Pony Con Disaster - Is This Doom For First Year Cons?
274*Update* Please see below.
Las Pegasus Unicon may go down as one of the biggest convention disasters of all time. It was set to be a first-year con for the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fandom. But, it was disorganized and mismanaged. Things went awry when fewer than expected convention-goers showed up, and there wasn't enough money to pay any of the guests, among these problems:
- Attendees kicked out of rooms or way overcharged
- Agents took money from con cashbox after not being paid
- Sponsors paid for space in brochure that wasn't printed.
- Con organizer disappeared, deleted website, and likely has missing and unaccounted $40,000
- Actors paid in bounced checks
- Vendors paid in fake money
This is obviously really bad for anyone who attended, but could it affect the credibility of other first-year cons like voice actress Tara Strong suggested? What does it take to run a con correctly? Let me know what you think of the fiasco below.
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*Well more than $40K seems to be missing. Below is a message I received from someone attempting to figure out the financial issues:
Hey,
Thanks for posting your video about the LPU fiasco - we're looking at tens of thousands of dollars still unaccounted for, some of which was promised to charities, but nearly everyone has forgotten about it.
I'm the curator of the investigative work 4chan has carried out, some of which might be helpful (or perhaps could be added to the video description). I'm not sure whether you used it for the video, but your figure of $40,000 corresponds with the figure from the original LPU statement, which we now believe to be false.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-G4JfFM-P8UUPj5CgfegwlIwlTIcAzOC-msrcbhHj7o/edit
We've also compiled our best guess for the financial records, and though they're quite vague they give a decent ballpark estimate:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjnyYBmYJjwWdHpoeUVVTmFwcnhybHh0eVBkT09KdlE#gid=0
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-Kim
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