Oh, boy...

 Well, some exciting news was posted on the Breyerfest Blog yesterday and...what a doozy of an announcement. To simplify things:

• The special run line as we knew it is gone
• We'll use the master list option to select models in advance (or, well, they'll be selected for us in advance
• Models will be paid for ahead of time
• We'll receive vouchers for the models we were selected for and pick those up at Breyerfest
• Vouchers will then be used to pick up models at any time throughout the weekend

Uh, well...it seems like a plan that could work, until you actually start thinking about it and, well...the major sticking point is the whole voucher system. Other people have crunched the numbers and asked how exactly the voucher distribution is going to realistically work, considering they'll sell around 12,000 tickets, and if you consider it'll take 2-4 minutes for each person picking up their ticket book, and 8,000 people picking up books, and 4 people handing out the books, that's about 100 hours required to distribute them all, and as we all know, Breyerfest is only operational for 23 hours through the weekend (9-5 on Friday and Saturday and 9-4 on Sunday). Let's be generous and say the Will Call booth will operate for 8 hours on Thursday as well (not likely). That gives us 31 hours to distribute all the vouchers. They say we'll be able to pick up special run models at any time throughout the weekend, similar to how the Celebration Horses are handed out, but I think they're failing to take into account that really, nobody cares about the Celebration Horses that much. But people (for the most part) will want to pick up their special run models ASAP to have the best chances at trading those models.

Which leads into my next point...trading. They say right in the blog post that if you don't like the models that were picked for you, just buy them anyway and trade them! So basically they're saying we should do their work for them and distribute models amongst ourselves accordingly. The problem is, since we're making master lists for our models again, and they REFUSE to tell us in advance which models will have variations, or the matte/glossy split, plus the matter of the surprise model, it's impossible to really decide what we'd want so far in advance without knowing all the options. And I'll go so far as to say they should at least tell us the mold of the surprise model if they want us to be able to make our selections in advance. Take last year - I would have filled out my master list differently if I'd known every special run would have a rare variation, and with full knowledge of the matte/glossy split and the Marwari options. And I'm sure I'm not the only person that was put out by that! 

Now, I'm not entirely opposed to getting rid of the special run line on its face - it's just the logistics that are going to be sticky - I think handing out the vouchers is going to be the major issue here. What happens if there's still 1,000 people waiting in the voucher line at 5pm on Friday? And then 2,000 at 5pm on Saturday? And then 3,000 at 4pm on Sunday? We all know Breyer likes to get their stuff packed and out of the park ASAP on Sundays - will all those people just be told, "Sorry, you're out of luck?" Not to mention the inevitable mistakes that will be made, because this is Breyer we're talking about and it seems like Breyerfest is just a series of near-disasters or actual-disasters through the whole weekend (not to mention the inevitable forgotten pallet or two of SR items and the associated ire of everyone those models belong to). 

And then you have the problem of people trying to do pickups! The blog says if you're picking something up for someone else, you'll have to have the applicable checkout information. How long is it going to take to verify all that stuff if someone is trying to pick up models for 20 people? How are they going to get all those models themselves? Will Breyer provide people to help carry all that stuff? Nobody's going to want to make more than one trip through that tent, considering what a disaster the whole voucher system is going to be, so how long is the SR line actually going to be? Are we going to end up back to the way things were in the '90s when you could stand in line for 8 hours and still come away with nothing at the end of it? What a nightmare. 

So it's not really surprising that they waited until a Friday to drop this information - maybe they think the whole thing will blow over by Monday? Oh, and the ticket prices got raised too, so there's that. People have been making their dissatisfaction with the situation known on Facebook and other places, but in true corporate fashion, most of the negative comments are either being deleted or not being allowed to post at all, so....I don't have a lot of hope that the situation will be rectified in any kind of acceptable manner. But let's hope for the best, shall we? Oh, and VIP tickets are going on sale next week, but there's no indication of a limit for said tickets, so for all we know the more popular Breyerfest models could all end up sold out to VIP members before the rest of the plebs even get a chance at them. So I may need to buy a VIP ticket after all if I want to get my hands on a Stein. Fun stuff! Let's hope for more clarification on Monday.