Gabby Maybe

Review of Connecticut Convention Center

The venue in and of itself is awesome. As vendors ...

The venue in and of itself is awesome. As vendors at a convention, the staff was very accomodating.

As a visitor on the floor, using the bathrooms, food establishment, and facility, the staff caused more problems than the guests.

Our convention had Omnigender bathrooms and staff consistently made comments about who was allowed to use them. When my male assistant accompanied me to the bathroom to assist me into my costume, we were told that he wasnt allowed to assist me in a stall. I was basically told to strip in the common area of the bathroom in front of everyone in order for him to help me. When i basically told them that I wasnt going to do that, I was told to find a female to help me. I did not, ignored them, and got dressed in a stall away from other people. Just because we walk around in flamboyant costumes does not mean that we want everyone seeing our private parts. For the record, i have been to this event for the last 3 yrs and this is the first time I encountered this problem.

Second was food. The staff put up signs everywhere that no outside food or beverages were allowed in the facility. However, they did not offer a menu to accomodate various food allergies. There are signs for Gluten Free burgers however the food is prepared in the same kitchen and the staff uses the same gloves and utensils to handle GF food. Again, as a vendor, we can not leave our booths and rely on helpers to fetch food for us. Since we couldnt eat any food in the venue, we sent them to outside venues to get food. They were stopped and told that the food needed to be eaten outside. Well...we cant leave the booth to do so. We ended up having to have them 'smuggle' food in, which was great because apparently a number of guests got sick from eating at the venues cafe. Finally, IF the cafe is the ONLY place to eat, the center does a horrible job staffing the lines, which take hours to stand in, only to find out there is nothing you can eat.

Finally, on numerous occasions i was commented on by staff about my helper doing things like rubbing my feet and back and telling me it was inappropriate. My costume weighed 30+lbs and I had to wear boots with it. I am not sure where they think they can tell paying guests what they can and cant engage in,but i found it highly inappropriate. This was on top of watching staff prevent other patrons from taking pictures. When asked why we were prohibited from cerrain actions we were given canned answers 'You cant do that on our property'.

There were some staff that was nice. One woman who staffed the omnigender womens bathroom in the front of the vendors area was really nice and apologized for what other staff members said in the bathrooms. She also kept that bathroom pristine.

Finally at the end when we had to close up our booth, they turned off the AC making the place instantaneously get ridiculously hot and started ripping up the carpet instantly. We had to wait for them to rip things up before we could take things down.

The only reason this venue gets 3 stars is because the facility is convenient making it easy to plan for. Otherwise, based on thos experience, i would give it a 2.