diary of an Endorphin Junkie

It doesn't seem to matter how every year the exact same issues are brought up at every freakin' Worldcon one after another, each year another team fails to solve the top 3 things any convention should ensure are solid for their attendees. This isn't just bad information sharing, honestly after 30 years of watching every single one of them fail again and again, it just comes down to outright lack of care for the members.

When you attend a convention, what's the top 3 things important to you?

1. Registering
2. Getting to (thing) you want to see
3. Finding food

These are in order they likely occur to you, rather than order of importance as #2 is critical to someone with accessibility constraints for example whereas #3 may matter more to someone with blood sugar issues, etc.

And how often do these problems appear? Well, if you attend the feedback panels at any convention you'll find that more than 90% of the complaints on most non-epic-tragedy years center around these three issues. Furthermore, if you work a table promoting a convention you'll find that these three issues dominate the questions asked of you. In short, you hear it coming and going over and over again how important these issues are.

So how well is Worldcon 75 standing up to the task?

1. Registration
- started a day late
- is apparently missing significant information (per other posts)
- has merged multiple registrations that contain the same name with least privilege winning out
- has no access to the original dataset, and no way to validate original membership confirmations

2. Getting to things. The maps of each level are
- rotated in different directions
- missing intersection of common details (no common staircases exist on both levels of a map)
- have labels with arrows that point opposite direction from where that thing is (do the Fins always walk away from where the arrow is pointing?)

Accessibility is a super-clusterpuff. There's a nice hotel for the accessible attached/merged with the convention center. It's less than 30 steps from the hotel's breakfast area to the registration desk. However, staff has decided to make all of the accessibility-constrained people walk/roll more than 700 steps out to the street and back in the south entrance "to ensure flow"

3. Finding food

OMG. So there is a whole book on finding restaurants. Nice! Well, except that the map uses a 3-point font for names, so it is unreadable EVEN WITH A MAGNIFYING GLASS. Furthermore, the only anchor points on the map are the restaurants, so there's zero ability to find how they relate to your positionn.

Wait, we have technology! We'll use Google Maps and find some common points of reference... So yeah, not a single restaurant with a number on the map is listed in Google Maps, so there's no way to overlay Google Maps so as to find the restaurants listed there.

Some of you are probably going to say "and nobody can fit into the panel rooms, they are overfilled" and yeah that's the same old same old as previous years too. Because god knows, sharing data gathered over the years couldn't possibly be in the member's interest.

TL;DR version: the Excel center has gone out of its way to make an accessible space as difficult to access as possible. Every short path has been blocked, requiring hundreds of meters of re-routing.

Number one top problem is the Aloft hotel that disabled people have been put in. It's a nice hotel and I rather like it... but I'm still walking. I've watched people on scooters and in wheelchairs trying to navigate it, and it's depressing. I've been here less than 24 hours and I've already helped 3 people get into their rooms after minutes of struggling to do it on their own.

The second problem is the usage of the Excel. In very general terms, the Excel meets every guideline for accessible access... if you discount that every accessible entrance is dozens if not hundreds of meters farther away than necessary. On top of which, in every situation where you come up or out and find yourself facing a doorway to the next area, that doorway is locked. You are continually re-routed from direct paths to indirect paths dozens or hundreds of meters out of your way.

A prime example is the access to the programming space. When you leave the art/vendor/fan space there is an elevator which would take you directly up to the programming space. This is closed off. Instead you must route through three escalators and three fifty meter walks between them, or route to an elevator a full 100 meters away from both the fan space and the programming space.

When you reach the top of the escalator or handicap-accessible elevator, you will find yourself directly facing a walkway. If this walkway were open, you could reach the programming rooms in 20 meters. However, this walkway is blocked off. You are instead re-routed 50-70 meters down to the far side of the building, from which you go the same 25 meters sideways, and then walk 50 meters back to reach the programming rooms.

Why the expansive re-route? Because this location is more suitable for the fully abled security staff. Who, let me emphasize this, have their own elevator which goes directly from the fan space to the programming space.

Let's go back and review this. Handicap people are re-routed hundreds of meters, while fully able-bodied security staff have an elevator going directly from the fan space to the programming space. Futhermore, handicap people are re-routed dozens of meters around a scenic route so that able-bodied security staff don't have to walk more than a few feet away from their direct elevator route.

The amount of Fail in this situation cannot be fully expressed.

As is my standard response to non-optimal scenarios, I attempted to reach out and bring this problem to the attention of the Loncon3 convention programming and operations staff. Each of which department made it very clear that this wasn't their problem, it was someone else's problem, and wouldn't I please go away and bother someone else? After doing a full 1 kilometer loop being sent in a round loop of departments, I was in too much pain to make my way the 1/2 kilometer back to the programming space and have returned to my hotel room. Where I could not use the doorway which leads directly from the convention space to my hotel as it was locked, but had to walk 30 meters down a hallway to a much farther doorway, and then 30 meters back to the same point outside the direct doorway in order to reach the handicap hotel.