Dear Congoers of America: Please Don’t Trash Con Hotels
So Katsucon was held this last weekend in National Harbor, MD, and the Gaylord Resort and Convention Center is a bit worse for wear because of it. Although the actual fire that occurred was not attendee related, most of the damage was caused by the congoers themselves.
There’s a post circulating on Facebook detailing a number of issues created by attendees, including broken exit signs, flooding, graffiti, holes punched in doors, and some urine. Seriously – this stuff happened, and here are a few pictures:
This isn’t isolated to Katsucon, let’s be clear – I’ve seen things like this happen at cons across the country. This is just a very, very well documented example. And I just have one thing to ask to the congoers responsible for these things: What the f**k is wrong with you?
I mean, seriously – do you actually like being able to go to conventions? Because this sort of crap right here is how you get cons kicked out of hotels. This is how you get hotel rates jacked up for every event that tries to host an event in your area, and this is why ticket and badge prices go up.
This is how you kill a con scene.
So please, just stop. Treat con hotels like a place you want to go back to — because I’m pretty sure you do want to go to more cons. You wouldn’t pee in the hallway of your own home, so why the f**k are you doing it here (and if you would do that too, please exit the con scene entirely). And just because you get away with breaking stuff in hotels, doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences — they just won’t be right away. They won’t be direct.
But maybe five years from now there won’t be a con to go to, all because you acted like a jackass. So stop – treat venues and shared spaces with respect or they just won’t exist anymore.
Plus, if it’s a room that you stayed in (and thus have a credit card on file), hotels can and will charge you for damages. Heck, I’ve heard of guests being on the hook for elevator repairs if they were jumping in it (to the tune of over $1000).
Seriously, I can’t stand morons who do things like this.
✍
How can you hurt an elevator by jumping in it?
You’re kidding me, right? It’s a device that moves up and down on a track. Violent, short bursts of force can severely damage cables, the tracks, safety brakes… it’s like saying “how can you knock over a table by kicking it?”
elevators are able to withstand up to 2,000 pounds (depending on settings for the region in question). hence the ‘i doubt a single or even few people can do that’
Door vandal can’t spell “man.”
The fire started in an mechanical room not Maid Cafe please stop spreading that rumor
People are blowing this out of proportion.
Hotel and convention centers rent property. That is their purpose. They are quite used to minor destruction, and charge more than enough to both account for it and profit from it. Short of water damage, which is being claimed as a burst pipe, all if these are less than $500 damages that the tenant will be charged heavily on at a hotel with 2000 rooms at more than $500 for the weekend, with an event presumably paying the hotel six or seven digits to rent.
Any adult knows not to damage something that isn’t theirs. The people responsible aren’t reading this. They are in class, having drank at a convention away from adult supervision for the first time last weekend.
You know, as I’ve run cons that have had their rents jacked up for later years because of previous damage from attendees, I’m going to say this ISN’T blown out of proportion. Spotlighting unacceptable behavior is important for the prolonged survival of any con scene.
In my experience, you are quite wrong. Hotels are, indeed, in the business of renting space and furniture. To maximize their profits, they look for events and renters that will not destroy their property because that property makes more money if its able to be used more than once. Also, they know that you cannot let this type of behavior get off lightly because it will ALWAYS get worse the next time around. It may not be by the same people who got charged for the damage the previous year, but you can bet there will be someone who remembers the crap people did the previous year and repeat it or outdo it simply for fun. The hotels also have to factor in how the events impact upon their other guests and customers. No one wants to return to a hotel where other guests act like wild animals. No one wants to go to a hotel where they saw someone urinating or defecating in hallways or elevators, have broken emergency lights, holes in the doors, or graffiti in the bathrooms. They aren’t staying at a truckstop. They pay $100+ a night for their room and they expect a certain level of comfort and atmosphere. I don’t believe any of it is blown out of proportion. Its serious and needs to be addressed before it becomes a financial issue for everyone.
Whatever you may incorrectly believe about how much profit the hotel makes off the room, no one is going to just accept you costing them in repairs, downtime and negative experiences from those with reservations the following day.
