If you’ve been reading my blogs I’m sure you know that I was not very happy with this year’s D23 Expo. It was a very frustrating experience for me, and I talked to others who had much worse experiences than I did. There were a lot of “lowlights” and very few “highlights” for me this year.

The first D23 Expo two years ago also had its share of problems – and you would have thought they would have learned something from that, but unfortunately that apparently was not the case. I’d have to say, at least as far as the sessions go, that things were much worse this time. (Not with the content – the sessions themselves were first-rate.)

Two years ago there were more sessions scattered across more rooms, some of them occurring simultaneously. The rooms were too small for most of them, but at least there were more choices. This year, sessions were only held in three venues – the Arena, Stage 28, and Stage 23. These rooms were larger than they were two years ago – but there weren’t very many sessions scheduled in them. In fact there was NOTHING scheduled in Stage 28 on Sunday. They did use some of the smaller rooms – but as queues for all of the people who were lining up for sessions 2-4 hours early!!! With very few exceptions, if you didn’t queue up for a session at least 2 hours in advance then you didn’t get in. So you had lots of (unhappy) people who were standing in line rather than being on the show floor or buying food and merchandise.

Enough of that…here are some of my ideas to try to fix it:

1. This first one is really an either/or…either limit ticket sales OR schedule more seminars so that people have more options.

I personally think that they should go with limited access, and sell one type of ticket that allows access to the exhibit floor and the Archives ONLY, and another more limited ticket that also allows access to the seminars and arena presentations. That would cap the number of people trying to attend the sessions and give them a better chance of getting in without wasting time in line. What they did this year with the Sorcerer and Premiere tickets was a good start but I think they need to expand it and offer an option that isn’t quite that expensive to those like me who just want to be in the room and don’t care about sitting close. (Destination D at Disneyland was like that last year – I could walk in any time and always find a seat. Though it might be way over on the side I could always hear the presentation and they had big video screens so I could see what was going on.)

If they aren’t going to limit ticket sales then they need to add more content – this year there just wasn’t enough to do. Something like Comic-Con has 10-20 sessions going on simultaneously, so people can always find something to do, even if their first or second choice is full. We just didn’t have anywhere near those kinds of options this year. The sessions don’t all have to be panel discussions – they could just show us Disney TV shows or movies! This year there were a couple of screenings that were packed – they could have re-shown those at later times without the panel discussion that went with them. Guy Williams was inducted as a Disney Legend – how about showing us some episodes of Zorro? Or showing the movies featuring all of the Disney Legend princesses?

2. (Thanks to Michelle B. for this idea) Implement some kind of Fastpass system.

Only one per day per person – but it gets you into whatever session it is valid for without waiting in line for 2+ hours. If I’d known each day that there was ONE session I was going to be able to attend without having to wait for two hours, I would have been a lot happier.

3. More efficient room-loading.

You’d think that Disney, which moves thousands of people around every day in the theme parks, would know how to efficiently get people into a room. Nope, didn’t work that way. It did get better as as the weekend went on, but on Friday most sessions started at least 20-30 minutes late (I think the Dick Van Dkye show was 45 minutes late!) since they were still seating people right up to the time the show started. It was especially bad in the Arena since it held a lot more people.

4. Better training for the convention staff.

The red-shirted convention staff really didn’t know what was going on – if you asked the same question to three different people you got three different answers.

5. Satellite rooms.

If they are going to have rooms that are too small, then offer a satellite viewing location where people can stand and watch on a big screen. I didn’t have to be in the room for any of these events – I just needed to be able to see and hear what they were saying.

6. Better entry procedures.

People were waiting in line for over an hour just to get into the Convention Center in the mornings. Starting the day off with a negative experience is just wrong.

For those of us who filled out a yellow card at the Expo, Disney sent out an email with a link to an on-line survey on the D23 Expo – I received mine on Tuesday and have completed it. It was fairly lengthy. They asked questions about the experience and provided a place for me to explain my answers. It will be interesting to see what comes out of that – or even if there will be another D23 Expo. At this point, unless they implement some changes, I have very little interest in attending another Expo – but I will definitely go to another Destination D!