[Dark Spellmaster]

Given recent events at Youmacon in regards to the whole, springing it on people, I want to note that this idea would not be a sudden thing but possibly intgrated over a period of a couple of cons. I also want to say that these bands would not prohibit people that have badges and IDs from entering into say a showing of the Zombie survival panel, but rather would help in regards to specific events.

So here's my suggestion, when purchaseing your hotel room based on the number of people that would be allowed into the room, those people would get a writsband. These bands would have a color based upon the hotel that they are at. Example, Hyatt gets blue, Hilton gets pink, Aloft gets yellow, etc. These bands, much like the all access passes at the Shedd Aquarium, act as a way to allow people to go in and out of various exhibits during the day. In this case the bands would do the following.

1. Tell medical personal right away what hotel a person is at. (I bring this up after seeing a medic trying to get a guy to tell him his name and what room he's in at when he was loopy.) This band would have the room number and name of hotel on it, and allow the medic to radio in to find out who the person is and get important information based on this, such as who the emergency contact is.

2. The bands could be used as a way to deal with the raves. Given the lateness that these events run to, those without bands should leave by say 1 am. This way crowd control could be easier. Don't have a band on, can't get in after 1. Most other events are done by then anyway I think the rave is the only thing going. Again if there's an incident, the officer or IRT just has to look at the band, get the room number to at least get who's involved, or if that person is a guest of the room. Bands would be checked for in line, those that don't have their bands will be asked to leave.

3. This could also help with the issue of room parties and too many people in a room. You have to tell the clerk when you come in how many people you would have in your room. Based on that, that's how many are allowed in the room for sleeping. As for Room parties, after a certain time, the rooms that have parties should be checked by IRT (not too hard to hear loud noises on the room). The time could be about 1am too, consistanct with the rave timeframe, and people that don't have bands for that hotel will be asked to leave. No badge is also room for being asked to leave if the party has gotten too loud out of hand.

I'm trying to think of other good uses for this, but this is a start. Wonder what others think of this.

[Genichiro]

The only way to make that affordable would be to have paper bands that can't be removed once their put on, and I like to take showers at cons, so I'd have to go through the fun of getting a new band everyday, as it's more than likely the room information would wear off if I tried to bathe with it on. Not a fan of the idea myself. Having to show a card key would be enough to tell someone which hotel, and I would think they would have a way of finding out which room the key opened at the front desk of the hotels, should the need arise. If that doesn't work, the person in question would likely have idea, and if the room is registered properly to all people in the room, then everyone's name would be on it, and that would work, too.

[Yandere Emi]

Maybe it's vain, but I'm totally against wristbands because I really don't want them in pictures of my cosplay. :/ Honestly these suggestions aren't really necessary since you SHOULD be carrying ID of some sort and hopefully have a phone or some other method so that people will know who to contact in emergency. It just seems annoying to me to force these bands on people. As a respectful guest I'd like to be respected, not treated like a child in my hotel that I am paying for.

[pyrrhicvictini]

Wristbands easily rip off, get soggy, etc, & will fall off, causing people to go through the trouble of convincing someone to get them a new one, as well as causing the distributor the trouble of giving them a new one.

People usually have I.D. on them, as well as travel in friend groups. Of course, there are times when this doesn't happen. (Personally, I have a diabetic wristband too, just in case no friends are around to inform other people why the heck I passed out if it should happen [which it rarely does anyways].)

I think wristbands would just make things more complicated, since people usually just carry their I.D.? (I mean, they should at least. It's not enforceable, but can be encouraged. People with medical conditions that I know, including me, are usually good about keeping some sort of I.D. to let people know.)

Having IRT check all "room parties" at 1am might not be feasible, & also kind of... makes people seem untrustworthy? If there are noise issues, can't people call in a complaint? The 1am thing doesn't sit well. I don't wanna go to a con just to have someone parenting me with a curfew.

I guess I might be touchy, but wrist bands seem like more trouble than their worth. If the hotels decide to spring them on us, there's not much we can do but deal with it, but I'd rather wait till they spring it on us than have us spring it on us.

[Cherry_Wolf]

I agree with Yandere Emi. I understand hotels cracking down on the number of people in a room, etc - but enforcing wristbands is childish. We're hotel guests, not some children in an amusement park. Granted, a convention is pretty much like an amusement park if you look at it from a certain angle, but I'm still a hotel guest - not just an ACen attendee.

Also, yes - cosplay. This will be my big cosplay year, as in, I'm actually taking it seriously and wanting to have fun and good pictures - a wristband would look tacky and really unprofessional.

