If you have ever been to a Pokémon Center experience at a Pokémon World Championship before, you know about the delays, the issues, the scalpers that try to flip things for a premium, and more issues that you think Pokémon Company would have gotten right by now.
This year in Anaheim, it feels like nothing has changed with trainers showing long lines on social media, sometimes with delays of over a couple of hours, and hordes collapsing around single bins to snag rare items likely to resell them online. In some pictures, there are tons of people all trying to get to the entrance, and it feels like an overcrowded mess so far.
In a now-deleted tweet, I witnessed trainers trying to snag what appeared to be the new playmats, barging people out of the way despite a surplus of stock available. I have also seen videos of lines of people arriving for their slot only to see queues of people that have been waiting for previous slots still unable to enter the Pokémon Centre due to likely overcapacity issues. Leading to massive delays.
The Pokémon Centres have a massive interest, especially in the first few days, when people competing try to get their swag before they are unable to find time to go to the Pokémon Centre over the weekend. So, while these queues might be massive now, I imagine that by the end of the event, the issues should be fewer, and a lot of the exclusive merch that people will have been after would have probably sold out by then.
There is a silver lining, though, with trainers alerting people online that staff are actively checking bags as you enter the queue to make sure that people can't hoard multiple high-value items to sell on. There is currently a one-item-per-person limit, and many high-value items are available at the event. It seems like staff are being more proactive this year to stop people from walking away with multiple of the same item.
As someone who went to Honolulu last year and saw people walk away with sometimes 12 deck boxes or plush toys, this is a welcome silver lining in an otherwise pretty dire experience so far. Hopefully, things will improve over the weekend when more trainers are expected to arrive in Anaheim to snag some exclusive merch.
Especially when you look on eBay to see that most of these items are already up in pretty large amounts, selling for four times their value as scalpers and trainers try to make a buck off those who are unable to attend the venue. Obviously, there's nothing that the Pokémon Company can do to stop these actions. However, it's still a pretty sad experience when trainers are already facing scalping issues from new card sets, with the issues seeming to get worse every time.
For those interested in the games, Pokémon Worlds starts today and ends with the grand finals on Sunday, when we are likely to get a bunch of new announcements.
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