Youmacon 2010
If you didn’t make it out to Youmacon this year, plan your calendar for next year now…no…right now, go do it. With an estimated 7-8,000 attendees expected, the convention staff was likely pleased (and extremely overwhelmed) when over 10,000 people showed up. Go on and make the DBZ joke, I’ll still laugh. :3 Even the pre-registration line had to wait two and a half hours in line. The hotel was HUGE, but how things were spaced out made things a little compact. Atrist’s Alley was a literal alley, three rows spread out among a hallway that was a bit cramped to say the least.
We hit up several of the main events such as the Yu-gi-oh Abridged 50th anniversary, TeamFourStar panels, and Potter Puppet Pals. (Halloween edition, special musical number included) Everything went rather perfectly other than there being TONS of people, but that only makes things more interesting! We got to sit down with TFS and chat, but don’t worry, we recorded it so that we’re not just bragging about it.
The cosplay was, as always, amazing. We didn’t have a chance to take it all in! Lots of characters from anime I know and others that look awesome, and I have no idea who they are. Video game, comic book, sci-fi, steampunk, anything and everything was there in costume form, even if only for one day.
(These awesome people hooked us up with free food and drinks because they had too much!)
The accessibility of food was one of the single most attractive things about this convention…aside from all the cool stuff going on there. Burger King, Subway, Chinese, Gyros, Godiva, ice cream shop, random strangers handing us lasagna, it was great to not have to go to a grocery store ahead of time or eat McDonalds for three days. More fuel means better con experience. At a previous con, the closest restaurant was 20 minutes walking distance, and you’d have to pay parking if you left. X.x Which brings me to my next point :D Parking was extremely reasonable. Thursday and Friday had a max of $14 and Saturday and Sunday had a max of $6. If you forgot something and had to duck back in and out, you weren’t going to have to break the bank.
I could probably go on for far too long about this convention and all the neat things that happened there, and nit-pick at it’s defects, but one particular point I wanted to bring up is that this was the first convention I truly missed leaving. I owe this to all the friends I made and saw there, and especially Martin Billany (Little Kuriboh). He gave an amazing speech that really hit me. There was some phenomenal talent this year at Youmacon, and I can’t wait for next year.
(You can’t tell, but they’re dancing to Thriller)
(Yes, they are fighting for the Patty Cake Championship belt. More on this later.)