And, no, the hotel isn’t making enough to just blow off the damage. The reason a hotel costs what it does is because it provides things your home does not – huge air conditioned space, professionally cleaned by someone other than you, kept sanitary for multiple short term guests, in an area with much higher property tax on top of lodging taxes and the pay for all those hotel employees who helped you check in and out, get luggage to rooms, drive shuttles, handle complaints, maintain a massive facility, and all the other aspects of making a hotel feel like you’re not being overcharged. On top of that, they have the majority of these costs whether the rooms are rented or not, so they’re losing a lot for everyone who doesn’t want to share a hotel with a convention. The blocks of certain room rentals are the only reason it makes sense to allow a convention to rent the space, and a lot of hotels have gone under in recent years without the help of vandalism. They may be able to absorb the costs of a few incidents, but they would be stupid to allow a con to come back after incidents like this.
Disclaimer: While I live in the DC area, I do not work or attend KatsuCon, mainly from a lack of interest in Anime. That said, my son and daughter both work this con.
I read this and see the pics, and I am of two minds.
The first, which serves as Con Chair, says that this BS needs to stop. Now. Too much of this and the hotel/venue says “Yeah, don’t come back”
The second, which works/runs Con Security, is thinking that “They got off light!” There’s no
–Fecal matter on the walls
–People stealing the lightbulbs out of every elevator all weekend
–Wearing parts of the chandeliers as jewelry
–Dumping a medium sized box of super-balls at the top of a staircase
–fire extinguishers sprayed on the hotel managers car
–and, everyone’s favorite from the DC area, there were no mundanes learning the hard way that sprinkler systems are not load bearing..
So, yeah, this sorta crap needs to stop. But it could have been oh, so much worse.
(and yeah, the fire was in a mechanical room)
>He’s not kidding… I’ve seen all that and more (sometimes with Grayhawk) at DC area conventions. I’ve also worked at about 15 Katsucons. We are lucky to have such a good venue now.
If you go to cons and see people who are doing this kind of thing, reporting them isn’t being a narc, it’s protecting your fandom.
This is so spot on.
I’ve worked the past 6 Katsucons. I was also present for the aforementioned Disclave – both for the Great Flood and the Burning Bush. What happenedin these pictures was shitty, juvenile bullshit… but if that’s all the damage, or the only class of damage? We’re doing okay.
The Disclave reference is particularly pertinent. That was the LAST Disclave. The con ENDED in part because of that sprinkler incident. That’s exactly what the article here is warning about – maybe this wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but stuff like this IS what kills a con. If this isn’t stopped, that’s how you get escalation, and then you don’t have a con anymore.
“It could be worse” is not much help; depending on the hotel management, this much damage can be enough to put a convention out on the street, searching frantically for its next venue.
And PLEASE don’t do this to schools, either. My school hosts a convention, and someone at the con smashed the glass on the ticket office. A Homestuck group also left a ton of graffiti, and almost got homestuck cosplayers banned from the con. The club who runs it also considered a “nobody under 18 can attend without a guardian” rule. I don’t think they’ve made a decision on that yet.
I know that from day one, AN had a policy of “Anyone 13 or under must be accompanied by a guardian 18 or over at all times.” The reasoning was so that we didn’t end up with parents dropping off their kids and expecting us to babysit them for the day.
This kind of behavior is happening more and more. It’s happening more in public areas of the hotels. RainFurrest isn’t happening in 2016 because they lost their contract due to vandals during the con knocking things like large planters over and defacing hotel property. Any public space you’re using is NOT yours and you are not allowed to do with it as you like. If ya don’t own it, don’t damage it.
It’s not really, this kind of thing was a huge issue back in the 90s with things like concerts. I remember that if you went traveling the highways behind the Grateful Dead concert the fans would follow it around and they didn’t limit their damage to just the concert areas. The rest areas along the highways became absolutely rancid after the GD passed through.
I don’t think it’s happening more. Rather, with the increasing interconnectedness of all things, more people are seeing the things that only a few of us saw before.
15 years ago, the “onePunchMan” door would have been little more than a story at this time, circulating through the Mid-Atlantic constaff circles, and maybe not reachiing the midwest for weeks or months. Today? They knew about it within a day of the con ending.
Like many things, I don’t think it’s happening more – just that we’re learning about it faster
Thank you.
Interesting story to share, about how this isn’t just hurting Katsucon, but all fan conventions that use that space.
PAX, Emerald City Comic Con, and Sakura-Con, among many other events, use the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. This convention center first opened in 1988. Prior to this convention center, there was an older convention center, that this was built to replace (not sure if it was just to make it bigger/nicer, or because there were problems with the old one).
