Creation Entertainment: Unique Site For Sci-Fi and Fantasy Television Merchandise and Experiences
Written: Sep 15 '09
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Over the years, several different science fiction and fantasy television shows have caught my interest. Star Trek: The Next Generation helped make me a lifelong Star Trek Fan, leading to my later interest in Voyager and many of the Star Trek movies. When I was in junior high school, I liked Xena: Warrior Princess. My husband introduced me to Farscape when we first met, and we watched all four seasons in one summer. We have been watching Supernatural for the past few seasons after receiving the first season on DVD as a gift. Most recently, my husband and I have become fans of the Twilight Saga novels and movies.
These shows have some of the most die-hard fans, many of whom hunt down merchandise and any chance they can to meet the cast of their favorite shows. My husband and I have never dressed as Klingons nor have we waited outside of an awards show for Rob Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, but we have sought out merchandise related to our favorite shows. We have also attended several convention events. Luckily for us, one website provides these opportunities for all of the shows I mentioned as well as some of our other favorites: Creation Entertainment (CreationEnt.com).
Website
Creation Entertainment offers merchandise and hosts convention events for the aforementioned shows in addition to Serenity, Battlestar Galactica, Smallville, Lord of the Rings, and others. The company works in conjunction with the production companies to bring exclusive perks to fans, most recently partnering with Summit Entertainment to create a series of official Twilight conventions.
The site offers merchandise in their online shop, in live auctions, and at their convention events. Their diverse selection includes autographed items, such as signed photos and paintings. Navigating the site to find merchandise is easy from the home page, which has a menu of show logos on the left side of the page. Clicking on the logo of your favorite show brings you to a shop with related merchandise. There is a menu of tabs at the top of the homepage that appears when you click "Shop," but the links are broken. I have tried two different browsers to test them, but I can't seem to get them to work.
The products are divided into logical subcategories, making it relatively easy to find what you're looking for. A search feature would have been helpful, but I couldn't find one. The selection is unique, but spotty. Their inventory of autographs seems to depend on which stars have attended their latest events. Autographs from the biggest stars are the most uncommon as well as the most expensive. The merchandise selection at the conventions is the most impressive, offering plenty of items for purchase to be signed live at the event as well as previously signed items. For a price of about $1,000, you can pick up a painting with the signatures of the whole cast of your favorite show!
For items purchased online, the product pages are rather scanty. There is a picture of each item, but in most cases, only a sentence fragment-description of the item is provided. There is pricing information, but no shipping information on the page. The product page does not state how much handling time is required before the item will ship. A link labeled "You may also be interested in..." promises related items, but often results in a blank page with the words "There are no alternate items for this item."
The convention schedule is posted in the center of the CreationEnt.com homepage. It's very easy to find convention dates in your city for your favorite shows. In some cases, events are planned well over a year in advance. For events that are numerous months away, the site may only list the date and location for those who wish to book their hotel rooms early. Though the events often span several days and fans can choose to attend for only one day or all of them. Many fans choose to stay at the venue to take advantage of the full schedule of events. As the event draws near, the site begins to post a convention schedule with a detailed timeline of the entire event. This is updated until all of the events are finalized.
Event schedules usually include speaking appearances by cast and crew, along with photo and autograph opportunities with these special guests. The higher-end ticket packages often include some or all of these photo and autograph opportunities, but separate tickets can be purchased for those who only want certain experiences. During their appearances on stage, the audience is allowed to line up to ask questions at two microphones on each side of the stage. The convention events include special treats for the fans such as showing of exclusive blooper reels. There are numerous contests held over the weekends, including trivia, costume, and centerpiece contests. Other special events may include a musical performance by the present cast members or a dessert party where you can mingle with your favorite actors. Many of the convention date pages have links to past events, allowing you to view pictures from the previous year's convention.
CreationEnt.com is badly in need of an update, as the layout and site issues have not changed much over the decade that I have been visiting the site. Luckily, the issues mentioned above are the only problems I have had with it more recently. I experienced no other broken menus or links, and the pages loaded quickly.
My Experiences
My first purchasing experience with Creation Entertainment was for tickets to a Farscape Convention in 2004. My now-husband and I attended one day of the convention with a good friend, who was also eager to see the show's star Ben Browder, along with two other supporting actors, Gigi Edgely and Anthony Simcoe. The tickets were $45 for the day-long event, with an additional $30 for autographs from all three cast members. The checkout process was easy enough to follow and luckily, the site's problems did not affect checkout.
The convention was very smoothly run and entertaining. Each cast member was given a half hour or more to speak, with plenty of time for questions afterward. Creation does a good job of keeping the question session entertaining for all fans by recommending that fans please refrain from overly personal questions or wasting time gushing over how much they love the actors (after all, everyone at the convention loves them!). Most of the other events were very entertaining. The winning entries from a music video contest were shown and they were hysterical. Just enough filler events were put into the schedule for some time to shop in the exhibition room.
The seats for one-day ticketholders are quite far back, so if you're a big fan looking for an up-close-and-personal experience, the gold and silver weekend packages may be much more to your liking. I was satisfied with the seats for the Farscape convention. I was able to see the actors, even if they were a bit far, and the price was reasonable. The autograph sessions were lengthy and the line forms in order of distance from the stage so we had a long wait, but the actors were really friendly and made the experience worth it.
For Christmas in 2007, I purchased Gold Weekend Package tickets for my husband and I to attend the Star Trek Convention in March 2008. The event included a rare appearance by Patrick Stewart, along with Brent Spiner. The Gold Weekend tickets were more than $300 each, but they are well worth it for die-hard fans, providing a seat in the first ten to fifteen rows and autographs from all of the stars. Though the convention venue itself proved to be a disaster, the convention was so much fun! We enjoyed all of the events, including the special dessert party when several of the actors joined us for ice cream.
Shortly after the convention, I made a Star Trek merchandise purchase on the site after having seen the item at the convention's exhibition center. A "transporter" mug had caught my husband's eye. It featured images of three Star Trek: The Next Generation crew members which dematerialized when the cup was filled with hot liquid. My husband had received a similar mug with characters from the original series as a gift and wanted the mug from his favorite series. As described above, the product page was shoddy, but I ordered the item since I had already seen it in person. The price was very reasonable, even with shipping. The purchase cost about $15. The checkout process went smoothly. I received the item in about two weeks with regular shipping. It wasn't my fastest-received online purchase, but I can't complain. Star Trek mugs aren't usually the most urgent purchases.
My husband and I are considering attending a Supernatural and Twilight convention next year. At this point, there are several dates in July but no concrete details about guest appearances. If Creation Entertainment manages to snag some great guests, we'll definitely be picking up tickets. I'll update this with those experiences when we do!
Overall Recommendation
Creation Entertainment is a rather rudimentary website that badly needs an update, but it provides unique opportunities of fans of many science fiction and fantasy shows. The website itself may leave much to be desired, but this company offers great merchandise and their events are a lot of fun. I recommend them to any and all die-hard fans!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
noangels
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Member: Jamilynn
Location: Staten Island, NY USA
Reviews written: 223
Trusted by: 41 members
About Me:
So glad to almost be done with Christmas shopping!
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