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Eastercon 2017 in Cardiff?!


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Straw poll: how many people here – particularly those who don’t often go to Eastercon – would be interested in an Eastercon in Cardiff in 2016, potentially including Doctor Who and Torchwood walking tours?



ETA: this is now 2017; see page 2.


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Is this a cunning plan of yours to make several people step into non-exsistance?

:D

We're in the interesting position where either a lot of people or not many people would be perfectly doable but a medium amount of people (c. 1000) would be tricky. At the moment we're trying to garner approximate enthusiasm and turn that into guesstimates.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

Hello,

I'm a fairly regular Eastercon attendee, and would definitely be interested in a Cardiff Eastercon.

What is the upper limit of your smaller option? 1000 would be a large Eastercon these days, and hasn't occurred outside London in recent years. Generally outside London, Eastercon maxes out around 700-800 (though I didn't hear totals for Glasgow this year, I'd expect it to be in that ballpark).

Best of luck,

James

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Hi, James: Zoe Sumra here.



Glasgow had around 775 pre-booked members and sold just under 100 walk-ins (combination of weekend and day in each case). Not all the pre-books turned up - not sure how many as I didn't count the leftover badges - but that's always the case.



Under the most sensible configuration of altering the moveable walls, the person limit for the biggest room in our smaller option would come out under that for the two-room main hall configuration for Glasgow (525 in Glasgow versus 375 in Cardiff - when the main hall in Glasgow was split in two, each half's official limit was 250). We have the option of expanding the main hall up to 700 people, but at the cost of a problematically small dealers' room.


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My own recent experience is Shamrokon. We had approx 970 warm bodies at the con, so comparible in size to an Eastercon. Our largest room could seat about 370 people. The only events it was full for were Doctor Who on Saturday, and the closing ceremony. The demographic attending would probably be different to Eastercon, so I would caution making a direct comparison, but it at least gives an indication, and a 700 person main room would almost certainly be unnecessary most of the time..

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Mmm, I just got hold of the Glasgow actual room usage numbers, and the main room was pretty low on average with the opening/closing ceremonies excepted (bear in mind that the one time I managed to get in to anything there was the closing ceremony, so I'd had a warped view of its usage as opposed to capacity). The hotel we have in mind is looking more and more suitable!


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  • 2 months later...

A bit early to commit, but looking at travel options, Cardiff does seem a bit outbackish. Seems like KLM are the only option to get there, and getting back will involve a sleepover in Amsterdam. Are there any other international airports in the vicinity that could be used instead?


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A bit early to commit, but looking at travel options, Cardiff does seem a bit outbackish. Seems like KLM are the only option to get there, and getting back will involve a sleepover in Amsterdam. Are there any other international airports in the vicinity that could be used instead?

Bristol's the next best - nice easy train route between the cities, and it boasts a "connecting flight" to Bergen (and direct flights to Stockholm, Copenhagen, three cities in Finland, lots of other European cities etc. - many, many more direct flights to Europe than Cardiff has, though flying to Cardiff will be the quickest, though possibly not cheapest, way of getting there from Edinburgh and Aberdeen). Exeter is just off a train route to Cardiff (change at Bristol) but hardly has any flights so is probably useless.

Other than that, odd though it may sound, Birmingham and Heathrow will be your next bets - Birmingham New Street station is about two and a half hours from Cardiff Central, and Paddington station, the end-point of the Heathrow Connect and Heathrow Express, is two hours from Cardiff Central. (For reference, it takes just over an hour and a half to get to my house in south east London from Heathrow.)

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