What I REALLY Thought About Fanatics Fest and My Flight From Hell

For those who read Sports Collectors Daily, you may have noticed an article under my byline about attending the East Coast National and the Fanatics Fest NY the same weekend. Obviously, when I report about events for a publication, I stick to a just the facts, ma’am approach and I have a (really good) editor to reign in my impulses, but when I am bloviating here, I can say whatever I want. So, let’s get to it.

I am a Fanatics Fest hater. Yup, I said it. I found the whole event depressing and will not get within ten miles of the planned Los Angeles version (I saw a sign advertising it on the top of a Slurpee truck on the show floor). Let’s be clear about this: the fest is NOT a collector’s event. It is really about marketing professional sports and celebrity culture as a tool for separating people from as much money as humanly possible as quickly as humanly possible. The admissions costs alone prove it. A family of four would have been out $160 just walking in the door on Saturday. It also felt like every activity or display at the show ended with a merchandiser ready to insert its blood funnel into the participants to suck out a little more juice. Then there were the enhancements (extras) to the experience. Wanna shake hands with an athlete? Bust out the Benjamins.

Now, if you are impressed by seeing sports icons in a theater, watching other people toss balls in skills competitions, or shaking hands with a celebrity for pay, hey, knock yourself out and open your wallet for the fest. No judgment here; we’re all freaks. But if your hobby is collecting and a show means you try to work on your collection, skip the fest. The acreage of slabbed shiny crap at the show and the smattering of vintage cards in the mix there were mundane, mainstream commodity cards that you can pick up every day of the week on eBay or at auction. Perhaps it is me, but I do not like to waste money buying overpriced cards. I went to the fest with four figures in cash ready to go and I walked out of there with the most significant purchase being the $5.80 I spent on the subway ride to and from the show. The people I really feel sorry for are the vintage dealers who set up at the fest. At a minimum of $3,200 per booth, they really got hosed, especially the vintage guys who could have set up in White Plains for a fraction of the cost and made more. Again, the event was not about the collector.

Now there was huge traffic at the fest, but let’s put to rest the myth of attendance as a metric for card shows. Crowd numbers are meaningless except to the person making money on ticket sales. What counts is the demographics of the crowd: who is attending the show. A homeless person wandering into a show counts just the same as a wealthy collector with $25K in cash to spend when your metric is headcount. In fest terms, a WWE fan in full cosplay mode whose main goal is to hang around the displays, walk the runway at the WWE booth, and maybe pay $200 to shake hands with a wrestler, is a nullity for a card dealer at the fest. Sunday morning stroller time is packed to the gills at the shows I attend; it doesn’t translate into sales.

Finally, the biggest middle finger I can possibly extend to Jetblue. I flew Jetblue to NYC. The outgoing leg was fine. Coming home was a weather-delayed disaster. I am not blaming Jetblue for the weather, but their response to the weather situation was a nightmare of negligence, indifference and even hostility to their customers.

A bit of context: I used to fly Jetblue whenever I could. Even when there were issues, the company took care of it. Dangerous thunderstorms are a regular feature of the summer weather in the NYC area. Back in 2012, when I was heading to the Baltimore National, I went to NYC first to visit family and hang around before taking the Amtrak to Baltimore (great way to do it, BTW, if they ever hold a show there again). My flight was diverted to Buffalo, where we had to wait for 8 hours until the weather cleared. The airline handled it just great: they opened the bar, gave out all the food on board for free, and let us kick back and watch tv, sleep, or whatever. When the weather cleared, we got to JFK just fine. A little drunk and well-fed too.

This trip we caught weather on the ground. We were stuck on the tarmac for 3 hours, then were informed that the FAA’s tarmac rules required the plane to return to the gate and let us off the plane. These rules are fairly new and were made after my 2012 Buffalo diversion. Per Conde Nast’s Traveler:

“Carriers are not allowed to hold a domestic flight on the tarmac for more than three hours … barring a couple of exceptions (like if the pilot deems it's for a safety reason). When the delay stretches to the two-hour point, the airline must provide passengers with water and a snack, such as a granola bar. Airlines must also ensure passengers have access to working toilets, any necessary medical care, and that the cabin temperature is comfortable.”

