Photos from the Brick Expo 2011.

ConanOfCooma said :

They have overcrowding problems every year – The organisers do not care. They also don’t care if you line up all afternoon for the show, then at 3 (an hour before going in ) they tell all the remaining people that they lined up for two hours for nothing, and to go home, because they are letting the last few people in have a longer look than everyone else.
Furthermore, the display of purchased models is absolutely disgraceful. ANY IDIOT CAN DO THAT.

Of course we care, every year we look at ways of improving the event. Line lengths and waiting times have been an issue but not to the exagerated extent you state. We frequently spoke to patrons and the majority waited about 30-40 minutes. All said it was well worth the wait. The Melbourne LEGO show in 2011 had 3 hour waits and at the end of the day people were turned away. Much better to find out when joining the line that you won’t make it in time?

We also spend a great deal of time organising the exhibits. The majority of the purchased models like the Ultimate Collectors series are not seen in the shops here and to be able to see 80% in one place assembled is amazing. Some of those sets take hundreds of hours to build.

This year we have adopted a pre-purchased ticketing and are a set number per session. Our experience has shown this should reduce waiting times to under 10 minutes. Tickets for Brick Expo 2012 have gone on sale (and are limited). Visit the website for details.

Bare in mind we are volunteers (its a not for profit event) that donate a lot of time to making this happen. In 2011 we raised $12,000 for the childrens ward at the Canberra hospital.

I get the impression from your post that you will never be satisfied.
I hope to see you there all the same, all the best.

David Boddy
(Chairman Brick Expo)

ConanOfCooma said :

They have overcrowding problems every year – The organisers do not care. They also don’t care if you line up all afternoon for the show, then at 3 (an hour before going in ) they tell all the remaining people that they lined up for two hours for nothing, and to go home, because they are letting the last few people in have a longer look than everyone else.

Furthermore, the display of purchased models is absolutely disgraceful. ANY IDIOT CAN DO THAT.

I’m sure they do care, but what can they really do about it? As mentioned by RedDogInCan, if they moved to a bigger venue you will just end up in the hall and be unable to see anything.. and will likely jump on here and have a rant about how overcrowded it was.

From my understanding, the venue is chosen as the Southern Cross Club provide the room (possibly at discount or free) as they are a major sponsor for the event and the event is run to provide funds to charity (PaTCH). All proceeds from the event go to this cause. The room used this year was larger than last year which was a step in the right direction!

I went to the VIP event and the guest speakers were absolutely excellent. The displays could have been a bit more involved (I believe they have plans to increase over time) but I am sure the displays would have kept plenty of the kids entertained with their level of detail and things to find.

Also don’t agree that the display of purchased models is ‘disgraceful’. A lot of kids spend time flicking through the catalogue looking at the sets so seeing them ‘in the plastic’ is a fun experience for them, especially in the cases where the sets cost a large amount of money to purchase and are either rare, expensive or difficult to get in Australia. They definitely wouldn’t have been my pick for the photos as there were much more impressive personal creations there, but each to their own.

I personally think the best method to combat the crowds is to open across three days starting on the Friday, so parents with younger kids can get in without the weekend (c)rush. Alternatively they could pre-sell tickets for allotted time periods (say 1 hour slots) over the weekend to avoid people needing to queue (as long as Southern Cross don’t manage the ticket sales.. that’s another story…)

I also agree that the venue gets quite hot/stuffy but that is probably something they need to bring up with the Southern Cross club.

The VIP cocktail party was an excellent way to see the models without queues + kids this year, and was a great addition to the expo.

I’d be interested to know how much money they raised.. and I wonder if it had any impact on the crowds at Malkara over the same weekend.

ConanOfCooma said :

They have overcrowding problems every year – The organisers do not care. They also don’t care if you line up all afternoon for the show, then at 3 (an hour before going in ) they tell all the remaining people that they lined up for two hours for nothing, and to go home, because they are letting the last few people in have a longer look than everyone else.

A bloke did come out on Sun morning to address sections of the queue. He was apologetic, thanked everyone for coming, explained it was a volunteer run event & that they were trying to keep costs down. He’d have been easily missed – traffic noise meant only those nearby could hear (and repeating the speech many times would have worn thin).

Maybe the lego user group will take suggestions?

Wow, looks really cool. Thanks for the pics. Didn’t know the event was on, must stop being such a hermit.

Holding it a EPIC wouldn’t help as there are too few exhibits for the number of people attending. A larger venue would just mean the crowd would be 5-10 people deep instead of the 2-5 that is was.

They have overcrowding problems every year – The organisers do not care. They also don’t care if you line up all afternoon for the show, then at 3 (an hour before going in ) they tell all the remaining people that they lined up for two hours for nothing, and to go home, because they are letting the last few people in have a longer look than everyone else.

Furthermore, the display of purchased models is absolutely disgraceful. ANY IDIOT CAN DO THAT.

Poor choice of venue. I waited with my 5yo for over an hour to get in on Sunday morning. It was crowded, noisy and hot. He threw a massive tantrum because he couldn’t get close enough to any of the exhibits to get a good look. I don’t get why they didn’t have it at EPIC. That said the models looked great and Mr. 5 loved the people dressed as Star Wars characters who entertained the line.

This was a good expo, took the Kaos Kids they had a ball there, Kaos 2 busily photographed ideas for his next project. Lots of really intricate and amusing models for viewing, yes crowded but have to expect that with lego on a wet weekend.

We first went on the Saturday, the entry line was around the corner onto Hindmarsh, even the Kaos Kids said “no way, can we come back tomorrow?”. We did, 9:45 on the Sunday morning, got close to the start of the line, by 10 when it opened the line was around the corner again.

Was speaking with one of the organisers and they were not expecting so many people or the expo to be so popular (???, its lego FFS, everyone loves lego). Perhaps next time it should be held in a larger more accessable area such as the convention centre in Civic or epic out at Mitchell – though I suspect the entry fee would be outrageously high being held at these premises.