I feel like Amanda goes outside so I don't have to, and I appreciate that

So, what you're telling me...is that the REAL ghosts were the communication problems we encountered along the way 🤔🤔

Fun fact: Old, poorly insulated wiring can give off tons of EMF, which causes symptoms such as paranoia and discomfort 🙃

We vended at this and it was a NIGHTMARE. Terrible managment, the owner was so rude, many of us were complaining because we drove 4-5 hours and spent hundreds on hotels and made 60$ the whole weekend. Many of us are also con veterans who usually pull in a couple thousand each event and were told and i qoute "to smile more" and that all of our product was the problem when we had to come together ro make signs directing traffic to vendors. Meanwhile the few people that got to our booth complained they didnt even know there were vendors, that the "celebrity" photos were like 50$ a pop, they weren't even given any schedule of when speakers would be talking, the first day they didn't even have microphones, they didn't let us unload/setup until the morning of which caused HOURS of backup and most of us in our area were still setting up 3 hours into the event, the 250$ spots had 20 people walk by, the attendance tickets were like 200$ and they gave out last years badges with 2022 on them, they flew these horrible drones around spraying everything with mud and dirt, had ONE food vendor with a 1 hour line--when we were promised "many". So many of us complained but were ignored and insulted. They didn't even give us chairs to sit on for 3 hours into the event. The "mid-level" spots were legit rows of banquet tables with dirty table cloths, no display space, (and after we finally got set up the owner threw a fit and tried to force us to vend out from under the giant tent we paid bc there was only room for 25 chairs for the speakers) for many of us were missing from the sign in info--the problems were ENDLESS. Never again. The WORST con i have ever vended. The owner was heinous to ANYONE who said anything negative--this was a disaster. I honestly dont know why anyone even attended--they got nothing for their money but basic overcrowded tours, insane autograph fees, and the same 5 speakers repeated all weekend. Nightmare. And i get the vibe its bc they cut corners by not hiring an ACTUAL event coordinator and tried to do it all themselves--it was like watching a lizard try to repair a jet engine while high. We watched Jack Osborne pulled a crowd of 50 ppl bc no one knew he was speaking. The management acted like we were crazy when alot of their attendees were the ones wandering around and complaining to us. The vendors were having meetings about how awful it was.

To your Facebook point, even if they're going to use Facebook they also need to use every other communication channel they've been using for important info. That's basic event planning.

Red painted walls are known to make people uncomfortable. It’s why many businesses paint bathrooms red so employees won’t stay in there too long. I can’t imagine why a hotel would chose that scheme.

As a Pennsylvanian, I apologize for some of the sketchy hotels/motels we have. Pennhurst is on pretty grounds.

Who doesn't include a schedule when doing an event?

The museum of disability is a great step, but it sounds like the event didn't think about accessibility at all. Maybe I'm wrong and they did include disabled guests, but this feels like an event about disabled people for abled bodied people.

Time to get needlessly invested in an event I didn't know existed until 12 minutes ago :)

It is very refreshing to see Disabled history candidly discussed, (both in the convention and by Amanda). It is so so often just brushed under the rug, and despite the ghost tours, having the horrible parts of disabled history shared and shown and discussed is so important, and something so many shy away from.

I'm a convention vendor, and poor traffic is the bane of my existence--and livelihood. Always make sure the vendor's room is CLEARLY noted (not just "oddities" or "treasures," but "Vendors' Room") and there's signage to it. Make sure it's arranged so traffic flows easily. (I've been in two conventions where they only opened one set of doors, onto a straight alley of vendors. Only that alley saw business.) Events need to remember that people looooove a good vendors' room, even if just to browse, and if the vendors don't make money, we don't come back!

As someone with a lot of interest in disability history, especially as regards the history of intellectual disability, I started this episode going "they held Paracon

Amanda gives us the “female solo event-goer” representation that I desperately need 🙏

Nice to see they brought the woman who actually stayed at pennhurst. And gave her her voice. That was good to see :)

“You have a VIP pass, follow me to the porta potties” had me cracking up.

I'm glad they were respectful. I'm glad they had patients there. History is alive and well, as is the narrative that allowed Pennhurst to happen, unfortunately. We still have a long way to go. I appreciate the video, for a while, as a disabled person, I've wanted to go, but the idea of people gawking at a collective trauma skeeved me out, now that I know it's not the case, I feel far more comfortable with the idea of going. I know you're talking about the organization, or rather disorganization of the con, but the respect for the history lingering in the space really stood out to me.

I took a sociology of madness class in my undergrad and it was pretty much just about how unfairly and horribly people with disabilities and/or mental illnesses were treated throughout history and how we paint them to be these horrible and scary people when in reality they were going through something that no one knew how to help them nor had the empathy to figure it out.

This feels like a dinosaur museum that is scholarly and educational during the weekdays, but then on the weekends they put on the dramatic lights and ambient sounds so you can feel like you're in a prehistoric jungle.

Thank you for the thoughtful discussion of the history of the institute and empathy for those who lived there.