This is very VERY important for congoers to know this kind of stuff. I’ve worked for a couple different anime cons over the years, and oh the stories I have.
One year when I was running Con Ops overnight, there had been a few kids running around with WET RED PAINT (seriously what the fuck) on their costumes all day, and it had smeared in a ton of different places all over the hotel. The convention was facing potentially tens of thousands of dollars worth of wallpaper replacement and painting if we didn’t find some way to clean up the mess before the weekend was over.
Do you understand? For a small, regional anime convention, $10,000 in property damage would have killed the con. Killed it dead. All because three cosplayers didn’t let the paint dry on their costumes.
When attendees cause that kind of property damage, if the hotel can’t locate the people who did it, the convention staff has to take the flack for that. The red paint incident was me sending out our registration programmer to the 24-hour grocery store at 2AM Sunday morning to buy a bunch of different cleaning supplies to see what, if anything would work.
BE RESPONSIBLE WHEN YOU’RE IN A HOTEL OR CONVENTION CENTER. Cons are fun, staying in a hotel is fun, but that does not equal a free pass to do whatever you want!
In other words, I don’t come to your house and stain YOUR pool with body paint runoff, so DON’T DO IT AT A CONVENTION.
I never post on Tumblr, so I’m hoping my few followers can help me get this word out by reblogging…
I work for a hotel that hosts a major US con every year. I love anime and I go to cons myself, but I am going to be blunt about some of the problems we have and how we deal with them. I don’t know why people lose common sense when attending cons. I realize that most con-goers are young, and probably haven’t traveled alone before. They’re also really excited to go to a con and to see people they’ve only chatted with on line.
But…things have gotten out of hand.
So, please…read this list of Bad Behaviors that I’ve seen over the past three years and please…don’t do them!
1. Completely Trashing Rooms. I have part of the team that has to take pictures of the damages left behind after a con. We will bill you. Sometimes, we won’t even tell you. We’ll just charge it on your credit or debit card. Again, the tiny print in the contract allows us to do this. We take pictures in case you try and dispute the charge with the credit card.
2. Being a Homeless Congoer. These are the people who don’t have a room but figure they can sleep in the lobby, stairwell, hallways, whatever. We’re on to you. We will remove you from the premises. If you are underage, we will still call the police.
3. Being Unable to Pay for Your Room or Food. These are the people who usually make arrangements for rooms with online friends. One friend books the room on a credit card, but when it comes time to settle the bill and the so-called friends are asked to pay their share in cash or come up their own credit card to split…there’s suddenly no money. I feel bad for the person who booked the room, and I’m sorry that you’re not going to make rent, or that your mom is sick, or that you’re a poor college student or whatever. Please don’t stand in the lobby and cry or try to offer me “free art commissions” or the horns off your Homestuck costume. My hotel does not accept those as payment.
4. Having Noise Complaints Lodged Against You. So, that little gathering you decided to have in your room is getting pretty loud and despite two phone calls from the desk asking you to quiet down, you refuse to do so. Guess what, the hotel management is throwing you out. We’ll have our security guards tell you and then the police will escort you from the premises. No, you will not get a refund. No, we don’t care you have nowhere to go. Maybe those two phone calls should’ve clued you into the problems you were causing.
6. Acting Like You Own the Hotel. These are the people who think that since they paid X dollars for their con badge and Y dollars for the room they are entitled to do whatever and whenever they want. Here are some of the most ridiculous (and this is by far not an inclusive list):
a. Taking their clothes off and running down the hall
b. Wearing full Homestuck body paint and jumping in the pool and hot tubs.
c. Screaming “KAWAII!” at random people
d. Camping out in the hotel restaurant and not ordering anything
e. Running through a wedding reception in different a ballroom while shouting “HETALIA!!!”
f. Smashing a brand new TV in one of the rooms
g. Sex in the lobby. While in cosplay.
h. Setting up an “art table” in the middle of the lobby. (She didn’t get an artist alley table and was mad about it…
i. Pulling the fire alarm at 3AM and forcing an evacuation (This person was prosecuted. We caught them on tape)
k. A cosplay-photo shoot that went out of control with photographers physically fighting with each other…in the lobby.One more note: Our manager is really upset about the amount of clean-up required after the Homestuck cosplayers we had last year. Bathrooms and bathtubs were covered in gray body paint, and the pool and hot tubs had to be drained and cleaned because some of them thought that would be a quick way to get it off. Manager is thinking of putting in the contract with the con that they have to ban Homestuck cosplay to prevent this in the future.
So, as a Homestuck, I beg you! Please, please, don’t do this! Clean up after yourself!