LAN XXIII Booking Form

[CrazyHorseZeroOneNiner]

agreed with the chance to save it kinda thing, surely you guys could have given us a warning so we could arrange new blood to join to make up the numbers? Also some money is better than no money for the hotel. its not usually packed with other people when we are there and tbh looks like they could do with any amount of business albeit smaller than usual...

[CrazyHorseZeroOneNiner]

I have a possible 2-3 people also who would be interested also. I will ask.

This is a BIG BIG shame :sad:, especially as 5 of us from my group missed out list time and were looking forwards to coming this time. How far away are we from the "desired" number of attendees? I have 2-3 people who have been considering coming for years... im sure i can sell them into it to make up the numbers... im sure i am not the only person who could do that also. I also know Jay very well, who has attended before and I am sure i can convince him. Would be great to have an opportunity at least to save this LAN. :taz:

[absolutehype]

I'm also very upset by this decision, just heard the news from Scott. Would definitely have been nice to have heard about the concern re: numbers sooner so that this LAN could have potentially been saved :sad: I have a few avid gamers at my new company who I was trying to get down for this time and/or next. And I second the comment by CrazyHorse, the hotel definitely looks like it could do with the business :g:

[Benny]

Gents, just to underline this, the decision was far from taken lightly and wasn't aimed to put people out. There was some discussion in the admin forums and if the argument is that we should have been clearer, then my hands up.

The truth is the March LAN didn't garner the attention that it has in previous incarnations, the take up wasn't as strong and we had to make a quick decision between acceptable notice for people needing to cancel and the hotel holding good on it's commitments. We in admin land didn't want to cancel this any more than anyone else, but post homously coming up with a list of people that we can try and convince won't help. If people were interested in going we shouldn't have to talk them into it.

Yes we could have handled it better, no it's not great (it's the first ever cancellation in my time here) and sorry it's come to this.

October will have a minimum commit and a sign up by date.

[Norton-]

Yeah, is a shame that this is now cancelled. I can also ask to see if a few additional people will be interested. How many people are we short? About 7-10?

[JulzPolz]

Pulling 20+ people from the hotel for 3 night stays sounds like a serious revenue killer though... There is no way that they could recoup that surely... They gotta be making £200-250 per person easily... so they are going to lose 4-5k just from those 20 people. We are unique clientele that not only rent the rooms, but also eat tons of food and drink copious amounts of alcohol... Normal clientele just wouldn't be doing this. I just cant understand how the hotel cannot be benefiting from us being there (even in 20) and I really cant see the point of view that they are doing us a favour. I work with hotel owners in my job and they would all see the benefits of 20 food eating, beer drinking, non-leaving, 3-day hotel clientele. The only thing they really loose is the quality of their wifi for other guests, which in March i really cant see being a massive issue.

[DrunkenZombiee]

This is a real shame, as I know how much work goes into all of the organisation for these events and probably many hours have already gone on this event. I would like to thank everyone involved anyway as this must be pretty gut-wrenching for them more so than just us attendees.

If anyone is interested in rekindling something let me know as I may be back from the US in time to make this, even if its just a meet down the pub or something would be great to see you all again!

Thank you again to all of the organisers and the community for supporting.

Chin up lads and lets make the Autumn one a complete blow out!

DZ

[Tutonic]

It's not the end of the world chaps, lets not over-react. Cancelling now is the sensible option, doing it at the last minute would be a major pain for most people attending.

Maybe we should try to organise a social event to make up for the lack of a LAN. Cambridge pub crawl anyone?

[BrotherTobious]

Guys we are really sorry this has happened and we did try once we made a decisions to try and contact all that might be interested.  Unfortantly a few people who had already signed up cant make it and some of those that came back to us couldn't either.  Based on this information and other factors we made this choice which we didnt want to.

We really want this to work but we felt it couldnt work as is.  It is only a cancelling it is not the death of the Spring LAN just number XXIII

[Chaosphere]

I'll echo what DZ and Tut have said.

Let's plan some other sort of meet up And look forward to the next LAN now. No point flogging a dead horse

[albert]

Sorry guys, I was just in the process of booking and was on the phone to the hotel when I read the update. I think the problem for me has been I'm in Asia, Amsterdam then the US for 3 out of the 4 weeks in March so I had to wait to the last minute to make a decision. I suppose it's not useful to wait too late as a minimum number is needed to justify the event.

[Sn00ks]

I prefer the smaller LANs.

[TheDvEight]

I can understand the decision, while I also understand people are a bit miffed I think it's good you were given plenty of notice out of curiosity what is the ideal number of bookings you look for in which a Lan will go ahead?

[BrotherTobious]

It's a combination of factors, but at the last meeting it was agreed that ideally we wanted in excess of 30 people but with a minimum of 27. This number was based on previous LAN attendance, issues resulting and feedback.

Is the numbers for your info.

[TheDvEight]

Thanks Toby