I agree with most others. The start time should be enforced (at all shows for that matter). Like others already mentioned, Ron stated that in 2016 vending will not be allowed until Tuesday morning.
I also agree with Signs&Neons. The hotel is old and smelly. The parking is always an issue and even though you can park at the Jet lot across the street, there were times when the attendant turned people down, because they needed to save room for their airport customers.
Maybe it is time to change venues. I ate dinner at Draught House 50 in the Mills Creek area of west Des Moines (Mills Civic Pkwy, west of I-35) and wow, that was a nice area. A clean area with a lot of great restaurants (pubs, steak houses, bars, familiar chain restaurants dinner, quick places to grab lunch), a lot of very nice hotels and a lot of parking. If you Google map the area, zoom in and search restaurant or hotel, you will see what I am talking about. Street view will give you an idea of how nice (and clean) the area is.
The only downside in that area is that it doesn't appear any hotels have windows looking into the rooms. Although the window shopping is neat (especially in Columbus), do you really need the window for room-to-room???
That is my two cents...... however, we can all be armchair quarter backs. And I know what a pain it is to run events similar to this, as I have been there - done that. So even though we are trying to be constructive in our criticism; hats off to all the people who run the show and make it possible for the rest of us to attend. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't be talking about what a great time it is anyway.
