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Destination Star Trek Birmingham

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For Mulgrew, my sister convinced the guy that commanders have preference after captains and so we managed to get in shortly afterwards. My sister got a bit worked up thinking I was going to miss the Discovery group photo that was clashing with it. I knew the queue for that wouldn’t be large so I went and got that and came back and in the end, I was only 10 people behind my sister.
 
Gallery and museum displays were much better this time and professionally laid out compared to 2016. More selfie and free photo op backgrounds as well.

I have to say, I don't buy the earlier post suggesting Isaacs was a wash out re photo shoots.The Discovery year 1 talk had about three times the numbers as the TNG one.
 
Isaacs was easily the best celeb there. He looked like he had a blast there. Apparently if you stayed at the Hilton, he kept people up there in the bar until 5am.
The TNG one wasn’t popular because only Troi, Crusher and Worf were there. Also all Lieutenants, Commanders and Captains got the Discovery panel as part of the package.

Looks like they’re coming back in 2019 with Takei already confirmed as a guest.
 
I've only been to one convention - day trip to Manchester. Palace Hotel in 1996 I think - saw talks from Beltran and Meaney. I don't recall much in the way of queuing, and I don't see anything on umtss about it, but it was half a lifetime ago.

I'm seeing conflicting posts here, some are saying it was dead, some are saying the queues were terrible.

What's the actual truth? I hate queues, almost as bad as adverts, but SWMBO is keen on going to a convention of some sort at some point, and Birmingham is far easier to get to than Vegas
 
The queue for the Kate Mulgrew second time slot was long but that's due to her popularity I guess. I don't like queueing either but it was worth it. That was my first convention ever and its reignited my love of all things ST. Barring anything life altering I'll definitely be going to next years.
 
It was my first and even though I was only there on the Saturday I thought it was good. There were large queues at times for the props and some of the photoshoots but it was all pretty well organised from my perspective.

For me the highlights were Alexander Siddig who took time out to chat and take photos with everyone and then the Cirroc Lofton talk was really quite interesting and more structured so got to hear a lot more about his experiences and relationships with the other actors then any of the others that I did (DS9 writers, Quark Family and Walter Koenig).
 
For Mulgrew, my sister convinced the guy that commanders have preference after captains and so we managed to get in shortly afterwards. My sister got a bit worked up thinking I was going to miss the Discovery group photo that was clashing with it. I knew the queue for that wouldn’t be large so I went and got that and came back and in the end, I was only 10 people behind my sister.

You were likely in the same photo batch number as your sister and they hadn't called a higher batch number yet.

One thing you are going to do at these events if you want photo shoots and autographs is queue, for autographs usually the most popular guests (or those expected to be popular) will have a crew member give you a ticket for the queue so you can go away and do something else and come back and join the queue so long as you have a lower number than what has been called up to.

There was some interesting talks there from ESA and Fred Haise (Apollo XIII)
 
This was the first Star Trek convention I have been to, I loved it! I had a photo with Anthony Rapp, and autograph he liked my Team Stamets bag and my Stamets t shirt! I enjoyed the William Shatner talk. I will definitely go again!
 
It was batch 9 for Mulgrew but we managed to convince the chap to let us go in after the captains as we were commanders.
Would have liked to see the Apollo 13 talk but it was on the Voyager stage and I always arrive too late to get a good seat. At least if it was a paid talk, I’m guaranteed good seating.
I thought the Discovery actor autographs were too pricey. Should have been £20 each. Isaacs was the only one that the price made sense.
 
That was one thing as a first time convention-goer that I didn't expect - needing to take lots of cash. Luckily, by chance I had more on me than I usually carry. I live on contactless payments and rarely carry two fivers to rub together.
 
That was one thing as a first time convention-goer that I didn't expect - needing to take lots of cash. Luckily, by chance I had more on me than I usually carry. I live on contactless payments and rarely carry two fivers to rub together.

It does seem to vary some merchants are happy to take card while others aren't. I suspect a combination of processing fees and under the table cash. I remember one convention I talked the guy into taking PayPal as I had no cash on me .

It was far worse in the 90s card payment was unheard of at cons, you fog ripped off with high prices but got hit with the double edged sword that there
really wasn't an easy way to buy sci fi merchandise. If you had a Forbidden Planet anywhere near you they charged huge sums and importing from the US was still difficult, costly and could take ages to arrive.

I looked up prices for some the stuff I bought over the weekend and it seems to compare very favourabley with online pricing .
 
I would love to go to DST Birmingham sometime. Once my schedule agrees, I might fly over and check it out. I'd love to get some more Trek merchandise as well, as my local comic con only has 50% or less of booths taking up the floor. It has been slowly taken over by artist's alley over the years.

And I would love to meet Mulgrew!
 
Are you there? Do you work for Showmasters? Just wondering where you get these numbers you quote.

When you go on the ticket ordering site and order a guest photoshoot ticket, it tells you beforehand what batch your ticket will be in. A batch is roughly 70 photos. When the batch is full, the ticket site makes it unavailable. Your ticket will be in the next available batch. As of 10pm last Friday night, Mulgrew had sold 8 full batches, and tickets were selling in batch 9. Now, I don't discount people buying tickets on the their phones while at the event. I know it happens. But not 8 more batches worth. That's unheard of, especially for a £55 ticket.

As with the whole STD cast, Isaacs didn't sell well. For Saturday, he'd sold 4 standard photo batches, and 1 batch with the Discovery chair. Again, more may have been bought at the event, but he was £60, so it wouldn't have been many. I've been told by someone I talk to who went all 3 days that the STD cast were doing very little autograph business. Many of them were walking around giving free selfies, unheard of at Showmasters events. £35 and £55 photoshoot guests who've not sold, going around giving free selfies? I can imagine Joiner must've been somewhere putting his fists through a wall. All the DST fans can say what they like about how wonderful the show is, how millions of people are watching it, and how sad all the haters are etc, but I'm afraid the lack of photoshoot and autograph sales, not just for the DST cast, but across the board for most guests, doesn't lie, at least not for the UK Trek fanbase. It's a real shame as the cast seemed like decent people. Doug Jones especially was going down a storm on Saturday.

Friday was dead, Sunday was little better. I've seen floor walk videos of both days. Saturday turnout seemed to be reasonable.
 
Friday was a weird day since you could only get in if you bought a 3 day ticket. It’s usually the quietest day which makes it the ideal day to get all the photos out of the way.
 
Well obviously it was successful enough for them to be doing another one next year, and at the end of the day if the cast enjoyed themselves no doubt some will come back and do another one. And by next year they might be more fans of DSC as they don't have Netflix but will pick the show up on DVD/BR.

I think the batch numbers are per day not overall.
 
Well obviously it was successful enough for them to be doing another one next year, and at the end of the day if the cast enjoyed themselves no doubt some will come back and do another one. And by next year they might be more fans of DSC as they don't have Netflix but will pick the show up on DVD/BR.

I've a suspicion, based on historical observation and joining the dots, that Media 10's license could well be running out at the end of next year, and that either they won't be renewing, or CBS won't be allowing them to. There will be a very good reason why Joiner's suddenly running this event 2 years running, and it won't be because of the profit or lack of that he
made from last weekend.

As for STD picking up more fans, I suspect there's too much of a bad stench around the show for it to pick up new viewers, and even if season 2 improves, the show won't go on long enough. DST showed the lack of interest in Discovery in all its glory.

I'll just post this here.
https://postimg.cc/8FPTHw3C
 
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