Thank You For Attending Birmingham Anime & Gaming Con - Photos, Stories & Reactions

[Ferefire]

We'd like to thank all of you for attending Birmingham Anime & Gaming Con!

We look forward to seeing you all at the next Birmingham Anime & Gaming Con on the 17-18 August! You can get tickets for that now at at this link.

Got any stories, photos or feedback? Put them in this topic

[Deap]

Well, I honestly can’t say I had a good time at all.

It started with the queue. I arrived the same time as my friends and went to join them at the back of the queue. They told me I needed to go get my wrist band as they did. I found the people holding wrist bands but they told me to just queue. Some people In The queue had bands, others didn’t..

So I ended up at the back of the queue again because everyone was being told different things.

While in the queue I was talking to the people in front of me who, like me had an early access ticket. The group of people behind did not. But they didn’t know where they should queue.

As we got to the front about 40 mins later. We all got wrist bands depending if we had a Saturday ticket or weekend ticket. And we all walked in together - which means VIP and early access was pointless.


Inside were a ton of vendors. But I’ll be honest, they were all either 3D printed pokemon, or stuff you can buy on Temu or AliExpress. Wow…


Upstairs was another floor of the same sort of stuff, but it was a little brighter.


The tabletop and boardgame area was no more tha. A selection of board games you can pick up and play. No demos, no vendors.


And the gaming floor was just random hand me down consoles and tvs, games you could be playing at home.

And the queue for the merch and vip tote bag was stupid. Down the tabletop gaming corridor which was congested due to the people wanting to pass by for food or leave from the food area. It wasn’t wide enough for a queue and 2-way traffic.

And that speaks to the whole venue. It’s not right for this many people to move around in. For a cricket match sure, walk through and find your seat, but to move around all day, it’s not the right layout. This all should have been in one large hall, like a convention hall.

The food prices were egregious, with a hotdog costing £9.

TLDR, VIP/EarlyAccess meant nothing, Vendors all selling Temu level crap, Bad venue for this many people.

But the attendees were all lovely and it was great to see so much cosplay!

After waiting 50 mins to get in, we left at 12:30, won’t be going back next year.

[Rich-Allen1976]

Well, I honestly can’t say I had a good time at all.

It started with the queue. I arrived the same time as my friends and went to join them at the back of the queue. They told me I needed to go get my wrist band as they did. I found the people holding wrist bands but they told me to just queue. Some people In The queue had bands, others didn’t..

So I ended up at the back of the queue again because everyone was being told different things.

While in the queue I was talking to the people in front of me who, like me had an early access ticket. The group of people behind did not. But they didn’t know where they should queue.

As we got to the front about 40 mins later. We all got wrist bands depending if we had a Saturday ticket or weekend ticket. And we all walked in together - which means VIP and early access was pointless.


Inside were a ton of vendors. But I’ll be honest, they were all either 3D printed pokemon, or stuff you can buy on Temu or AliExpress. Wow…


Upstairs was another floor of the same sort of stuff, but it was a little brighter.


The tabletop and boardgame area was no more tha. A selection of board games you can pick up and play. No demos, no vendors.


And the gaming floor was just random hand me down consoles and tvs, games you could be playing at home.

And the queue for the merch and vip tote bag was stupid. Down the tabletop gaming corridor which was congested due to the people wanting to pass by for food or leave from the food area. It wasn’t wide enough for a queue and 2-way traffic.

And that speaks to the whole venue. It’s not right for this many people to move around in. For a cricket match sure, walk through and find your seat, but to move around all day, it’s not the right layout. This all should have been in one large hall, like a convention hall.

The food prices were egregious, with a hotdog costing £9.

TLDR, VIP/EarlyAccess meant nothing, Vendors all selling Temu level crap, Bad venue for this many people.

But the attendees were all lovely and it was great to see so much cosplay!

After waiting 50 mins to get in, we left at 12:30, won’t be going back next year.

To be fair I've attended other cons at rubbish venues, organised by some fool who literally couldn't organise a you know what in a Brewery.

[Areas30041990]

Me and my son attended on Saturday with the early ticket, and had no issues getting in but didn't end up getting all of the items that were part of the ticket because the queue was too big.

The layout was over 3 floors and just so busy to move around in, why can't this be hosted at the NEC instead?

Gaming floor was awful, Controllers didn't work and small old tvs, very poor my son didn't enjoy at all!

Food too costly and the whole area felt cramped

[Yoruichi Shihouin]

Unfortunately, my family and I didn't have the best of times to say the least! 

We attended on Sunday. We took the advice sent by you regarding arriving later in the day to avoid queuing. Once we arrived we made our way to the gaming room where the staff members were less than friendly.
The staff refused to let us play games on vacant consoles because they said they had to pack the consoles away in time for the next con in London. This was at 14:30 on Sunday afternoon!!!
When I informed them that we were advice to arrive at 14:00, one staff member simply said, “That was your choice. That’s not my problem!”
I asked when the gaming room was closing and another member of staff informed me that it would be closing between 17:00 and 18:00. I asked why they were refusing access to gaming so early and was met with an angry response of, “We have to do all the work packing things away, not you!”
I will definitely not be attending next year if this is the level of service!

[Rich-Allen1976]

Unfortunately, my family and I didn't have the best of times to say the least!

We attended on Sunday. We took the advice sent by you regarding arriving later in the day to avoid queuing. Once we arrived we made our way to the gaming room where the staff members were less than friendly.
The staff refused to let us play games on vacant consoles because they said they had to pack the consoles away in time for the next con in London. This was at 14:30 on Sunday afternoon!!!

When I informed them that we were advice to arrive at 14:00, one staff member simply said, “That was your choice. That’s not my problem!”
I asked when the gaming room was closing and another member of staff informed me that it would be closing between 17:00 and 18:00. I asked why they were refusing access to gaming so early and was met with an angry response of, “We have to do all the work packing things away, not you!”
I will definitely not be attending next year if this is the level of service!

I would report the staff member, up here in Sheffield, the gaming areas are open till at least 4 PM, the whole thing shuts at 5.

[Yoruichi Shihouin]

I wouldn't know which member of staff made the decision. All of the staff in the gaming room were turning off the consoles and telling us that they had to do so in order to pack up in time.

[Yoruichi Shihouin]

The Birmingham con appeared to be a bit of a shambles! I don't think I will attend next year.