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Meet & Greet Experiences

As far as autograph collecting and music fan experiences goes, I find the range of stories I hear about various meet & greets to be pretty fascinating. I've heard of people paying modest fees (or nothing) for wonderful, fun experiences - and other stories of fans shelling out large amounts of money for a massive disappointment. And, of course, everything in between.

I thought we should have a comprehensive thread on the topic. Have you been to a pre-show or post-show meet and greet or know someone who has? Was it a bargain or a ripoff? What was the mood - structured and hurried or casual and fun?

My favorite band does meet and greets at every headline show they perform on this tour, chosen at fandom by fans who sign up for their fanclub and enter the show-specific drawing. There is no charge, and (usually) I don't believe a show ticket is even required. They were asked about this in an interview early this tour, and the response from one of the band members, Martin, was pretty passionate about musicians who charge high prices for meet & greets. FYI: I get that this band isn't quite a household name yet, so there might be a sentiment of "Who are they to say . . ." However they have an interesting perspective as both successful musicians with Top 10 records and huge music fans themselves).

Here's that portion of the interview:

https://youtu.be/l1da-ZW_3OA?t=6m48s

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Permalink Reply by Rich on June 21, 2016 at 1:49pm

I think for me, so many of my favorite celebs fall into the indie band category, which tend to be pretty easy to meet. I've paid for photo ops and autographs from some celebs I grew up with, and it was always cool. But I'm thinking about who I'd really want to shell it out to meet, and I'm not sure. Part of the problem is that I always view photo ops with a shrug, because I tend not to look all that great in them. So when meet and greets are a glorified, expensive photo op and not much more, I'm not overly excited. It's a 50/50 shot it's something I'd want to show anyway.

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Permalink Reply by Robin McKay on June 21, 2016 at 2:03pm

Some photo ops admittedly are expensive, but worth it. I mean, if you take Arnold, he could, in theory, charge in the four figure bracket for a photo, but for the price, in the three figure bracket, I thought that was good.

I would draw the line at a certain price, but that was a reasonable price for me. As you rightly say Rich, as he is a childhood hero, it wasn't something I could turn down.

I couldn't fork out hundreds each time a high profile celeb does a meet and greet, so I think you sometimes have to narrow it down as to whom you'd really want to meet and Arnold fit the bill.

Single photo ops are easier to work for than conventions as you need to save up for them and they are expensive as well.