I got my badges for NYCC in the mail this week. These things are getting very complicated. They sent me two badges, one for Thursday and one for Friday, and they needed to be activated online, similar to what you need to do with a new credit card. They’re RFID badges, and you need to tap them against… something… as you go in and out of the con. I guess I’ll figure it out when I get there. I had to give them my mobile phone number as part of the activation, and I’m hoping they don’t abuse that. (I think I probably gave that to them already for the “fan verification” thing you need to do to buy tickets, so I guess it’s fine.)
I guess the days of having a simple paper badge are long gone. The badges do look pretty nice, and they have photos of people from The Walking Dead TV show on them, so I’d probably think that was cool, if I actually watched The Walking Dead. (I’d much rather have, say, people from the Flash and Supergirl TV shows on them, but oh well.)
I do have a list of grievances about badge activation. I should probably just keep that to myself, but what’s the point of having a blog if you can’t use it to post a list of grievances?
- The activation number is printed on the badge in pale yellow on a white background.
- Each badge needs to be activated separately.
- There is no option at the end of the badge activation process to activate another badge under the same name. You have to start over again from scratch.
- There is no option to log in to your NYCC account and just pick up your name, email, and phone # from that. You have to type them in.
- There’s a sticker on each badge telling you to activate it. The sticker does not use the easy-to-remove adhesive that’s typically used for these things. I had to use a razor blade and rubbing alcohol to get the stickers off.
- Seriously, why do I have to activate these at all? They were bought online, under an account that’s already associated with my ID.
So that’s my list of grievances. I feel slightly better having written them down. (Insert old man yells at cloud image here.)