Fan Expo Canada

I'm writing this review because this convention is super unorganized. I tabled back in 2022, I got accepted, traffic was great and I did well - So I reapplied in 2023. I got rejected two weeks before knowing if I was in or not, then was never refunded. I sent multiple emails and it seemed as if the person responding to me was different everytime. It is 2024 and I still never got a refund. It isn't fair to have artists pay the full table fee before even knowing if they're in or not? Especially to never end up refunding them - as well as being one of - if not THE - biggest comic conventions in Toronto. This con is only good if you actually get accepted, since the traffic is insane. However, if you're rejected, you can expect to never get your $700 fee refunded. Previous years, you would only pay the fee after finding out if you were accepted, so why the terrible change? Treat your artists better!

Disappointed last year
I hope this year is more exciting. It's pretty expensive just to get a ticket. They management fly by the seat of their pants. Disorganized. The vendors are great. The celebrities selection really is disappointing. Prince George you need to do better. Get some bright media people working for you. Ditch the old one's because thy are giving it their best shot.
The stage setbup is always ugly and disappointing as well as the set up for the celebrities, terrible lighting.

You need to hire fresh faces who have an openmind and are visionary. The ones you have now are doing the same things over and over again because they don't see the problems. Your venue could be even more outstanding with some musical talent. I see so many opportunities but you guys do nothing.

So I came from way out of town. This is an old story BTW. Informa bought a show in my own neck of the woods. I had no faith in their predecessor and I have no faith in them based on these reviews.
So the year I went there, no one made sure fire codes were being obeyed. The fire Marshall locked out customers for most of the day. Many paying customers potentially were locked out. I sold abysmally. Probably because those customers were locked outside.
I contacted the show and asked for a refund. They refused. I knew of other vendors that complained louder than I did and they claimed they were.
Never again. Moved on to other shows. Any show.

Staff is great but the management (the people who run the show) are horrendous. They will make you fill out an application, charge your credit card, never refund you, and a month before the con is coming up they'll flat out reject you even if you paid for your hotel+flight already. Even 2 weeks after I was rejected, I STILL didn't get a refund. What is going on?

Before you think, "maybe it was a one-time mixhap?" Nope. This happened to me TWICE. Same situation. You pay for a booth, shows coming, they decline you, and then still provide no refund. They are so disgorganized because the person I was emailing basically went from "You got declined for this event. No wait, our apologizes, it was this one actually." They have too many events that they don't even remember who goes where. They need to restructure.

Some of their events are also hit or miss. In this one I did okay, but their San Francisco one made me lose money. Sadly due to the constant issues with them, and because they only keep making me lose money, I'm gonna stay far away from their events in the future. If you decide to try them out, DO NOT purchase your hotel+flight until 2 weeks of their event or purchase in advance with refundable hotel and flight options. I know it sucks, but with the current management, it's too risky otherwise.

The convention itself was great. But I'm upset by where my booth was. I was in a spot where traffic was low and shouldn't have had vendors at all. If I had been in literally any other location it would have probably been great. Which it's very expensive to go here so that makes it so much worse.

I was supposed to sell with them, instead they canceled, then moved the event and demanded more money from me to keep my spot. When I asked for a refund of the money I paid, I was ignored.

Don't support them. They're crap. Don't go to their events, don't try to sell with them. They cheated the people going to the event, too.

I don't see many FanExpo Canada AA reviews here, so I thought I'd give my 2 cents. It was definitely insightful for me to get a sense of the con before applying, so hopefully this review will be helpful to others who want to try it out! Just a note that this was my first con, so I don't have a good point of reference for anything. I also already have an online following, so that may skew my first con experience/audience reach.

