Tag: WonderCon

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For the first time ever, we attended three days of a comic-con with the whole family. Including cosplay! (Well, one of us did)

WonderCon was back in Anaheim this year, and it felt like a homecoming. The Anaheim Convention Center is just a better fit for the con than LA. The fountain area is a better gathering spot than the LA lobby. The programming rooms are much easier to get to. Plus the food’s better, even before you add the food trucks, and the plaza in front is a better place to put them. (Speaking of food, just about every place had at least a vegetarian option, and there was a whole truck dedicated to falafel.)

Casual Cosplay

Katie broke out her Whitney Frost (Agent Carter Season 2) outfit for a second con. Since it didn’t start until afternoon, and we needed to wait for school to let out, we had the whole morning to do the effects makeup. She had much better results this time around: Lots of people recognized her, and lots of people asked for her photo. She even ran into a couple of Peggy Carters. On Saturday she went with something more low-key: Kara Danvers (aka. Supergirl), complete with a coffee cup labeled “Kira.” That one was more subtle, but when she was standing next to a Supergirl, someone would catch on every time.

Kara Danvers cosplay: Woman wearing a harlequin sweater and glasses, carrying cardboard coffee cups, one labeled Kira. Whitney Frost Cosplay: Woman in a 1940s style purple dress, spidery cracks running down the side of her face, and hair with half a victory roll and curls on one side.

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Last year’s WonderCon went well enough that when our five-year-old said he wanted to go both days this year, we figured sure, let’s do it! Famous last words…

(TL;DR: full photo album)

We had another thing going on Saturday morning, so we got in around noon and went to get lunch as soon as we had our badges. Then we stood in line at the food trucks for over an hour. By the time we made it into the convention proper, it was almost 2:30pm. On Sunday, we brought sandwiches with us, though we did wait in line for cotton candy shaped like Baymax’s head (cotton candy being the exception to the rule about not eating things bigger than your own head).

Unfortunately things didn’t work out as well as last year, kid-wise. He’s old enough to find cool things to do at a con — meet the Ninja Turtles, check out toys, play retro video games, stuff like that — but hasn’t quite mastered the art of “let someone else have a turn” or “let’s start walking so we can get to this other thing before the room fills up.” The first day of a con is overwhelming for anyone, and that goes double for kids (and parents). Saturday was so exhausting that we left early and I dropped into bed fully dressed.

Crowds, Cosplay & Events

As many people as there were, I never felt crowded. We didn’t have any problems with the RFID badges either. They had a new system where you had to tap your badge on a scanner to enter or leave the main hall, or one of the areas where events were being held. Our badges scanned just fine. J. insisted on tapping his as well, and was disappointed that the scanner didn’t respond. (He really likes the idea of having his own ticket to things, even when children get in free.)

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As of last weekend, I’ve been to more WonderCons in Anaheim than San Francisco, and more with a kid in tow than without. And I’m finally at the point where I’m no longer comparing the current incarnation of the con to the previous one, and just taking it on its own terms.

(Jump to the Photo Gallery if you don’t want to read my ramblings on the con.)

Honey Lemon and Photobombers.WonderCon is still a lot like old-school San Diego Comic-Con, with the mix of various media presence but without the cattle-drive crowds. It’s the kind of con where you can find the high-profile events or guests and actually visit more than one in the same day!

The era of gigantic booth displays (other than the tower of T-shirts) seems to be over, or maybe exhibitors are saving them for the bigger cons. I was surprised that DC didn’t have a booth, since they’ve been heavily involved in WonderCon every year I’ve gone, though they provided the program cover/T-shirt as usual, hosted panels, and of course were well-represented by artists and writers.

Even without giant booths, the main floor filled most of the convention center. Artist’s Alley was probably about the same size as at SDCC, but easier to navigate. It’s a bit of a blur, actually, but I remember:

  • Looking at a lot of art
  • Comics sellers (though I only took the time to look at the discount books that were actually organized)
  • Pirate-themed devices
  • Antique keys, tools, drafting instruments and the like. (In some cases the artifacts weren’t actually that old. There was a Swiss Army Knife that looked pretty much exactly like the one I was carrying in my backpack, for instance.)
  • Tentacle Kitty!
  • Talking to several artists including: Phil Foglio, from whom I bought a Girl Genius-inspired card game; Amy Mebberson, who got a kick out of Spider-Elsa; the writer of an indie comic about airship combat with amazing artwork called Skies of Fire.
  • What is it with me and airship comics?

