Hey, I'm still alive! Let's face it you didn't notice me gone. This weekend My family came to visit me for the Comic/Anime Convention in Louisville KY and to see me of course, They just left this morning and It makes me sad but I'll hopefully see them again soon. Where to Start?! Well, my loving mother did 99% of the photography you'll see in this blog so if you didn't like it, just accept the fact you didn't have to deal with being a tourist with the awkward glances from regulars. To the right is the official signs they had posted in the streets for the weekend event. I was really excited for this con because I thought there was a chance a to meet some of the famous people attentending but basically you'd have to be super rich to see them and get a crappy picture you don't get to take yourself or their signature on a piece of paper instead of an item of your choice. Basically this sort of thing was not an option for my family and myself, but the people I wanted to meet most cancelled anyway. Now, what can you do at Fandom Fest for your basic 60 dollar ticket? Nothing worth paying for and that's the truth. The only thing I enjoyed was the Vendors Hall that you had to pay to get into with your ticket, by that time you have no money to buy anything so you just walk around and smile and hope some person likes your costume basically. |
I got pictures with a lot of people and their cool costumes(above). I love seeing people's artistic abilities come to life to create our favorite characters of sci-fi, anime, and video games. It was really enjoyable, the vendors hall was huge and a lot of people dressed up, but not nearly as many as I thought and they had a lot of great options for shopping. The soul theme to this con seemed to center around Star Wars and Doctor Who, both of which I am insanely fond of so there wasn't an issue with that, but I truly expected more of a variety into the anime aspect. Basically the only anime lovers that would be happy in this hall would have been Sailor Moon fans and others may have found 1 or 2 figures or toys in something they liked. The only Vendor I bought from was a T-Shirt shop from which I got a total of 8 shirts between my brother and I for the extreme cleverness and cuteness.
My brother was Nausicaa and Kenshin, My sister was Super Girl, and I was Kiki, My mom didn't dress up but we pretended she was Shinji from Evangelion. (she looks it right? the short black hair, white shirt and jeans? No?!)
My brother was Nausicaa and Kenshin, My sister was Super Girl, and I was Kiki, My mom didn't dress up but we pretended she was Shinji from Evangelion. (she looks it right? the short black hair, white shirt and jeans? No?!)
As for the Panel rooms in my personal opinion were for the most part a waste of time and terrible. To be fair of course I didn't have time to make it to all of them as there were plenty of them happening at the same time, but the ones I did go to during the day were rather amateur. The "Maid Cafe" was a huge disappointment, I wasn't even sure there was a point to it, though many seemed to be having fun but it would have been so much simpler for them to just set up a room with tables and chairs and serve coffee and tea and I would have been pleased with it.
My second upset was when I realized the guide for events said nothing about the cosplay contests and events. Only that they were on Saturday and to be honest even if it were too late to enter, I would have loved to see everyone enter and act out their skits, so that was a monster bummer. The organization was so lacking I couldn't believe this was considered a huge event because my hometown does a better convention than this on a smaller staff and less panels, they have bigger turnouts too.
Then I decided to give the Cosfluff panel a go because I thought the topic was interesting and that the panel would serve me new information that I didn't have before because every plus size girl knows what it's like to be self conscious and have a hard time with cosplay let alone everyday clothes. We show up and it's the most dry discussion. Basically they didn't give you any helpful sewing tips for different body types, they didn't have any specific stores to get your things. I could have done the panel 1000 times better in an improv performance. I was so frustrated it basically went like this "if you're fat its expensive to cosplay" duh we know, "if you're plus size you have to use more fabric" yeah we know "if you order clothes online, do it early to make sure it fits, watch those asian sizes they are smaller than we are" NOOO REALLY?! I couldn't understand why an entire panel room was wasted on this conversation that could have happened in the hallway. It seriously blew my mind and I began to wonder if there were any standard requirements for a panel room.