So if wristbands were to be a thing, I'd want it to be removable, which means the paper ones wouldn't work. But then that brings up another thing - more things to look after while at the con. I've lost my badge before. It's not fun. I don't want to have to deal with losing a wristband too.

If ACen wants to implement this, fine - whatever; but I only hope they get removable ones. We already have to have our props tagged, don't make us tag ourselves too.

[Agatha]

There are logistical issues with wristbands.

1. Are you proposing that ACen print these wristbands and distribute them to the hotels? If so:

-Who pays for the added expense? Printing isn't cheap.
-ACen would need to have access to everyone's hotel information. Even if this is possible it's likely a logistical nightmare.

If you expect the hotels to do the above, they likely won't, because of the additional expense. Even if ACen were doing it all, enacting this policy would also require significant additional expense for the hotels because they have to pay people to distribute and check wristbands, and pay someone for the time it takes to get everyone's information to ACen. Remember, at Youmacon, it was the hotel's idea in the first place, so they'd already concluded that they were okay with the added expense (and it was one hotel.) For this, you'd have to convince the hotels to do it. There are also tons of hotels in the area, and I don't think it's feasible to expect every single one to be able to and/or want to accommodate these policies, especially hotels that are farther away and thus don't see as many congoers - and then it's not fair to those attendees who might be excluded from events on that basis.

Unless your proposal is that ACen staff handle all of this (checking bands, issuing bands, issuing replacements) which, given the scale of the event, would require a lot more staff-hours, and I think is probably not feasible to do.

2. Wristbands are also easily damaged by showering, easily torn, etc. and then there's the problem of getting replacements.

I guess I also don't really see what problem this is fixing.

1. For hotel rooms, you're already not supposed to have more than the number of people booked for in there anyway, and wouldn't responsibility for that fall to the hotel and not ACen? If it's really something the hotel wants to strictly enforce they could easily require people to show keycards and/or require keycards to access certain areas.

As for IRT checking rooms at a set time, IRT's already quite busy, and that seems like it would take a lot of resources from them. In addition, is that really IRT's jurisdiction? If I have a noise complaint, I call the hotel.

Besides that, even if it were IRT's jurisdiction, is the number of noise complaints really so great that it justifies the added resources and the added irritation to congoers? If I had people who weren't even employees of the hotel demanding they be allowed to check my room when we weren't doing anything wrong, I a) wouldn't be too pleased and b ) wouldn't let them in. We're responsible adults, thank you, not kindergarteners.

2. I also don't understand why they'd be used for the rave.

Is your proposal that only people staying in certain hotels should have access to the rave after a certain time?

That doesn't seem very fair. There are a lot of different places that people go to stay in the area besides the "big" hotels, and there are also locals who commute to ACen. If they bought their badge, shouldn't they be allowed the same access as anyone else who bought a badge? (As above, I don't think it's reasonable to try to get every possible hotel to abide by a wristband policy)

Are the "problems" at the rave typically caused by people not staying at nearby hotels - is there any actual information on this, as opposed to anecdotes?

Couldn't this simply be implemented by making someone show a keycard?

3. For medical situations, a keycard would be enough to tell what hotel a person's at. In addition, how many of these medical situations arise wherein it's necessary to find out someone's room number ASAP, and is that really enough to justify the added hassle for the thousands of other people attending the con? (i.e. someone could fall down the stairs and hit their head, but we don't make everyone wear helmets)

4. There's also the cosplay issue. I'm a cosplayer, and I'd be pretty peeved if I had to wear something that I couldn't take off or hide.

This post has been edited by Agatha: 15 November 2012 - 08:06 PM

[Smokey]

Dark Spellmaster, on 15 November 2012 - 01:40 PM, said:

1. Tell medical personal right away what hotel a person is at. (I bring this up after seeing a medic trying to get a guy to tell him his name and what room he's in at when he was loopy.) This band would have the room number and name of hotel on it, and allow the medic to radio in to find out who the person is and get important information based on this, such as who the emergency contact is.

We already give out the MedicInfo card. They're attached to the badge and contain your most vital medical info, including your emergency contact. Available for free at any Special Needs location.

[Bloo09]

Not everyone stays in our hotel block, thousands and thousands are either local or go to further hotels that are cheaper for them. So banding by hotel would not work. We also will never accept a bracelet as a form of showing legal age. As others have said they can easily be slipped off, cut off and taped back on, etc. A badge is currently enough to show that you are an attendee of Anime Central

Please remember this thread is posted as a Suggestion by one of our awesome attendees and currently is not a plan for Anime Central programming.

