We want to thank everyone who attended this past weekend’s show, and give special thanks to the media personnel from the Los Angeles Times, New York Post, and many more outlets for being so kind to us.
For the first time, we had a real division among our guests on what to think of our new celebrity booth arrangement at the show. We’d like to explain to you, the fans, how and why this came about. Many studios are starting to realize the value we offer them in bringing you, their fans, to this show, and many of the large studios have entered into negotiations with us. Several representatives from those studios were in attendance at our October, 2009 event.
When they were at the October event, with an eye towards allowing us to book even bigger and more current stars, they had a list of things they wanted to see us accomplish at future shows. At the top of the list was the request to pipe and drape the celebrities’ tables like many, many other shows already do. This was an expense we took on with no return and no financial backing for the thousands of dollars spent doing it. We certainly didn’t enter into any change lightly. We felt, and still feel, there is merit to us having done this but, even though we have e-mails from many of you who loved the booths, many of you didn’t like the restriction on visibility.
For that reason, and so the map given away free at the front of the convention center could be used as a guide to the stars, we didn’t move anything during the weekend’s event, but as they say, sometimes perception beats reality, as some of you thought the aisles were smaller, when in fact, they were actually larger! We had eliminated over a dozen celebrity spaces inside the main ballroom to accommodate these changes. The reason you felt so limited in space was quite simply because we had a record-shattering attendance of fans from all over the world, second only to the San Diego Comic Con in California.
While this of course pleased us, the celebrities, and many vendors, the fact remains we are still unhappy that some of you were unhappy, and to that end, we wanted to let you know the booth configurations as you saw them will not be back at future shows. However, we do intend to spread our celebrities more evenly throughout the room so we can better handle the growing crowds and lines. We will be adding more personnel to our next show for the purpose of stopping people from cutting in a line or chatting and holding up a line when they aren’t even buying anything from a celebrity. That is something that can be done when no paying fans are waiting in line.
In some cases, we may have to limit how many items one person can have signed before having to get back into line. Our Terminator line never stopped, and in fact, the stars incredibly stayed over an hour after the close of the show on Saturday to sign material and have photos taken. We want to thank Ms. Linda Hamilton, Ms. Kristanna Loken, Mr. Robert Patrick, Mr. Michael Biehn, and Mr. Edward Furlong, as well as all of our other celebrities for their tireless dedication to their fans.
Our next show is April 24th and 25th and already has several wonderful “first-timer” surprise celebrities coming along with, we hope, a much better room layout and line handling.
From all of us at The Hollywood Show, thank you, and happy collecting!
Hollywood is bidding farewell to another of our beloved legends. Kathryn Grayson died in her sleep Wednesday at her home in Los Angeles at age 88. 
