Con Report: MegaCon 2013

Arriving a little later than usual I ended up parking a bit further from the convention than last year. Fortunately, there was a nice and free shuttle bus that took me from where I parked to the convention center. It felt kind of like being a packed in a sardine can, but being the last one in line to make it on the bus I couldn’t complain. Immediately after stepping off I was on to familiar territory. MegaCon!

Now last year admittedly while I thought the convention was fun it was not quite my favorite. This year saw some improvements over the previous, but there were a few things that weren’t as good as before.

First off, the panels I attended were much better than the ones last year. I decided to move away from what I would normally attend and enjoy the more diverse offerings MegaCon offered. The Star Trek panels were really funny despite there always being a lengthy line to get into them. The hosts were always really fun and didn’t seem to hold back. I also caught a little bit of the Troma/Kaufman panel. One panel I randomly walked in one room and saw something I had not seen before in person… Micro Championship Wrestling. Being a fan of professional wrestling I was impressed in it being more entertaining and competitive than I expected. I actually liked it a little more than MetroCon’s wrestling event. Some of the other panels I checked out included Zombie Makeup, Movie Trailers and Advanced Costuming. Speaking of Star Trek, there was certainly a lot of it in terms of programming and their guests. However, I didn’t mind of course being an avid fan. Oddly, despite there being a tons of diversity and the quality of the programming going on, I didn’t notice a video game-related panel.

The video game room was a lot easier to find and like last year had a large Dance Central crowd right next to it. The video game room was also much bigger and had a variety of great games old and new. There was a nice fighting game crowd so I spent a deal of time in here.

The costume contest and some of the cosplays I saw were pretty good, but I don’t think they were quite on the same level as last year. I saw some impressive cosplays including the group that won best prop on their 2nd year in the row. However, overall I did not think it the cons cosplays were as impressive as last year. Still.. as always MegaCon has some of the craziest and unique cosplays I had seen. Some other standouts include League of Legends, GI Joe, and anything comic book related was usually on the money. There was even a Dynamo cosplay from The Running Man and some sort of Green Lantern/Batman Hybrid. Staff and attendees were also more friendly this year.

The dealers was also fun and it felt like I was always finding more vendors that I did not spot last year. As before MegaCon has the largest dealers room in comparison to any other convention I had attended and there is always a deep variety from comics, video games, sci-fi and anime. There was even a cozy photobooth inside where I got a free print. Another fun standout was this Star Wars corner that had some recreated structures from the movies.

While it was disappointing to see Stan Lee did not make the trip out this year. MegaCon still offered a large diverse number of guests, panels and other content to satisfy just about anyone who attended. MegaCon wasn’t one quite one of my favorite cons last year, but it certainly has started to grow on me and I enjoyed a lot more this year.