Over Half of the Guests For Louisville’s Fandom Fest Have Dropped Out
Fans showing up to Louisville, KY based Fandom Fest today aren’t exactly going to have the experience they were initially promised. The con’s last minute change in venue which moved the con across town to an old Macy’s seems to have been just the start of their problems. What looms even larger now is the fact that over half of their guest list has cancelled.
Apparently the list of forty celebrities that were slated to appear has now dropped down to about eighteen at last count. Losses include Weird Al, Tori Spelling and Ian Ziering. When talking with local television station WDRB, Ziering and Spelling’s booking agent Tony Vela said, “Delayed flights and hotel room reservations — it just didn’t look like a good situation to be in.” While convention organizers have tried to shrug off the cancellations, blaming them on business as usual, the sheer number of guests no longer in attendance is hard to dismiss.
Frankly, it would be hard to see how the venue change isn’t to blame.
The most infuriating part of this for a lot of fans is that Fandom Fest has a “no refunds” policy. Considering how much photo ops and the like cost, with no recourse to recover spent funds, people aren’t exactly happy. While the convention is allowing attendees to transfer these purchases to another celebrity, there will always be people who showed up just for one who don’t really care about the rest of the guest list.
I mean, Weird Al Yankovic can’t just be replaced, you know?