Convention Centers exist to sell hotel rooms. Therefore, not selling hotel rooms means events can’t use the Convention Center. The old Con Center in Seattle, reportedly, had huge problems with fan conventions (sci-fi conventions and such, we’re talking the 70s). Apparently, fans would have room parties, and be loud (disturbing non-event guests) and damage property. It got to the point where the hotels didn’t want the conventions’ attendees in their hotels. No hotel rooms, no con center. (Supposedly there was damage to the con center, too).
When the new (current) Con Center was built, they had a rule: no fan conventions. There’d been too many problems with the previous one, so they didn’t want to take any risks with the pretty new con center.
Enter Sakura-Con.
Sakura-Con started under the name of Baka-con in 1998. It bounced around a few times, until staying at the Sea-Tac Airport Hilton Hotel and Convention Center, where it was for 4 years. Hotels loved Sakura-Con. My first year I attended, 2001, we were at a hotel in Everett, WA. They wanted us back, but the con had outgrown the location. The Hilton (2002-2005) wanted us back, too. The problem was, was that the convention was growing more than the hotel had room for. There was only one place in the Greater Seattle Area big enough to support the growing convention for any significant amount of growth over the years: The Washington State Convention Center.
However, there was that pesky “no fan conventions” rule. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but the execs managed to work out a contract with the convention center. The con center was impressed by the reputation that Sakura-Con held with the hotels we’d been at, and were willing to take a chance. Obviously, as we’re still there, 11 years later, we’ve been doing something right. Furthermore, Sakura-Con’s success made them willing to have PAX (2007-current) and Emerald City (2008-current), and other large fan events.
Sakura-Con had nothing to do with the original convention center. Sakura-Con wouldn’t even be started until 10 years after the current one was opened. But because of the reputation “fan conventions” in general got, Sakura-Con had to work to even be given a chance.
So while Katsucon will be the first ones directly affected by what happened this weekend (my friend who’s a regular attendee there pointed out that the Gaylord prefers MAGFest, which is this weekend, and will bump Katsu to make room for MAGFest), they’ll look more closely at other fan events, and if too many cause them problems, don’t think that they won’t be willing to boot the whole lot of them, both the ones who caused troubles and the ones who didn’t.
Yeah, I was about to say something about Sakura and by extension Kumori never having this issue, as I’ve NEVER seen anyone damage the property like that before and I generally stuck to PNW cons. The closest I’ve seen to anything like that was that year about six years ago Kumori’s dealers room was stuck in a moldy basement and that was the hotel’s fault.
Just gotta say this: It is exceedingly doubtful that the Gaylord prefers Magfest based on your friend’s opinion. I’m at the Gaylord several times during the year in non-convention capacities and I almost always try to engage with employees about how they feel about Katsucon and Magfest. My experience talking to actual hotel employees indicates that they feel that Katsucon is a “chiller” convention while Magfest is, in their words, “a party convention” and a “much wilder crowd.”
And while I am admittedly more familiar with Katsucon than Magfest, I know for a fact that the Gaylord bends over backwards to court Katsucon and the idea of them “bumping” Katsucon is laughable at best. The Gaylord wants both conventions; they’re not bumping anyone.
Fun fact – a person will be charged, rather heftily, if any damage is done to the room they’re in. Doesn’t matter if it was the renter themselves, one of their roommates or one of their friends visiting from another room; the person whose name/credit card info is on the receipt is the one held accountable for any damages that were done.
Hopefully, a hefty bill will help wake these people up and not do it again.
A prime example of a few convention goers ruining the event for everyone: in 2011 the inn lodging contestants and spectators for Scrape By The Lake (formerly Canada’s most popular car show hosting 750+ vehicles) got *completely* destroyed by those attending the event. The damage was so severe that the inn had to close and Scrape By The Lake was canceled indefinitely.
I feel like there should be a way for Con admin to receive the names of people registered to rooms that were trashed so they can ban those people from future events. I know this wouldn’t get the people who trash the hotel outside of their designated room, but at least it would be a start…
From what I hear, the person who pulled down the exit sign HAS been identified and banned. Not sure on the flooded hotel room, though there are reports that it was a clogged/burst pipe and not their fault.
