Megacon Nearly Stumbles Over Surprising Crowd Sizes

Last year Megacon celebrated its 10th year in existence and set a record for attendance with 62,000 fans flocking to the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando. While locals consider it the same thing as predecessor OrlandoCon, which ran from 1974 to 1993, Megacon as a separate entity was born in 1993.

This year Megacon moved to a bigger building and, according to Director of Operations Jason Smith, had an attendance number somewhere between “82,000-83,000 total over the three days of the event, which is great, but nothing that you can prepare for, as you can never estimate what the drive-up sales are going to be every year.”

Despite a move from the West Building of the OCCC to the larger South Building, on Saturday the crowds were far beyond what the convention organizers expected, which the Orlando Business Journal pegged at about 75,000 for all three days. For those that had no trouble getting in to the convention, Megacon 2014 was an amazing time, with some understandable glitches brought on by the enormous crowds. However there were plenty of people stating on Megacon’s Facebook page that they decided not to attend Saturday, after waiting in traffic for as much as two to three hours.

For those massive crowds that did fill the OCCC, they got to see guests like comic book giants Stan Lee, George Perez, Neal Adams and many dozens of others. Science fiction and fantasy TV and movie celebrities like John Barrowman, Manu Bennett, Danai Gurira and dozens more were also there, appearing on panels, signing autographs and sitting for photo opps. In fact, the Walking Dead panel, on Saturday afternoon with Gurira, David Morrissey and Steven Yuen was an example of how the crowds strained the capacity of the con to handle them.

The Walking Dead panel was held in the same room (the largest available) as the costume contest which was scheduled to happen immediately after. Those two events were arguably the biggest draws in the con, and the staff had a real hard time figuring out where to put the lines for costume contest, so that the crowd for the Walking Dead panel had room to leave — and the guests had room to escape without getting mobbed. Different staffers and con security members were telling the costume contest crowd things as wildly different as they had to line up in a certain way on the floor the room was on, to saying everyone had to clear the floor and line up one floor below.

Not everything was a problem, however — most of the con went on smoothly and even panels as well attended as the voice actor script read started on time and cleared out easily. And if you have never heard The Ghostbusters done in the voices of Pres. Obama, Yakko Warner, Winnie the Pooh and the female Commander Shepard, you haven’t lived. Kudos to celebrity talent manager Jeff Zannini for coming up with this idea to give voice actors something to do other than a Q&A panel.

Then there are the cosplayers — Megacon is one of the biggest draws for all kinds of cosplayers on the East Coast. While cosplayers like Ivy Doomkitty came from the West Coast to be celebrity guests, many others came from places like Toronto and Las Vegas just to enjoy the convention and show off their latest cosplays. Kristen Hughey was another cosplay guest, and Riddle, Yaya Han and Alexia Jean Gray either had booths or were working with a vendor on the exhibit floor. Another well-attended event was the panel “So they say you shouldn’t cosplay,” featuring Ivy Doomkitty, Nicole Marie Jean, Soni Aralynn and AlyChu Cosplay — just one of four cosplay-focused panels.

At about 82,000 attendees for 2014, Megacon is actually bigger than its more well-known Southern cousin, DragonCon. It is just a bit smaller than the biggest con on the East Coast, New York Comic Con, which had 116,000 attendees in 2013. To put that in perspective, the Magic Kingdom at Megacon’s neighbor Walt Disney World averages about 43,000 attendees per day.

In fact, having it in the month in which nearly every high school and college has a spring break week is both a blessing and a curse for the same reason — it makes it easier for people to attend. I spoke with one man who said he had asked his middle-schooler daughter if she wanted to go to Universal Orlando or Disney World during break, and mentioned they could stop by at Megacon. She immediately said that Megacon was all she wanted to go to.

Despite its growth-related problems Megacon 2014 was a great success — perhaps too much of one. But Smith made it clear the convention gets it: “This year was definitely a learning experience for us, as now we need to start anticipating larger crowds and developing our operations to accommodate them.”