Lines

My day started very early in the morning. It was dark when I woke up. My friends and I drove up to Anaheim to get in line for the Diamond Anniversary pins. We waited almost two hours to eventually be turned away. We arrived at the line at the time they said we could line up. Unfortunately, people who did not follow the rules, showed up overnight to wait for pins. Rather than being turned away, Disneyland brought them onto the property to wait to get wristbands to buy pins. So, hundreds of people who followed the instructions were left waiting in the standby line for nothing. And the people who cheated the rules, got the pins, so they could sell them on eBay for three times what they cost. It doesn't really make sense for Disney to let people do this, because they aren't even benefitting from it.

This problem is not exclusive to Disney. The same situation happens at Comic Con. They give a date and time that people are allowed to start lining up for a hall, the Con floor, or exclusive sales. People start showing up to line up early. Sometimes as much as two or three days early. So, Comic Con then announces that people can line up as early as the night before, "to discourage overnight camping." So, people start lining up early. And because people are lining up early, Comic Con decides, rather than not allowing it, they will start giving out wristbands. The same thing happened at VidCon, with the autograph sales and panel access. And, this is not just a Convention/Amusement Park issue. The same thing happens with stores on what used to be Black Friday.

Let me tell event organizers a little secret: Wristbands do not discourage people from waiting. They don't minimize the amount of time people will be willing to wait. Rather than being in any way a deterrent, the wristbands then become part of the package. It means people now want the panel, toy, or pin and a wristband.

The real truth is this: Event organizers don't want to do what needs to be done. The way to discourage people from lining up overnight and causing issues by milling en masse is not to reward them for that behavior. Rather than giving them what they want, these places need to let the police handle it. They need to let the giant group of people disturbing the peace get the tickets/arrests they deserve.

I don't see this ever happening. Because, then there would be bad publicity, but it really is the only way to stop people from pushing an envelope that has already been pushed too far.

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