Disappointed in the Show Floor
I want to say upfront that I had a pretty good time at this year's D23. This has been my fourth D23 expo and I keep coming back mostly because it is nice how much more structured and clean the convention experience is compared to stuff like SDCC or AX. D23 has always been a lot more corporate, a lot more advertising, a lot more controlled. ACC is a bigger convention hall than most places, the virtual queues and line management is better than the lotteries and outdoor camping you have to do at other cons, and the staff are way better. There's so many hotels nearby that even public transit seems like a waste of time, which is good now that ART is out of business!
Also, in my extremely personal experience, it felt like this year had way less problems with crowd management. Queuing everyone in the North Hall before the con opened was a super smart choice compared to the Lorcana tramplings that happened in 2024 when everyone was staged in Hall D, and I absolutely dread the old days camping overnight in Hall E on the hard concrete to try to get into the panels. It's also great to see Ravensburger join the list of virtual queue shops alongside the first party stores.
But I think it should be said what was missing from this year's con that left me pretty bummed out after walking the whole show floor.
First, the lack of marketplace vendors really took away a lot of fun on the floor. Say what you want about the difficulty of getting into virtual queues, but I think what sucked even more than getting up at 6AM to book a virtual queue is that if you didn't get one, there was basically nothing to do other than sit in lines for panels or look at the exhibits, and I'll get to my gripes with the exhibits in a minute. The marketplace at its peak when they would fill all of Hall A would take hours or days to go through. Tons of vintage stuff, hard to find pins, unique vendors, etc. And none of it required waiting in a 45 minute line.
It's like a lazy river at a water park. Is it the most exciting thing? No. But it's a reliable thing to do with no lines and tons of capacity that's always there if you're tired of waiting in lines for the big stuff. That's important for a large convention like this.
I get from Disney's corporate perspective that managing dozens of tiny vendors is a lot of work and risk for something that they don't get the lion's share of the profits from, but Disney didn't even try to replace it with anything. They just moved things back from the North Hall and moved the Premier stage so they wouldn't have to use the Arena and save money this time.
Second, I no longer felt like a customer at any of the "activations" that anyone was putting on. Everything was targeted at influencers and social media. The Disney+ Hulu area is the best example. For anyone who didn't go over there, there was a freebie that was marketed as a scavenger hunt. You go to a bunch of stations dressed up as different shows, and collect stamps. If you get four stamps, you get a free pin from a random show. What do you have to do at each station? You have to take a selfie. That's it. No learning about the show, no cool props or games involving the show. Nope. You just take a selfie. Why did I not like that? Because it's clearly just fishing for influencer and social media engagement. We asked if we could just take an empty photo of the set because one of our group members felt uncomfortable posing for a picture, and we actually got pushback from the attendants. After asking a couple times, they would let us, but every time it felt like, no, the requirement is that you're in the photo. You don't get the prize unless you take a photo that you can get tagged in, because they wanted the social media engagement. Did I learn anything about the new Simpsons movie or High Potential? Do I even know what High Potential is about? Nope. But it looks like it's about a woman who sits at a desk in an office. That's cool I guess.
Avatar was the same way. Was there anything there about the upcoming movies? Nope. Just a cool maze that you can post on Insta.
Disney/Pixar was the same thing. They had a much smaller area than years past and except for three walls with past concept art, all that was there to interact with was a bunch of photo ops, for Instagram. The other half of the space they were usually in was given to Mundo Pixar, which is, you guessed it, a maze with photo ops which you can take selfies with.
Bluey was the same thing. They have a new Bluey movie coming out. Was there anything there representing something specific about the new movie? An exclusive trailer or a poster? Nope, they just borrowed the character costumes from Disneyland and offered you a freebie keychain plush if you took a selfie with them.
Same with M&Ms. Tiny booth and all there is was a photo op with cardboard cutouts and a free fun size M&Ms packet.
I don't want this to be an "old man rants at the Instagram generation" but after walking the entire floor for 6 hours on Sunday, literally the only cast members that even talked to me about anything substantial was one girl at the Music Emporium booth who acknowledged my costume, a couple people at the Imagineering pavilion, and the DVC rep who tried to sell me on a timeshare.
And honestly, I learned way more about DVC and had more fun in that timeshare pitch than I did taking constant selfies.
Even in recent memory, we had mini golf courses, massive Archives exhibits, Avafest, trivia, etc. The point is, usually every "activation" usually has a unique fun quality to them. It's not normal for a majority of the floor that isn't shopping to just be selfie frames.
Credit where credit is due, I really liked the Heinz booth, which not only had free bbq sauce, custom bbq sauce vending machines, hot dogs and pretzels for sale, and an online poll for the best bbq sauce! I also liked the Music Emporium booth, which used their entire space for demonstrations and a prize wheel and put all their sales online so they could maximize the space. The Marceline museum also had a really cool model of the Carolwood Pacific railroad.
But I'm really sad if this is the way conventions are going. The big conventions are pushing "influencer engagement" and "exclusive merch" over fan experience and the smaller conventions are overwhelmed by 3D printed dragons.