New Security Policies Don’t Hamper Fun At Katsucon 2019
I began my trip to Katsucon this year with a ten hour drive from Massachusetts to Maryland. Katsucon is a convention located at National Harbor in Maryland that has an annual attendance that typically hovers around twenty thousand. It has become a well-known convention with beautiful scenery, locations to do photoshoots both on and off the resort and plenty to do outside of the convention itself in terms of food and entertainment.
In recent memory, Katsucon has been plagued by a bitter cold that has kept a lot of attendees bottled up in the hotel proper. I had hoped that with the changes to the security this year that perhaps the weather would give us a bit of a respite in its bitterness.
Arriving on Thursday, I dropped my bags off and darted over to Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center (the host site for Katsucon) to see how the pre-registration lines were. I’ve always been one of those convention goers that run up against the wire in terms of badges. Popping into the pre-reg had been a painless experience with an average time of twenty minutes from the end of the line to the beginning. It helped that the pre-reg badge email had a QR code that, when presented to the person at registration, had effortlessly allowed me to move through and get my lanyard and badge. From other friends I had heard of a slightly longer badge pick up time and some confusion as to which line they had to enter which seemed to stem from a staffers miscommunication. A lack of lanyards was also a small issue but hardly something I’d penalize the convention over, as they fixed the issue right away the next day.
New security runs smoothly
My hotel was the Residence Inn, located across from the Gaylord, so I had ample time to enter and exit the building and really get a strong feel for the security system put in place. That new security policy restricted access to the entire Gaylord facility to only people staying at the resort and those who had Katsucon badges. It was largely non-invasive as they merely requested that the badge be either visible or that you present it to convention security.
There was a slight hiccup with one particular staffer whom seemed to demand that every cosplayer wear their badges around their necks. I witnessed this, and also heard it from other cosplayers I know, as well as from a Facebook group where there is an ongoing thread. Even with this single person, the new security policy didn’t feel oppressive or make it difficult to move back and forth through the more secured areas of the convention without a hitch.
Katsucon placed the gazebo itself — perhaps the most popular location for photo shoots — under a greater restriction with only people with badges able to utilize it for photos and a line formed to allow people to use the space without hogging it for hours on end. The photography equipment restriction continued to be a thing with light stands kept at a minimum. Of course people slipped through the cracks here and there where people had equipment setup and by Saturday morning the staff had all but surrendered attempting to keep people out of the foliage in the massive atrium space.
The atmosphere of the convention had an odd feeling to it as it seemed laced with an uncertainty most likely brought upon by the new badge check system. A lot of people didn’t know what to expect and the rumors were all over the place as to how aggressive security security might get. Admittedly, I felt the same upon arrival because I didn’t know if it’d be the same or if suddenly I had walked into a cosplay police state. Luckily it wasn’t like that and everything including the normally congested hallways seemed to move well enough. The normal bottlenecks found at the convention — like the tunnel near the sports bar — weren’t eliminated but they were mitigated to a degree, with staff often pushing/guiding people through badge checkpoints and keeping the lines moving. There was an extremely long line for the initial opening of the vendor room but even that eased up over the course of the weekend as the flow remained constant.
Katsucon 2019 was incredibly enjoyable for me and I definitely do like the new security system though it still has its growing pains. I’d give the convention a 4 out of 5 in terms of rating as it was enjoyable but there is always room for improvement, and improve I hope it does. (Ed. Note: Featured photo above was taken by Luis under his studio name Crash: The Photos.)