Here’s the problem with your suggestion: we all know that there are, in many cases, several people staying in that room who are not the registered occupant.
If Joe is the person who “paid” for the room, but Kathy, who is staying in said room, causes the damage, then why are we punishing Joe for someone else’s actions?
Because the “registered occupant” has accepted responsibility for the room, and has control over who stays there. If you harbor a vandal, you are responsible for the vandalism.
In other words: if you’re not ready to adult, or if you take people into your room who are not ready to adult, you will be financially on the hook for it, and hopefully this will assist in your maturation process. Not to mention your education.
Just to be clear: I have no issue with the hotel charging “Joe” for the damage. He accepted responsibility for the room, he will have to collect from “Kathy”. But then, that’s how hotels work regardless of the reason for staying. 😉
However, we’re going to have to agree to disagree on whether “Joe” should be “banned from future events”, as in my opinion, without proof that “Joe” caused the damage, the convention is opening itself up to a PR nightmare that will likely cause more damage to the con than the door itself.
If Joe’s actions cause the hotel to take detrimental action against the convention – and, make no mistake, permitting someone who is a vandal to stay in your room is your action – then it seems to me that the convention should have some kind of recourse against Joe, specifically that which would satisfy the hotel that the vandalism would have a lower probability of recurrence. Banning someone from a convention (and I’d ban everyone in the room, not just Joe) would seem to meet that criterion, but I’d be open to other ideas as well.
Like I said in my post above, convention centers exist to sell hotel rooms (obviously, with the Gaylord it’s slightly different, since it’s a hotel as well, but the concept’s the same). This is why many cons have in their policies rules that if you get kicked out of the hotel, the hotel can notify the con and you will get kicked out of the con, too. No hotel rooms = no con.
Whether or not Joe caused the damage himself is irrelevant. The room was Joe’s responsibility. Joe did not keep the room from being damaged. Therefore, the hotel will likely not rent a room to Joe again. No hotel rooms = no con.
If Joe is lucky, Joe will just not be able to rent a room at that hotel again. But as he is the responsible party, and if the damage is threatening to affect the convention’s ability to be held in that venue, than the con has every right to deny him entry to further events.
Unless ‘Joe’ gives up the name of the offender, I’d think it’s fine to ban them. … and yes I do have the power to do that somewhere 🙂 You do realize that most events have a ‘for any reason’ clause in their membership agreement.
As somebody who stays at the Hilton in Rosemont, IL every year for Anime Central, I report all of the damage I see to the front desk. Damaging hotels is the quickest way to ruin a good time. I mean, my room parties usually involve food, booze, and a couple of movies.
Read constupidty.tumblr.com Those are some of the horror stories from cons.
Yeah, I checked out “constupidity” and immediately came upon an “ask” answer where the blog admin tells someone to “pull [their] head out of [their] SJW cunt.”
Never going to read or endorse THAT particular Tumblr blog, that’s for damned sure.
I worked con security at a number DC conventions in the 90s and this could be so much worse. That being said I too was at the LAST Disclave and every hotel has it’s limits. It gets harder and harder to find a new hotel chain once you get a reputation as a con with destructive attendees.
I used to attend AWA and I remember one year, we were in a swanky hotel near the airport. When I got there, I saw the fountain and the piano and the nice furniture and the very first thought I had was “They will never host another convention after this year. Just wait until the jackasses let loose.” Needless to say… That was the ONLY year AWA was at that hotel. Honestly? I don’t blame them.
That hotel was torn down that year.
It was the black attendees…..
These individuals need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and serve jail time. Until you make an example of these reckless people, it will continue. If the fines/Punishment are severe enough, it will stop.
Hotels need to have security cameras in place. Hallways, Emergency Exits, and if it were legal, Bathroom Foyers. There should be an exception made for bathrooms so those whom choose to flood a toilet with a Towel are held accountable. It doesn’t have to mean you have cameras pointed at urinals or in stalls – but you could monitor the entrance/foyer area – or at minimum the entry door to the bathroom.
Conventions need to have a clause in their registration that states If the participant does damage to property or intends to harm others – they will be prosecuted, and they will be banned from the convention indefinitely.
There also needs to be a national list of Troublemakers for conventions. If you screw up at a con intentionally, you get your name on a national list and banned from other conventions too. These Troubled teens will continue destroying cons and events – one by one until something is done to stop the bad behavior.