We left frustrated back to the hotel for some food only to come back later for the Who's Line is it Anime 18+ event because let's face it who doesn't love the show Who's line is it anyway? Well this was only half of a disappointment. The concept was there it was the best idea ever, unfortunately the people running it weren't that funny.. at all. Their knowledge on most anime was non existent, to the point where Pokemon was pretty much the only thing they knew well enough to make fun of. I'm sorry, you're titling your panel with Anime you should at least have the most common and popular animes over the past 10 years engraved in your brain, otherwise call it Who's line is it Pokemon. And then hire funnier people. Thank you. That doesn't mean I didn't get quite a few laughs here and there, but comedy panels should be making me laugh at least 50% of the show. Am I wrong?
Then they had a "hangout" room which blasted gangster rap music so loud you felt it in your chest.. which i may not have minded if at this time of night they had alcohol and a bar and a not so brightly lit dance stage where I only saw 2 girls wearing sexy costumes dancing which if your hot and want to flaunt it I'm totally supportive, but over all I don't like that sort of music and if I can't dance comfortably and I can't talk or sing along then I'm basically out. Point being if you are going to make a hang out area for the late nighters, give it a club feel and play bad ass music like anime themed our soundtracks to marvel movies and shit. It's not that hard or am I just insane?!
My second upset was when I realized the guide for events said nothing about the cosplay contests and events. Only that they were on Saturday and to be honest even if it were too late to enter, I would have loved to see everyone enter and act out their skits, so that was a monster bummer. The organization was so lacking I couldn't believe this was considered a huge event because my hometown does a better convention than this on a smaller staff and less panels, they have bigger turnouts too.
Then I decided to give the Cosfluff panel a go because I thought the topic was interesting and that the panel would serve me new information that I didn't have before because every plus size girl knows what it's like to be self conscious and have a hard time with cosplay let alone everyday clothes. We show up and it's the most dry discussion. Basically they didn't give you any helpful sewing tips for different body types, they didn't have any specific stores to get your things. I could have done the panel 1000 times better in an improv performance. I was so frustrated it basically went like this "if you're fat its expensive to cosplay" duh we know, "if you're plus size you have to use more fabric" yeah we know "if you order clothes online, do it early to make sure it fits, watch those asian sizes they are smaller than we are" NOOO REALLY?! I couldn't understand why an entire panel room was wasted on this conversation that could have happened in the hallway. It seriously blew my mind and I began to wonder if there were any standard requirements for a panel room.
We left frustrated back to the hotel for some food only to come back later for the Who's Line is it Anime 18+ event because let's face it who doesn't love the show Who's line is it anyway? Well this was only half of a disappointment. The concept was there it was the best idea ever, unfortunately the people running it weren't that funny.. at all. Their knowledge on most anime was non existent, to the point where Pokemon was pretty much the only thing they knew well enough to make fun of. I'm sorry, you're titling your panel with Anime you should at least have the most common and popular animes over the past 10 years engraved in your brain, otherwise call it Who's line is it Pokemon. And then hire funnier people. Thank you. That doesn't mean I didn't get quite a few laughs here and there, but comedy panels should be making me laugh at least 50% of the show. Am I wrong?
Then they had a "hangout" room which blasted gangster rap music so loud you felt it in your chest.. which i may not have minded if at this time of night they had alcohol and a bar and a not so brightly lit dance stage where I only saw 2 girls wearing sexy costumes dancing which if your hot and want to flaunt it I'm totally supportive, but over all I don't like that sort of music and if I can't dance comfortably and I can't talk or sing along then I'm basically out. Point being if you are going to make a hang out area for the late nighters, give it a club feel and play bad ass music like anime themed our soundtracks to marvel movies and shit. It's not that hard or am I just insane?!
Now if you were at the con you will know that as soon as they closed the Vendor Hall Saturday Night NO ONE AND I MEAN NO ONE was checking for wrist bands, there was security but only the kind of security for out of control people which there was no drugs or alcohol and most con go-ers are pretty damn respectful and kind to one another. So really the panels were free if you went up the right escalator which only pissed me off more that I spent 60 dollars to come there.
