speaking as someone who was watching the liveblogs as it happened.
It started off with it being extremely empty and like, the people attending had been to cons before and knew that this was very very unusual. Nightvale was advertized as being there but they were never going to be there and the organizers claimed nightvale cancelled at the last moment. The organizers also claimed that they needed several hundreds of dollares or else the hotel would kick everyone out and recieved donations. by this point a person attending the con had brought an inflatable pool and some plastic balls and made a ball pit. The organizers had started charging people to play in it despite it having been brought by someone attending and offered an extra hour in theballpit for those who had paid to see nightvale as compensation (they still had to pay for the initial hour in the ballpit) at this point it was pretty clear the whole thing was a scam and by the end of it, someone peed in the ballpit.