Hi guys! Well, with Conneticon having just recently gone by, the next event I'm looking forward to is the Cosplay Picnic. Located up in the Saratoga Springs Park, the picnic is a nice, small gathering of semi-local Otaku who come just to hang out and eat some great grub. There's a couple of fun little activities, a cosplay competition, and a dj (ironically named DJ) that plays some nice J-Pop. It's all great fun, and I encourage anyone in the Albany/Troy area to go. Entrance fee is only 10 dollars!
With that out of the way, let's go onto perhaps my strangest review yet, as I'll give you my opinions on how Conneticon 2012 went. Hopefully, I don't suck at this.
When I first got there, everything was in full swing. The hotel already had a huge amount of people in the lobby, and somehow the hotel people weren't insane yet. Fortunately, we got checked in quickly, and had a king-sized room on the 4th floor, with enough room for 4 people. After settling down and getting into costume, we proceeded to the convention center, and that's where I encountered 1 of the only 2 problems.
This year I decided to register at the door, and that's not normally a problem. The line typically moves rather quickly, but this year the line extended outside. Keep in mind, I was wearing a suit & coat, complete with a black fedora, and the temperature had to have been in the early to mid 90s. Volunteer staff was around as they always were keeping an eye on people, but they seemed just as irritated as the line was being out in the weather. To make matters worse, I got into the line at 10:21 AM, and made it inside some time around 12:23 to 12:35 PM. They only let in a chunk of the line at a time, and the rest of the people were getting irritated. Fortunately when I got inside, I made it to the registration station in a relatively short amount of time, and I was able to proceed to the con itself.
After getting my bearings, I made my way to where the dealer's room was, and that's where I encountered the second problem. Although it was in the con book, I was not told to my face that the dealer's room and the artist alley had their places changed, as well as having their sizes altered. Luckily, what I was able to buy didn't decrease, as I came home with a good amount of swag (see my previous post for the list of swag).
Perhaps the one thing you'll notice that when you go to Conneticon is that just about everybody there is incredibly nice. Newcomers will appreciate the amount of help they'll get, while returning fans like the familiar faces that just seem to ooze human decency and, dare I say it, love. Trust me when I say that this is a convention that has a lot of love going into it, and a lot of love coming out of it.
Next thing is is the events. Holy cow is all I have to say about what happened this year! There was a horde of stuff to see & do, and despite not going to a lot of things (I generally just walk around, and talk to whoever I bump into), the things I did go to were very entertaining. The main panels I went to were Jon St. John Presents, the last minute Nostalgia Critic panel on Sunday, and a Hetalia improv panel. There's always a horde of panels & workshops at Conneticon, and picking out which ones to go to and which ones not to go to can be some trouble.
Food is...interesting at Conneticon. You have a bunch of non-dealer's room food in both the convention center, and the hotel. Within the hotel, you have the Mariott's Vivo, a surprisingly good restaurant that serves up some unexpectedly great grub (such as a Turkey Panini with bacon). The hotel also a built in Starbucks (serving the standard Starbucks stuff. I recommend the Green Tea Frappachino) and a bar called Shift (at least I think that's what I thought it was called. I usually don't pay attention to the place, since I can't really hold my liquor). When you head into the convention center, that's where things take a turn, and whether it's a good turn or bad turn all depends on you. When you first walk into the center (by taking the pathway from the hotel), you have a small ice cream station (which does alright), and a coffee bar when you walk up to the second floor (think of it like a second Starbucks, only it's not named Starbucks). When you get into the gaming/dealer's room area, who have two stands in the back of place serving almost fast-food standard grub, although one of them has some variety to it (it serves some Chinese food).
Overall, Conneticon 2012 was great. Despite the slow registration line, and no forwarding of the changes made to the dealer's room and artist alley, it was a really great time filled with equally great people. If the world is still standing in 2013, then I'll be sure to keep going year after year.
See you all later this week. Until then, stay Otaku!
* Oh, and having lunch with Jon St. John (a.k.a. Duke Nukem) definitely made this the best Conneticon I've been to so far.
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