rude staff. Do you have a description of the person in the red shirt?

Also you have to keep in mind Sunday alway closes slightly earlier with things as we have to pack up and go home and considering most of us don't live in Bradford and we do have an event every single weekend this month it is usually the norm to start soft takedown around 3pm. Regarding traders that is up to their own choice if they pack up early, but again as most of them are coming to the events this month I assume they just wanted to get a head start to get home and rest.

Again, Bradford was always going to be our smallest event especially being the first time we've run here. If you wish to see more events in Bradford then please do support the events that do at the least try - otherwise Bradford will remain with very few events if any and you'll have to travel far and pay a lot more than £12 per ticket.

If you have any suggestions on how to improve the Bradford event would love to hear them :)
~Let our bodies lay, mark our hearts with shame
Let our blood in vain, you find God in pain~


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Thank You For Attending Bradford Anime & Gaming Con - Photos, Stories & Feedback

Post by LilMissLarBear » 30 Sep 2021, 19:38

Thank you for holding such a great event, guys :) And thank you for trialing out the venue and at least the city for hosting too. I wasn't expecting it to be a huge event so I wasn't going to let that aspect influence my enjoyment of the event (not that it should). As for the previous comments I can speak for a few things I guess too. For instance, I was in and out the gaming room and in terms of which consoles were working, i found it wasnt a case that they were just set up broken or anything. Especially with the controllers, they would either work on some consoles or just ran really awkwardly and that was on and off throughout the day. I appreciated that you might not have been able to get a lot of performers invited so I was cool with that- I thought the other main stage events were fun to watch :D I was disappointed though that the bar shut early :( but since alcohol was allowed in during the evening event had I known that was a thing i could have been more prepared but hey ho I still had a fun time :)

Thanks again guys for bringing it to Bradford! I hope you consider it again for future cons :) I think I have some pictures of my purchases which I won't mind sharing later :)
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Thank You For Attending Bradford Anime & Gaming Con - Photos, Stories & Feedback

Post by Ferefire » 02 Oct 2021, 22:26

Good to have you attend. A shame we didn't bump into each other though

Heyitslaurenk wrote:
30 Sep 2021, 19:38
Thank you for holding such a great event, guys :) And thank you for trialing out the venue and at least the city for hosting too. I wasn't expecting it to be a huge event so I wasn't going to let that aspect influence my enjoyment of the event (not that it should). As for the previous comments I can speak for a few things I guess too. For instance, I was in and out the gaming room and in terms of which consoles were working, i found it wasnt a case that they were just set up broken or anything. Especially with the controllers, they would either work on some consoles or just ran really awkwardly and that was on and off throughout the day. I appreciated that you might not have been able to get a lot of performers invited so I was cool with that- I thought the other main stage events were fun to watch :D I was disappointed though that the bar shut early :( but since alcohol was allowed in during the evening event had I known that was a thing i could have been more prepared but hey ho I still had a fun time :)

Thanks again guys for bringing it to Bradford! I hope you consider it again for future cons :) I think I have some pictures of my purchases which I won't mind sharing later :)
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