Doctor Who "The Official Convention"

To be held on 24th and 25th March 2012 at the Wales Millennium Cardiff. But the 2 days are repeats of each other. And I have to say that it looks like a right royal rip-off to me.

Details here.

Ridiculously over priced for a one day convention.

The FAQs don't make it sound too great either - especially the bits suggesting it's really for adults only and not for kids.

And it doesn't even mention a bar.

The signings are in the bars.

The whole thing is a disgrace IMO and it's no surprise that Who Fandom on the interwebs has gone into near unanimous meltdown.

it's a "con" vention...

i don't see the problem-if its at least four times as good as a normal convention it will be good value for money:)

Wow, that is "official"ly expensive.

This is not a convention, it is a professional event. I will not be going.

Good man yerself Cat.

Mrs C=O just made an interesting point. True *fanatics* will go to this, they'll go at any cost because it's such a total obsession.

So I guess that means we're all pretty normal!

It looks as though someone's realised that there are fans of Who out there with money they're not giving to BBC Worldwide and have set out to find the simplest way to extract it from them. I can't work out what the appeal of this is - and the whole 'not for kids' bit makes me think that it's going to be extremely dull as well.

Are people against the idea of the BBC getting involved in conventions on principle? Like having a party organized by your teacher or something, it's like having an injection of obvious officialdom?

That doesn't worry me one iota Tom. And I say that as someone who survived Longleat in April 1983! But........

I've known for months that this convention was coming, that BBC Worldwide was going to use an outside events company who knew nothing about Doctor Who, let alone Who conventions - but couldn't say anything to anyone.

I've known for a couple of weeks when it was going to be and the format/scheduling etc. Again I honestly couldn't post about it.

But I had no idea about the cost whatsoever. Or what a rip-off it would be. I'd actually reserved a hotel room in Cardiff for the night of Saturday 24th March. Suffice to say I will be cancelling the reservation.

I've been involved in no less than 9 conventions in 2011 alone, 8 one day events and one weekend one. On and off, I've been involved in the organisation of Doctor Who conventions for well over 25 years. By a country mile this simply has to be the most overpriced, badly thought out, p1ss taking load of crap I have ever seen.