Super Trainer Showdown Report, Long Beach, California
#3
Yes, there were several hundred VERY irate league players and their parents left waiting SEVERAL hours in line and then sent off with tickets to the Queen Mary and a Rocket pack but NO entry into the tournament!!
My son and I got there about 9:30; supposedly anyone in line from 8 to 11 AM would be eligible for the tourney—after about an hour in line, we finally moved up to about 30 away from the front of the line (although TONS of people in a second line, so nowhere near to actually entering). Then the organizers (who had no clue from our view) decided to put all the people in the second line back in the first; so now we were further back than when we started!! Apparently there were more people in the event than were allowed by fire safety standards. At this point it was obvious it would be SEVERAL more HOURS to get into the tourney, and we saw the gen. adm. line moving quickly, so decided to skip the tourney. Unfortunately we were 10 minutes too late; although we were about 8th and 9th in line, they stopped letting people in. At about 11:30 AM, we were told NO more people would be allowed in; if they let anyone in, it wouldn’t be for 2 hours or so!! The people in the tourney line were especially fuming—when they left, there was NO chance to get in the tourney since it was past 11!! (Those people had been waiting since BEFORE 9:00!!!) Tickets to the Queen Mary and a Rocket pack just didn’t cut it for most of the people; it was lucky no riot occurred (I seriously expected it, by the way people were ranting!!).
My son and I, disgusted, proceeded to eat lunch in the Queen Mary Seaport (burger and chicken lunches came to $14; parking was $8, 2 ice creams and a drink in the Queen Mary was $7!!!) then go inside the Queen Mary. We left at about 3:45 and decided just to see if we could get the freebie pack (stickers) and found there was no line to go in, so he played the card game and earned 2 Jungle packs.
There was a sign that said “Get Mew” and it took me about 15 minutes, talking to about 5 people who worked there to discover it was referring to the N64 game and not Gameboy. I felt the people working there had almost NO knowledge of the game; simply hired hands for the day...
At one of the higher-level Gameboy tournament areas, there were NO people at all playing. A kid walked up and asked if he could play and was told since his ticket said 5:30 he should come back in 15 minutes when it would be his time!! I repeat, NO ONE was playing in the area—HELLO!!!
All in all, I was left feeling pretty disgusted with Wizards and would be hard-pressed to attend another one of these events!!!
Laura J. (Brea, CA)