First of all, you need to understand that there was a random drawing to be able to register for this event, since the number of participants is limited. Secondly, the registration fee was $285.
What did we get for the money?
- Dinner/banquet with entertainment
- Mr. Toad statue parting gift
- First chance to buy merchandise from the event, and some WDW 40th Anniversary merchandise (but no pins)
- Artists signing
- Silent auction
- Commemorative photo shoot, with one complimentary print, and the option to have 5 additional photo shoots for $39.
- Admission to Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party that evening.
It was certainly a good time, and for those who are big Haunted Mansion fans and collectors, this was the place to be. However, I am very disappointed that not enough events were being planned for the attendees. For example, if you did you early registration and merchandise pick-up on Thursday, you have nothing, NOTHING worthwhile to do on Friday, the day of the event till 3:00 pm, other than the photo shoot and viewing the merchandise for the silent auction, the latter should take no more than 10 minutes at most! In other words, for most of us, we were just lounging around, chatting with other people, and simply be bored to death at nothing to do.
Even at 3:00 pm, when the viewing, artists signing, and silent auction commenced, these are activities that have very narrow appeal. most of the attendees either don't want to spend that much money to bid for these items (which ran into thousand of dollars), or don't want to spend time in line to get artists signatures. So again, most of us just wondered around with no place to go and nothing to do. In fact, what it boils down to is that, on the day of the event itself, the ONLY thing that everyone participated in was the banquet, and that started at 7:00 pm! So for many of us, there was almost nothing to do on the day of the event till the banquet!
Now, it is at the banquet where you see where most of your registration money was spent. They did make an effort to decorate the banquet hall to match the theme of the event. But this is also where they cramped everything in. During the banquet, we had the artist Noah making his one-of-a-kind painting, we had the organist, we had two different kinds of musical entertainment, and we had a presentation of the Imagineers on the Haunted Mansion attraction. Consequently, the banquet ran long, and it cut short our time at MNSSHP that evening (we walked out of the banquet just as HalloWishes fireworks was ending!).
Now, the most natural question that came out of this is that, why didn't they have some of the stuff they had during the banquet presented during the day when most of us had nothing to do? The presentation by the Imagineers themselves could have been a session on its own and that could have occupied an hour easily. The presentation that was given during the banquet was heavy on the Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, and short on the one that we were there to celebrate - the MK's Haunted Mansion - because they were then running long and had to skip over a lot of viewgraphs. Most of us would have liked to hear more on this, but were deprived of it.
And oh, another thing. A lot of people who attended the event are also pin traders. They released several pins at this event, including a mystery set that I'm sure a lot of people were trying to a complete set off. Having a room for pin trading/vinylmation trading not only would have given people a chance to do just that, but also a place people can meet and congregate and talk about the things they are there for.
At the end of the day, I was happy, but left with an unsatisfied feeling. It's like having a meal with a tasty dish, but you still feel hungry because the portions were just too small to be satisfying.
Zz.
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