[albert_dao]

Originally Posted by Myka

Thanks for posting pics! Looks like you have a great time, and met some "reef celebrities".

Pricing at MACNA is hit and miss...most of the awesomest stuff is crazy high pricing because the US reefers will pay it. Here's a pic I found with some pricing in it. I can tell you my LFS has most of those colors of Donuts in recently and they were around half the price.

Seems like expected pricing to me. MACNA is expensive as hell and livestock dealers are probably tacking on an extra 10-20% to account for the enormous fees they get dinged for. They (MACNA) charge you for EVERYTHING. I mean it, nothing goes unaccounted for. Every watt of electricity, every drop of water, if organizer staff have to get out of your way while you're setting up your booth ("help fee"), if you get extra foot traffic to your booth and it's clogging up the aisle, everything is charged at a show premium (i.e. your utilities are +xxx% more than the State utility fees). The entire show is a death of a thousand papercuts. A small fraction of dealers may make off like bandits, but most just barely break even. And this is not even accounting for any losses suffered to, at, and from the show.

I'm not saying the event is a run by crooks or anything; speakers and banquet hall rentals are expensive and that revenue has to be tolled from somewhere. That is not intended as a sarcastic statement either, in case I'm being misinterpreted.

Anyway, if you want to see what a big show with all the fat trimmed looks like, look no further than Reefapalooza:

www.reefapaloozashow.org

Their annual attendance is comparable if not larger than MACNA's, entry is cheap and vendors need not concern themselves with the bottom line by a wide margin as they organizers charge a flat fee. Attendance is dirt cheap too ($15, hell it was $10 last year).