*VENUE AND STAFF*
I'm local (10-min walk to Metro Toronto Convention Center), so I didn't have any hotel, travel, or food costs (just meal-prepped at home before the con, as well as packing a lot of water and snacks). It was fairly easy to pick up our badges, set up our table, and even though my interactions with staff were minimal, they were friendly and willing to help if I had any questions. We set up the base of our table on Wednesday night since we saw others doing the same. Apparently, the staff didn't mind and no one kicked us out. Finished up setting up the rest of the details on Thursday afternoon, so it wasn't too troublesome at all, since all my table set up and merch could fit in 2 suitcases. We just used the escalator to bring it down every time, since lineups for the elevators were really crowded during move-in and restock hours. (This was especially true during move-out hours, where there were hundreds of people waiting in line for the escalators to leave.) During the con itself, the aisles were usually packed in waves, and there was always a few people browsing our booth.

*LAYOUT AND ATTENDANCE*
It was more spacious than I expected while reading the other comments on this thread. We had a lot of room in the back, because the table behind us didn't have a backdrop/huge banner. Even if they did, I still feel like there would have been enough room for me to lean back and store my merch behind me otherwise. Again, I don't really have a point of reference, but it wasn't a big deal to me and I didn't feel "packed in like sardines," as others might put it. Talking to other AA artists, they said attendance was not as good as other cons such as Anime North or Otakuthon, but I found it really quite good. I was always busy, but had a few chances to sit down and rest during slower times.
My only complaint about the layout would be that it's really hard to see where table numbers are. There are no signs at all telling you where you are, and the only way to find other tables was to guess based on the tables who didn't have a tablecloth and whose little 'A123' number was visible on the corner of the table. From there, you basically just guess as to where you are. This made it hard for people who knew I was there to find me, but also for me to find other artists there.

*AFFORDABILITY AND PROFIT*
I turned a really good profit in my opinion. We were able to make back the cost of the table within the first 2 hours of the con on Thursday. Thursday was much busier than I was led to believe it was, and profit got progressively better on both Friday and Saturday. I actually made more on Sunday than I did on Friday, which I'm assuming is because everyone comes back and decides they actually want to purchase.

Overall, it was an amazing (first) con and I would definitely do it again. I would really recommend it if you're a local artist and want to try it out.

I went to it this year because I'm localish (1-hour commute to Toronto) and I wanted to at least try at fanexpo Toronto once with full effort.
Traffic? There are lots
Buying Traffic? not as much.

my profit was ok, and i might consider next year. Mainly i enjoyed the con because it was a chance to see some old friends again, but otherwise, there was a lot of downsides:

#1 if you lose a table badge- they will charge you 60 or 90$ for a replacement. I was tabling by myself- but on Saturday- to avoid traffic, I took public transport and lost one of my badges. Registrations tried to charge me 90$ for a replacement until I made enough of my displeasure known that they'd haggle it down to 60$. The staff tried to send me on a goose chase when I wanted to return the replacement badge ( as the table comes with two badges- the other I never even got the chance to use). I'll admit, this could have been avoided if a kept both badges on hand each day, or just not misplaced the 1st one on Saturday, but counter-factual thinking helps no one. TLDR: DO NOT LOOSE EITHER OF YOUR TWO BADGES, the staff will charge you an exorbitant amount for a cheap laser printed name tag/badge replacement.

#2 Location and getting there- even though I am local-ish- commuting to Toronto and then trying to get out of the convention at the last day is a huge hassle. The first weekday is always particularly bad, as traffic to toronto gets notoriously congested regulairly. I was late for the first-day b/c of that reason, and while I don't think I missed many sales, the stress of driving/busing in each day added up quickly. Public transport is also difficult to predict- my Saturday Bus back was particularly long and uncomfortable as someone puked 3 times in succession on the bus because they were completely smashed. The best option would be if you could hotel (which is more expensive) or stay at a local friend's house.

#3 The early bird table price is basically bullshit. It's literally only 20$ cheaper if i forked over 500$ for a table next year before the last day of the con. I would have lost a good chunk of my profits. Unless you did fantastically at Fanexpo, rebooking is not a particularly attractive prospect.

