I’ll agree with Lauren that this does bring in alot of money into Baltimore City. That is the only good thing about it. Even though I’m sure everyone in that area hates us…We bring you money. So you can’t really complain.
This year I actually stood in line for Johnny Yong Bosch’s autograph. It was a clusterfuck. I got there an hour and a half early. And I received a ticket and then told to come back at the time on my ticket. I come back for my time, thinking that oh hey, this will be real quick and we will be in and out. No. I was sitting there for another forty five minutes and then we were let into the room to line up for autographs. His bandmates were really nice and talked to people while in line. It looked like Bosch was probably really tired, he wasn’t that talkative. I heard his band at the Matsuri (the Matsuri itself was a joke), and they weren’t bad.
As Lauren said, crowd control was terrible. I went down to Artist Alley once and of course the escalators are off. I have no problem with that. What I had a problem with was this small, narrow staircase being the only way in. And they didn’t stop people from exiting the entrance and going up that narrow staircase. At this point I’m really irritated and I even said something to the staff person at the bottom that then didn’t seem to care. I know this is a volunteer position but still.
The Alley itself had a bunch of great artists this year. I saw alot of good stuff. Although alot of people say the organization of the Alley was a hot mess. Glad to see that hasn’t changed since I was last there.
This con used to be really great. I’ve been attending since 2002. And after it got so huge that it brings in 30K people, I have enjoyed my time less and less. Mainly because of the lack of organization and the crowds of people that don’t know to stop off on the side instead right in the way of everyone else.
Even though I’m not huge into anime/manga as I used to be, I didn’t find too much interesting except for Artist Alley.
Girls With Comics 