Wizard World Philadelphia 2018 Part 1
For those of you that don’t live in the greater Philadelphia area, I’m going to let you in on something: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is just the name of a television show, and not a statement that’s in any way indicative of the weather in our area. Mid-May brought us some of the gloomiest weather we had seen all year, with nearly nonstop rain in the forecast. Fortunately, we had a bright light at the end of the tunnel, as Wizard World was set to return to The City of Brotherly Love.
The 18th annual Wizard World Philadelphia returned to the Pennsylvania Convention Center on May 17-20 this year. Located in the Market East section of Philadelphia, the venue is one of the largest of its kind in the Northeast, measuring at 1,000,000 total square feet, with 679,000 square feet of exhibition space. The vast venue offers more than ample space to house the long-running convention, with plenty of room to grow, should the convention ever see a large spike in attendance.
The Pennsylvania Convention Center is in a location that is convenient to visitors to the city, with ample parking lots nearby (author’s protip: use a parking app for savings and convenience), and plenty of options for public transportation users. If you’re looking to get away from the convention center for lunch (because let’s face it, con food generally isn’t the greatest), the vaunted Reading Terminal Market is right across the street, offering a wide variety of highly-rated restaurants.
Now let’s talk about the convention itself. Wizard World Comic Cons are well-known for drawing in thousands of fans to see their lineup of celebrity guests, and their Philadelphia show did not disappoint in this regard, hosting dozens television, movie, and other pop culture stars. Celebrities in attendance at Wizard World Philadelphia included Jason Momoa, Natalie Dormer, Sebastian Stan, Elijah Wood, Sean Bean, Jon Bernthal, Jason Moore, Karl Urban, and Henry Winkler, just to name a few.
Wizard World Philadelphia packed plenty of entertainment programming into the four-day convention, with panels covering a wide variety of topics, including several hosted by some of the celebrities in attendance. Wizard World also featured an entertainment stage at the entrance of the show floor, which featured live musical performances throughout each day, among a variety of other unique attractions. Saturday night featured the always popular costume contest, which numerous talented cosplayers entered to show off their amazing creations. Speaking of cosplay, Wizard World also hosted a handful of cosplay guests, including Riddle, Knightmage, Princess Morgan Cosplay, Captain K, Canvas Cosplay, and Hendo Art.
Amid all the fun to be had at Wizard World, there was one problem which some fans encountered during the convention, and I would be remiss if I did not discuss this. On Saturday morning, the line to enter the convention center wrapped around the building, and was moving at a snail’s pace for quite some time. I spoke to a number of people as they entered the building in the morning hours, and many people waited around an hour or so to get into the building. This inconvenience was compounded by the fact that a large part of the queue was forced to line up outside of the building, on a morning where we were experiencing some light rain. While this is certainly not the worst entry situation I’ve seen at any convention, it’s certainly one that I would expect Wizard World to eliminate in future years in Philadelphia.
Despite this misstep, Wizard World once again put on an overall great show in Philly, which I look forward to attending and covering for years to come. Looking ahead to next year, Wizard World Comic Con Philadelphia will return June 13-16, 2019.
Cosplayers in this gallery include the above mentioned Knightmage, Riddle, and Hendo Art, as well as Harley Frances, Alexa Michelle Cosplay, Danni Darling Cosplay, Kevin D Cosplay, Allie Quinn Cosplay, Keely Madison Cosplay, Married with Cosplay, Bfarve Cosplay, Lua Stardust, Galactic Edge Cosplay, sparrowsongcosplay, powertripcosplay, colielouwarrior, casterly_fox, starrysprite, julietsong, and many more.
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