Bottom line- though Fanexpo has a lot of traffic, and some of it is honestly good. The amount of traffic makes getting to their and staying there quite stressful. The administrative and register staff are not very helpful, the organization over charges considering how many artists are crammed into artist alley, and table prices are steep. Go only if local, and be prepared for stress even then. Your profit should be ok- it may even be great (as the table 2 down from mine on the otherside). But for me this year, even though i made a decent amount, the stress almost made it not worth it.

I was more stressed actually for Fanexpo than Fanime- and famine I had to fly in for, yet I absolutely loved tabling there.

First let's get this out of the way, the table prices are RIDICULOUS. I believe last year they were well over 500$ and for that kind of price I kind of expect for the staff to go above and beyond for the artists, since shows at half the price do. But no, artists are crammed in like sardines with virtually no space behind the tables (good luck if you're stuck behind an artist with one of those freestanding backdrops!) and no space in the aisles which makes it difficult to maneuver as congoers and means that people will often skip the aisles so as not to deal with the hassle. Multiple tables are usually attached with one long tarp, which means if you brought your own tablecloth you will have to make sure it's exactly the width of your table or fold it on itself (which can disrupt your display if you have things that need to be on a sturdy table.

The staff is entirely unhelpful and the runners of the show make no secret that they charge as much as they do and do as little as they do because they're all about the money. My friend sold a couple years ago and months after the con was over Fanexpo sent her a letter in the mail because she still had an outstanding balance of 50 cents. On a 500$ table.

On the subject of snail mail, this seems to be the only con around that demands you send a cheque in the mail with full payment before you're even approved, rather than do it online like everywhere else. This is really troublesome because there's no telling when they're going to cash it and not everyone can guarantee they have that kind of money in the bank at any given moment. It also means that you have to trust Fanexpo NOT to cash your cheque before you sign a contract. Staff is also pretty much impossible to reach by phone or email which again is frustrating given the amount of money you're forking over as an artist.

Parking is expensive and the venue is in the basement of the convention centre so be prepared to lug your stuff for what feels like forever.

The good is the attendance, at 100k+ it's the biggest con in Canada and though many people come for the A-list guests, many also come prepared to spend a lot of money on artists. Or at least, the ones with a clear enough aisle to walk down. I do okay at this con but I'm local so I only have the table cost to worry about. People flying in or using hotels will probably not see a good return on their investment unless they're a super popular artist.

2015 was my second year doing the show and I loved it. I've made decent profit both years even with the cost of the parking, gas to get there, and hotel since I'm from out of town. There are always a lot of people because it's such a big convention and everyone was really friendly. Everything was really well organized and streamlined for check in and set up so it didn't take long to get settled.

Set up and parking was actually really easy because you can drive down to the loading dock and walk straight on to the sales floor. Plus if you book your parking tickets in advance (they send out emails to exhibitors and artists with the info) it's only $18 a day with in-and-out privileges and you're in the closest parking garage the convention centre has.

They have artist alley divided into sections based on what you say your main genre is. Mine is video games so I end up in the last few rows at the back of the hall. I think the front area closest to the food is the anime section. The convention is pretty well set up considering it spans two big buildings though there's a long walk if you want to go from one building to the other.

I didn't really deal with any staff too much. The main interaction was rebooking for next year and they were late getting set up so it was a good thing I had a second person to help run my table. I didn't get back until a half hour after the show had opened.

It's a expensive show. I think it was $475 for a table and $425 if you prebook for the next year. That's pricey but it's the largest convention in Canada and I've made the money back both times I've gone.

Attendance was really good. It seems to grow every year which is great. The only issues this year was that they moved around some of celebrity events and that caused some issues. I brought this up to the exhibitor relations coordinatior when rebooking and he said they were trying something new. The problem was that it didn't leave any downtime for con goers in between celebrity panels so they didn't have as much time to shop. I didn't do as well this year as I did last year but overall it was still a really good show.