FA: United 2012 (which is still going on) moved hotels this year (The PR reason was they needed more space, A
review of the hotel on Yelp by Dragoneer paints a different picture) and was advertised as being "bigger, better and more fun than ever before."
Firstly, it needs to be mentioned that the hotel, the
Hanover Mariott, is
literally in the middle of fucking Nowhere, New Jersey. Nearby attractions include high tension power lines and a business park. Even the
hotel's website says that the nearest restaurant not in the hotel is a mile away, so this is definitely a "bring a car" convention.
In the last few weeks, there's been some bizarre promotion of the event, usually revolving around selling hotel rooms over anything else. A week ago, the
schedule was released, which compared to
last year, was fairly sparse, despite the convention adding new breakout rooms thanks to the new hotel. There are numerous gaps where nothing happens or only one event is in progress for an hour or more.
Click here for a long time chart comparing last year to this year. (Key: Green is an event, Red is an adult themed event, stripes indicate an event that lasted 45 minutes or less. Stripes facing different directions indicate two 30 minute events that ran back to back.)
In the end, not counting the ongoing "Fursuit Games" events from 2011, you end up with an event count of 42 events in 2011 and 33 in 2012 (2012 is 36 if you count the three sewing panels on Saturday as separate events. I counted them as one.) They lost 9 events, not counting the "Tabletop Gaming" room they had in 2011 and that
never got past "we're working on it!" for 2012.
There are some rumors flying around that attendance is down quite a bit this year, and if they somehow manage to beat
last year's 531 attendees it will be a miracle.
