The link below is a video I shot on a Friday before the Dealer Hall opened just to show my friends how large the hall is. It takes almost five minutes to walk across without anyone attendees on the floor, without stopping and without going up and down aisles.
It is *massive* and if you truly wanted to spend some time at each booth, I wouldn't allocate time to do anything else during the hours the hall is open.
I honestly am not sure if you COULD spend a meaningful amount of time at every single vendor, even if you spent every open hour in there; I'd love to hear if you are successful at it.
Let's see. There are 530 Exhiitors.
The Exhibit Hall is open 10-6 Thur-Sat, 10-4 Sunday.
So that's 30 hours. That's 1800 minutes.
That makes for slightly under 3.5 minutes per vendor, without any breaks. If we take one hour off for food/potty breaks, that's right about 3 minutes a vendor. That's a little tight. If you quickly passed over vendors you weren't interested in.......you could do some demos, but I still don't think you could do them all.
Marian McBrine
Event Coordinator
Gen Con LLC
Besides the time and space to cover there is also the issue of sanity. I do well in crowds and 99.9% of people I have met at Gen Con have been nothing but amazing, but after about 3 or 4 hours swimming in a river of thousands of people with thousands of conversations all buzzing together Its nice to leave the exhibit hall. I can't think of a point in the last 3 or 4 years where I would call the exhibit hall a relaxed place where I want to spend the majority of my con. Don't get me wrong I love it and I love seeing my fav vendors and finding new ones just after a few hours I am ready to run for a door.
I usually spend 8-10 hours in the exhibit hall - I dont do a lot of demos - and I'm barely scratching the potential.
Frankly, visiting every vendor is one thing...very feasible...but not in any *meaningful* way and not if you are trying to do demos along the way. Just an opinion but there is too much to do and see at Gen Con to spend it *entirely* in the exhibit hall.
My wife and I try to at least walk past every vendor, but it's getting tougher as the room grows each year, and the layout isn't exactly even columns and rows so we miss some stuff - we used to be able to do the quick walkthrough on Thursday, but the last couple years we've had to finish up just the bare quick pass on Friday - then, we go back to places we want to demo or shop. It will be even worse this year since I don't have early access to get the initial shopping out of the way quickly; we probably won't have time to see as much since we'll be waiting in lines more.
I noticed last year (maybe the year before?) that at least one vendor now has multiple booths. It was one of the dice vendors.
Both Crystal Caste and Chessex have multiple booths this year, and IIRC, in most past years as well.
I know that every vendor will not appeal to my taste in games, and hell you could spend all fo one day just at the FFG area.
I think Koplow has multiple booths, too? Oddly dice vendors probably do pretty good business there.
But yes, anyone who says anything about getting through the Exhibit Hall quickly either only comes for one super-niche reason or is otherwise just virtually delusional. My goal this year is just to actually make it all the way through twice; I used to go all the way through every day, but between volunteering and random life events, I was lucky to even walk past every booth once the last two years. It is a commitment