[OtakuAngelD]

Forgive this, but this really erks my paranoia buttons something aweful.

I don't want anyone I don't want to know my hotel and room number. That is just asking for trouble. There are dangerous people out there. The young, barely of age girl you see in the rave line. You and anyone else that sees her wrist band now knows not only what hotel she is at but what room she is in. It's the first rule of staying at a hotel. You don't tell strangers where you are staying. Period.

[GITS SAC Motoko]

This idea has great intentions, and I understand for sure it would help, but I personally feel there are more drawbacks than benefits. Like the cost of printing wristbands, wristbands coming off. For example for the rave idea, the first thing I thought of was "if someone doesn't have a wristband, they can get it from a friend or find one on the ground" and the problem still arises. Or, I have commuted to ACen for two years and have stayed WAY LATER than 1AM--and it would stink if I would be denied attendance to an event because I wasn't staying at a hotel. Some people like to dance at the rave, have fun, and not stay in room parties or drink.

Though one thing you did mention was IRT going to rooms to control parties I have two issues: 1 this would be impossible without a designated "party floor." This can't be controlled with random rooms in the hotel. It's just not possible for the amount of staff and with staff needed in other places.

Biggest thing? The IRT are not your RA in the dorms to say where and when you can and cannot party. They are not there to control parties, tell people when they need to leave. Now if people are being WAY too loud many times and disturbing other guests, then okay fine. But their job is not to control who parties where or how long parties are going. In my opinion, it is up to the individual to make their own decisions on how late to stay/etc.

One thing that MIGHT help with badges is age. I know when I went to Anime Midwest to get into panels/rave/18+ events, you had a colored sticker on your badge--and it symbolized if you were or were not over 18, instead for checking everyones ID. That I am sure would take a lot of time and money to do--because ACen has SO MANY attendees.

[Tashigi2526]

Dark Spellmaster, on 15 November 2012 - 01:40 PM, said:

2. The bands could be used as a way to deal with the raves. Given the lateness that these events run to, those without bands should leave by say 1 am. This way crowd control could be easier. Don't have a band on, can't get in after 1. Most other events are done by then anyway I think the rave is the only thing going. Again if there's an incident, the officer or IRT just has to look at the band, get the room number to at least get who's involved, or if that person is a guest of the room. Bands would be checked for in line, those that don't have their bands will be asked to leave.

When you take into consideration the size of the line for the rave, along with the fact that the rave does not always start on time, there would be little, if any, chance for most people to get into the rave before the proposed 1:00 a.m. cutoff time. This past year, for example, the Soap Bubble and Hardcore Synergy were supposed to start around 10:30-11:00 p.m., but both were delayed for well over an hour (the concert held before Hardcore Synergy ran late and the Soap Bubble was delayed by the mass evacuation of the Hyatt after the fire alarm went off).

[Siren_N0el]

I am fully on board with either wristbands, or a sticker that goes onto your ACen badge. That may be easier and less likely to lose.
Enforcing curfews and age limits at the raves are crucial. We may not be children at an amusement park, but this idea can ensure that the REAL children at ACen are not where they should not be at the wrong time.

[pyrrhicvictini]

I like the sticker idea on badges much more than a wristband to show age or something for raves. However, would there be an issue with making underage people into targets?

[Dark Spellmaster]

Thinking about this over, applogies to anyone that I offended it wasn't my intention. I do like the sticker idea though, I think it might help cut down on some issues that there have been in the past. Also might help with security in some cases.

[Kitana_Matsuri]

Regarding age, I'm to assume that any responsible adult going to an 18+ area or even a 21+ area will carry proper identification. To not do so is moronic. The Rosemont police have become an active staple point in the hotel over the last couple years and I expect they'll be roaming around and checking ID's after hours. They will most certainly not take your colored sticker into account when they are trying to determine if you are out past curfew, smoking or drinking underage. They want valid identification. A wrist band or sticker is absolutely useless to them. While it would be convenient for IRT, it's all too easy to borrow a friends badge with sticker or wrist band if you're underage and trying to get into the rave.

Also, there is nothing remotely acceptable about being checked on when there is no complaint against the room. Unless you are an on-duty Officer of the law, I will not be accommodating check-ins at set times. Not only is that overstepping, but it's flat out offensive. Like many people going to the convention, I am a fully grown adult. So long as I am within the rights of the law, abiding by the rules and behaving appropriately, I will be damned if someone even has the audacity to tell how and where to conduct myself, simply because. I don't think I need to tell anyone where to shove that notion. The hostility is clear.