For those wondering about the title, I posted a retrospective in photos on my personal Facebook page (not the Age of Animus Facebook page). There was a lot of editing to be done to get them all up there. But now they’re there.
But what did I think of the Con?
In a word, disappointing. I must mention before going on, that I was not as excited for Comiccon this year as I have been in years past. Did my lack of enthusiasm paint my experience or was my lack of enthusiasm justified by the lackluster experience? I don’t know for sure. I’d say it was a mixture of both. Still, you may be well-advised to steer clear of this week’s blog, because it’s not really positive.
While I give full props to the volunteers who worked to keep the con running as smoothly as possible, the overall experience still felt a little less organized compared to last year where I felt everything went off wonderfully. Something as simple as putting up a sign telling me where I CAN enter the building (because the obvious doors are being blocked by grumpy security staff), or NOT yelling in my ear when I’m clearly already heading in the direction you’re herding me towards like cattle…oh yeah and NOT TRYING TO HERD ME LIKE CATTLE!
The VIP experience was NOT worth it this time around. I feel I could have had the same experience at the Deluxe level and saved $100. The VIP privileges turned out to apply to most of the things I wasn’t interested in and less so for the ones I was, so I ended up waiting in line a good amount of time anyway.
There was a lot of downtime during the Con for me. That is, there were large stretches of time where I felt I had nothing to do but wander around aimlessly…alone. There were panels and Q&As scheduled throughout the weekend, but the panels didn’t appeal and the Q&As weren’t as plentiful as they could have been considering the number of celebrities on hand since they grouped the celebrities together a lot.
This is not to say I had a terrible time at the Con. There were some high points: Stephen Amell, Billy Boyd and Brent Spiner are awesome! Karl Urban told a great story about his first day of shooting at the reactor for Star Trek Into Darkness. I didn’t know what to expect from Katee Sackhoff and Tricia Helford, but they delivered a solid panel as well. Levar Burton was inspiring and I could just listen to Michael Dorn’s voice for hours. Note these were all panel-related and accounted for 5 hours out of about 25 hours of con-going time. In between there just felt like a whole lot of nothing. I’d have had a much more interesting time if there’d been more of it!
Gates McFadden and Jonathan Frakes were fun, but they also showed up an hour (McFadden) and a half-hour (Frakes) late for their autograph signings with no sign as to why. That detracts from my score for them. People pay a fair deal of money to see them. It’d be nice if they made an effort to be on time. Maybe there were issues preventing them from doing so (Michael Dorn was held up by customs and Patrick Stewart’s flight was delayed) but TELL US!
I didn’t cosplay this year. I’ve dabbled and it didn’t stick. That said, my friends all seem to love it. It saddens me that it’s not a passion I can share with them. They have a lot of fun doing it. I’d rather be attending panels though (that was true when I was in costume as well).
I would be remiss if I didn’t thank the friends that provided a few bright spots in what was a less than stellar con for me: Jen, Rock, Frank and Melanie and of course Fab and Lyne who made the whole trip possible.
That said, I think that unless they announce some stellar guest (I’m thinking in the order of Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Roddy Piper, Michael Donovan, Nathan Fillion or any of the cast of Firefly I have yet to meet) that gets me excited to attend (and hopefully doesn’t cancel) or unless I finally manage to do something for Age of Animus that will give me some sense of fulfillment, I’m thinking my Comiccon days may be behind me.