Rainfurrest – with Diaperman and his filled drawers..
2014 Midwest Fur Fest – attempt with the Chlorine in the stairwell
Bowling Alley meets being cancelled because of lewd conduct
Park Meets because of Lewd Conduct
Start holding people accountable for their actions and things will change.
It’s worth noting that “diaperman” wasn’t even mentioned on the list of issues the hotel had with Rainfurrest (and his drawers weren’t “full” as you assert). It was vandalism by a completely different set of individuals.
At the very least, get your facts straight.
For roughly the past decade now, the main hotel for Anime North here in Toronto have security at the elevator foyer checking for room key cards, only allowing those with such up to the rooms – no key card, no access. This is because the first year AN was at this hotel, they had all sorts of problems with young attendees – room-stuffing being the least of the problems. I heard of kids messing up bathrooms with makeup and hair dyes (I remember one year my brother dressing up as Joker for Halloween, and remembering how much of a pain it was to try and clean up the bathtub at home, so I can just imagine that multiplied by LOTS). Also, there were stories of kids harassing housekeeping for stuff, like when they couldn’t get enough towels for their room.
But the final straw was when 22 people people (about half in costume) decided to cram one elevator, and then most of them playfully jumped when it stopped mid-floor, causing it to break down…which led to a cascade effect that eventually saw the remaining 3 elevators break down.
Sad, really, when a few ruin things for everyone else.
Youma had similar for awhile to try and cut the underage drinking problem.
In regards to the make up and hair dye, that’s an acceptable trade off which most if not all hotels put up with ( some even provide towelettes to help remove make up ).
It is clear that these shenanigans do need to stop however. There’s no excuse for a hole in the wall or a busted exit sign.
I’m not really a con-goer, but a medieval re-enactor, and we have a rule: leave a site better than how you found it. Is this not the same for our sister-nerds and geeks at cons? Shame.
It is the same for most of us, but there are a some who take the con as an excuse to do stupid shit they wouldn’t do anywhere else. Why? Who knows, and they give the rest of us a bad name.
It’s similar to the early SCA days (from the stories of them from parents, and from working con security to compare), where there were more young bucks, but without something like the value set of the code of chivalry underpinning the actions, and frequently with less accountability, as cons tend to be less intimately social than SCA if only because of less frequent events.
See my Laurel’s tales are that site preservation has been a thing for as long as she’s been in (she’s been in 30 years, and is big on Society history/culture), but there may be rose-tinted glasses involved there. Unless of course you mean early-early days!
I was meaning tales from the kingdom of the west in the single digit years of the society. Like hell’s angels crashing a fighter practice and being summarily beaten after the fighter called light, etc.
Tesla, as an old boy scout, I took that first rule of camping to heart when attending cons, even before I got involved in organizing. As for our fellow geeks and nerds, I think there has to be some level of maturity. Yes, I’ve seen immature behaviour at local gaming and science fiction conventions, but that type of behaviour is much less prevalent. For years I wondered why, but eventually came to the conclusion that anime fandom seems to have a higher ‘turnover rate’ of convention attendees then many of the other fandoms out there.
Because of this – and I don’t really know why, maybe anime fans ‘grow out of it’ faster then SF or gaming fans – there seems to be less of an ‘old guard’ who are wiser and more ready to help advise the younger fans on the finer points of what and what not to do.
furry cons have less of a turnover rate but they apparently have a more hardcore reputation than anime conventions though.
This kills me. It’s like people go out in public, and decide that they don’t have to have respect for other people’s property. You wouldn’t do that at home, what the hell makes you think it’s ok to do this in public? Have some respect people.
This issue is a two way street in my opinion, it’s on both on con attendees to be respectful to the hotel and con spaces and on con staff/volunteers to keep their attendees in line with the rules of the con and hotel. The reason why some cons have lasted as long as they did is because they had a good convention staff behind them that kept the con run smoothly and a security team that keeps the con attendees in line. If you don’t, then you end up with problems like one the cons i went to, Rainfurrest. A Washington State furry convention that got kicked out of the SeaTac Hilton due to an estimated $10,000 in damages to hotel property.
Highlights including:
-Damage to a hot tub due to someone thinking it was a bright idea to stuff towels into the hot tub jets.
-Hotel Restrooms flooding due to a couple assholes stuffing stuff in the toilets from what I heard, that also caused damages to the hotel offices underneath.
