Organisers of GamerCon have committed to refunding those left in the cold this weekend. The event took place at the Convention Centre Dublin, but many of those hoping to attend were left disappointed.
The line up at the event included PlayStation, Xbox and a number of prominent YouTube personalities. Early on Saturday morning, however, Twitter erupted with unhappy attendees, complaining of long queues.
#GamerCon Stay away queues aren't being managed lots of disappointed kids and very annoyed parents pic.twitter.com/9FgpUkO4sr
— Darren Byrne (@larsson007) March 18, 2017
In a statement issued this morning, organiser Ferdi Roberts said some 21,600 people walked through the doors of GamerCon across the weekend.
"11,000 on Saturday 18th and 10,600 on Sunday 19th. We clearly had challenges with queuing on Saturday When I was informed of this I made the decision to offer a refund to attendees who were outside and did not wish to queue further. We communicated this offer in person at the event, via social media and via our phone app."
Roberts says a number of changes were made following the confusion on Saturday to try and minimalise delays on Sunday, "with most attendees experiencing between 30 and 45 minutes queuing into the venue which we feel is to be expected with an event of this scale," continues the statement.
Speaking to Newstalk Breakfast this morning, Orla McDonnell told Kieran Cuddihy about her experience of attending the conference. She went along with her husband and four children.
"We travelled up from Dundalk and thought we'd get there for 11, which we did. We started to queue three blocks away at 11 and it moved quickly until 11.45, then it stopped. We were left standing there and did not gain entry until 1.30pm. Security was telling us that it was over capacity, too many tickets had been sold. The weather was horrendous and none of us were dressed for it."
Blame game
The statement from organiser Ferdi Roberts places some of the blame at the door of the venue.
"There were also issues with queues within the building. This was not under GamerCon’s direct control – the Convention Centre Dublin are responsible for people management and public safety within their building. The Convention Centre Dublin were fully aware of the ticket sales and expected numbers of attendees. It should also be noted that capacities and ticket sales were discussed and jointly agreed with our venue partner the Convention Centre."
The organisers say they will be "proactively dealing with all refund requests in the coming week and will be in contact with these ticket holders individually over the next 5 working days."
We have contacted Convention Centre Dublin for a comment.
Additional reporting by Stephen McNiece