Jetblue held us three hours. I was told there were no snacks offered in coach. I was in first class, so I got a drink. No snack offered but I am sure I could have gotten something for asking. We then had to go back to the terminal. Now, here is where it got interesting and stupid. In my view, Jetblue basically weaponized the tarmac rules against us. The FAA does NOT require that the plane be emptied, only that passengers be given the OPTION to go into the terminal. I heard the pilots and crew discussing whether to allow passengers to get off or whether to order everyone off with all their luggage. The pilot even announced an optional decision, then quickly switched to a mandate at the urging of the crew. I think the crew didn’t want to be bothered with tending to us, so they emptied the plane. We all had to grab our shit and go into the terminal. After an hour or so of hanging around, we had to go through the whole fucking “boarding process” again (when getting on the plane became a “process” is when the quality of flying started its slide into the shitter, IMO; you need a “process” to make a microchip, not to get on a plane). We taxi back out, wait another three hours. Again, no offers of food or drink to the passengers in coach. We go back, again, and have to empty the plane and take all our shit. Again.

The pilots time out. Again, FAA regulations designed to prevent airlines from working pilots into exhaustion limit how long a pilot can be on duty. You’d think at this point they would call it a day and cancel the flight. Nope. We are told to wait for a new crew. The crew arrives and we get on again. Three hellish rugby scrums on and off the plane, so far, if you are counting. We taxi out again, and the weather screws us again. Same deal. We head back in and have to get off the plane. Another rugby scrum to get off.

By now it is well past midnight, and the cabin crew times out. Jetblue cancels the flight. We are told that Jetblue has no partnerships with any other airlines, so they cannot help us book a flight elsewhere. There is a scheduled 1:34 redeye leaving for LA at the next gate, so we jump on line at the gate to get a ticket on that flight.

Now, you would think that an airline faced with this might get some customer service reps over to the gate to deal with the chaos it created. Nope. The bare bones two-person gate crew is all that is there, and when one of them decides to go on a break, well, that’s just too bad for the 100 people in line, the crewmember walks away with no replacement and no supervisor. After a ridiculously long time in line with one rep working, I finally get up there and there is a seat on the flight, so I take it. I then have to deal with my checked bag. Well, since the flight got canceled, they returned the bags to the carousel like an inbound flight. I can go claim it. Then recheck it to the new flight. Then go through security again and get back to the gate. For a flight that theoretically is boarding in a few minutes. Me and other people with checked bags resign ourselves to traveling bag-less.

Oh, one thing I neglected to mention is that by the time Jetblue canceled our flight every single restaurant and service in the airport had closed for the night. Newark…ugh. Stay away from secondary airports. No food, no water, nothing. Jetblue offers us…nothing. Well not quite. A crew rolls over a snack cart. One. We get a small bottle of water and a bag of cookies each. It was like watching piranha feeding at the aquarium. Mind you, we were supposed to have been offered food and drink on the plane during our delays. I got a couple of sandwiches in first class around 11:00. Not sure if coach got that; I know that some families were complaining that their kids had been given nothing to eat.

The replacement flight gets delayed…to the next day. We are now set to leave at 8:00 a.m. I try to sleep somewhere but basically am up all night.

Come 6:00 in the morning, our flight disappears from the board entirely and is replaced with a different flight. No explanation, no instructions from Jetblue. Nothing. Not a fucking word. What we get is the nastiest, surliest, thinnest-skinned gate crew I have ever seen. One woman traveling with two small children who had eaten nothing except a bag of cookies and had slept on the floor asked what happened to our flight and was told that she was ‘shouting’ and ‘being disrespectful’. She wasn’t, she was asking a fair question. Ohh, so that is how it is going to be: lots of finger wagging and ‘disrespecting’ accusations aimed at any passenger not willing to sit quietly. Someone said that they were giving our plane (the one at the gate we had been told was ours) to another flight. The gate crew overheard it and she was loudly finger-wag scolded to not say that. It was that sort of gate crew.

Jetblue had no answers for us and could not have been more indifferent. One of my fellow passengers called Jetblue customer service at 4:00 a.m.; as of 6:00 he was still on hold. We were finally told, informally, that we would get a flight at some point when a plane and a crew could be rustled up. It took hours but it did happen. The gate crew also just straight out lied to us. When the new flight plan was set, I asked what was happening with the bags from the canceled flight, since I had time to go retrieve and recheck my bag now that we had a flight. She assured me that all bags from the canceled flight were being reloaded onto the new flight. OK. Needless to say, when I got to LA, no bag.

Overall, it took me 27 hours to get from New York City to Los Angeles. One Australian couple on the plane was circumnavigating the planet; this was the next to last leg of their trip. I asked one of them whether they had ever had an experience this bad. They said no, not even in the third-world countries they visited.

So Jetlue, fuuuucckkk you!