Despite all this upset I truly did have a good time with my brother and sister we mostly talked about how we could have made the convention 200% better for every single person. They really should have made vendors free so they could make their money back for renting the spots with passers by coming to shop, and then made all panels wrist band only, mad the paid events at different times as the unpaid events so that everyone had a chance to see them. they had plenty of empty panel rooms and could have had more events happening at once which would have been smart to do especially for the amateur panels that could have been put up super early so if anyone actually wanted to go to them they could have woken up to see them. Then they should have asked the people doing the panels exactly what they were going to say and do in their event and only approve if it met their standard of badass convention!
The most important thing I needed to blog about however was the one and only panel worth having.. and it STILL disappointed me..... BECAUSE IT WAS TOO EFFING SHORT!!!! (Venom Rick Rollin above in video, my appologies for singing and laughing in the background) Karaoke.. 30 minutes.. 30 minutes for karaoke.. do you have any idea how effing stupid that sounds? They should have opened this event in the hang out room all night, it was the most popular event that I went to and the most fun, energetic, great crowd, absolutely mind blowing and it barely even got started before they shut it down. I wanted to scream at every single person that was in charge. There were like 8 plus empty rooms in the convention center and they were so stupid they couldn't say "wow people are really liking this, lets just move this to the hangout room, or move the next event to the room over while they continue to have fun, it might bring them back next time!" Yeah I guess people are to effing stupid to figure this out because I won't be going to FandomFest next time which really makes me sad. I truly wanted to come back here and write this awesome review encouraging everyone to throw down their money for this event, and I just can't. I apologize for that.
Despite all this upset I truly did have a good time with my brother and sister we mostly talked about how we could have made the convention 200% better for every single person. They really should have made vendors free so they could make their money back for renting the spots with passers by coming to shop, and then made all panels wrist band only, mad the paid events at different times as the unpaid events so that everyone had a chance to see them. they had plenty of empty panel rooms and could have had more events happening at once which would have been smart to do especially for the amateur panels that could have been put up super early so if anyone actually wanted to go to them they could have woken up to see them. Then they should have asked the people doing the panels exactly what they were going to say and do in their event and only approve if it met their standard of badass convention!
The most important thing I needed to blog about however was the one and only panel worth having.. and it STILL disappointed me..... BECAUSE IT WAS TOO EFFING SHORT!!!! (Venom Rick Rollin above in video, my appologies for singing and laughing in the background) Karaoke.. 30 minutes.. 30 minutes for karaoke.. do you have any idea how effing stupid that sounds? They should have opened this event in the hang out room all night, it was the most popular event that I went to and the most fun, energetic, great crowd, absolutely mind blowing and it barely even got started before they shut it down. I wanted to scream at every single person that was in charge. There were like 8 plus empty rooms in the convention center and they were so stupid they couldn't say "wow people are really liking this, lets just move this to the hangout room, or move the next event to the room over while they continue to have fun, it might bring them back next time!" Yeah I guess people are to effing stupid to figure this out because I won't be going to FandomFest next time which really makes me sad. I truly wanted to come back here and write this awesome review encouraging everyone to throw down their money for this event, and I just can't. I apologize for that.
On a brighter note I stayed in the Galt House Hotel in Louisville KY instead of the Hyatt hosting the event and I just want everyone to know that it's cheaper, It's extremely classy, friendly, clean, great view, walking distance to the convention center. I HIGHLY recommend it if you want to save money for shopping at your next event there. Hyatt hotels are really nice and really expensive, but trust me Galt House made me very happy, I had more fun at my hotel than at FandomFest if that tells you anything. Above I put together a little slide shower of the pictures we took from out our room window and by the pool sitting area and in the room being awesome. Overall good vacation, FandomFest isn't a great con though.