-Damages to hotel rooms
-Police having to be called twice during the con
-EMT’s having to be summoned to take 3 people to the hospital
-Hotel was at their wit’s end by the end of the con, evicting people from the hotel if they got even a single noise complaint.
Among other reasons, the convention had problems long before last year, it was just that last year was the final straw for the Hilton and basically cut ties with the convention after this year. And this is bad because this is the second hotel they have been booted out from, the other being the Marriott next door to the Hilton. Hotels talk and this has pretty much killed Rainfurrest, they’re trying to fix it to make it happen next year, but the damage is done. If you don’t have a good staff that are good stewards, who will reassure the hotel that they will take care of problems and have a plan to deal with people that become an issue, the con is only as good the staff members who take care of it.
“And this is bad because this is the second hotel they have been booted
out from, the other being the Marriott next door to the Hilton.”
I’ve attended RF since 2009, and I think this is the first time I heard of that convention being “booted” from the Marriott. I always thought it was that the attendance simply outgrew it…
Being an older Con attendee; my first con was in 1985 (yes, yes I’m old but not ancient). Anyways even back then there’s always somebody who’d do something immature to mess up others con going experience; often times it’s somebody whose a bully/jerk or a collective of punks. Flash forward 30 years to today’s article in a way nothings really changed either. While the SJW Keyboard Kommandos make complaints about this the same bullies, jerks and collectives of punks are still coming to these events. Often the vile offspring of the former bunches; they hear about the shenanigans their parents pulled and figured they’ve just as much right to ruin others fun.
Sociologically, we see a lot of collective style bad behavior where there’s always one instigator of events most of the time. The “Bad Egg” whose friends follow them around and cheer them on or are “dared” to engage in this kind of crap. Other times these solo individuals are disgruntled who lash out and likely are fringe socially even more so than usual. These events are outlets for them and if rejected by fellow geeks will engage in mischief in most cases; but in some cases could accelerate into more aggressive and hostile acts. We unfortunately never know anymore???
I worked as events director for a convention, and spoke with hotel staff about similar issues. We were told they loved us because we had less incidents and damages then business conventions they ran. Business conventions just run 9:00-5:00 and then the people are off to do whatever over night, Fandom conventions tend to run long through the evening, or even 24 hour.
So it’s not just fandom base conventions, it’s all conventions. We all need to be more respectful to the spaces
I volunteered at a con in October and actually caught two young “ladies” writing filthy things on the wall. I took video, and then went to my supervisor to report them. They were kicked out and banned from future events. Unfortunately for me, they discovered I was the one who ratted them out.
The next day, these two little brats were hanging around with water balloons (which turned out to be full of paint, discovered when they dropped a few and it wrecked the concrete), looking for me. Luckily the staff was on my side, escorted me in quietly via the staff entrance, and let me watch as security detained them while we waited for the police.
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Had this happen to me at a con once. My friend put a large double queen hotel room on his card for us. We agreed to split it and got on the con page to see if we could find anyone else who would like the floor space. We found a young couple that agreed to pay partially for the room. Not only did they take one of the beds and NOT pay their share, after my friends and I left, they stayed and trashed the room and caused my friend to get an extra charge on his card.
Now we don’t share with anyone outside of our group. Sorry co goers, but some of you suck.
Yeah, I’ve always preferred to room with the friends I know…at least by now we know each other’s quirks.
If I have to share a room with /anyone/, friend or not, I have a contract that clearly states that each person is responsible for their share of the room, that if they can’t make it, they’re responsible for either finding a replacement that the other people in the room accept, or still paying for their share of the room, and that any charges further than the cost of the room that they incur are their sole responsibility.
It protects my butt in those cases.
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This seems to be a problem with anything that starts getting too big. I was going to regional burn festivals (think Burning Man, but smaller). The first few years, it was all beautiful fun with music, art, making new friends, and sharing. Then as it grew, it started attracting an element that merely wanted to party and get wasted or whacked out of their heads on whatever party drugs were around. Next thing you know, stuff was getting damaged or trashed, camps were having things stolen, etc. Very disappointing to see that happen.
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This is also why the Baltimore Harbor Marriott terminated their contract with Katsucon back in 2002. It was supposed to last 5 years, but thanks to vandalism that first weekend, the convention was told to never come back.
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