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This year at WonderCon (April 18-20) was the year that I missed a lot of things. It’s not at the SDCC level where you have to assume you won’t get to what you want unless you’re really lucky, or deliberately go for the less popular events. Even if you’re at the very end of a long line, or arriving five minutes before, you might still make it into the room. Mostly, I got there late two days out of three, and spent most of Saturday finding things for a three-year-old to do (more about that later).

WonderCon is settling in at Anaheim. The crowds are coming even on Friday, and parking…well, it’s not perfect, but it’s better than the first year, when they sent people out to Anaheim Stadium for overflow, and a lot simpler than San Diego’s collection of dozens of tiny parking lots scattered around downtown. After the first day following signs from lot to lot to lot, I just went straight to the Garden Walk structure for the next two days. It’s a bit of a hike, but not much worse than parking at the far end of the Toy Story lot, and the time you save waiting to get into the lot will probably make up for the extra 5-10 minutes on foot. (But if you leave the con before sunset, make sure you walk out to Katella along the convention center, where there’s shade, and not along Harbor, where there’s a wide street to let the sun reach you and a wall to reflect the heat right at you.) Continue reading →

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Publisher’s Weekly reports that WonderCon still wants to return to the Bay Area, but that the limiting factor is scheduling.

  1. A convention needs additional days at the convention center to set up and tear down the event. So for a 3-day weekend event, they need to be in Wednesday or Thursday through Monday.
  2. They’ve been trying to avoid conflicting with other big comic conventions, specifically C2E2 in Chicago and Emerald City in Seattle. I remember one year they were the same weekend as MegaCon, but it was all the way on the East coast, so the two events were drawing from a different pool of guests and attendees.

With Moscone basically the only convention center in the area that’s big enough, their options are limited.

WonderCon’s last year (so far) in San Francisco was 2011. C2E2 launched in 2010, and grew to 41,000 attendees in 2012 and 50,000. Emerald City has been around for a decade, but expanded dramatically over the last few years, jumping from 13,000 attendees in 2009 to 32,000 in 2011. This year, all three cons* were in the 53-56K range.

The other shows’ explosion in size coincides with WonderCon’s move out of San Francisco. Both shows were already growing before WonderCon moved to Anaheim, so while I’m sure some former regulars decided to go to Emerald City instead, I doubt it accounts for the bulk of the growth. It makes me wonder (no pun intended) whether WonderCon might be facing similar scheduling conflicts even if it had stayed in San Francisco back in 2012.

If they do have to go up against another high-profile convention, it’s going to be one of those damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situations. My feeling is they’d be better off scheduling for the same weekend as C2E2, since Chicago’s three times the distance and two time zones away. Sure, it could be seen as a proxy battle between the NYCC and SDCC juggernauts, but it would play better than looking like they’re stepping on the little guy.

*I couldn’t find figures for ECCC 2013, but Wikipedia cites 53K in 2012, and they’ve been growing every year. C2E2 2013 was 53K, and WonderCon’s site cites 56K for 2013.

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WonderCon has officially announced that they’re returning to Anaheim in 2014 for a third year, from April 18-20. It’s turned out to be a good venue for the convention, especially if they can work the remaining kinks out of parking next year, and it means it’s easy for us to attend, since it’s close enough for us to commute. (That really takes some of the pressure off of trying to get tickets for San Diego, too.)

Still, I hope they find a way to move back to the Bay Area soon. I attended three years at the Moscone Center when it meant traveling (it probably helps that we have family and friends in the area to visit on the way up and back), and while the show still feels very much like part of the same family, it does feel like a slightly different show. I was in San Francisco on a business trip last week, and when I realized I was in the neighborhood, I just had to stop by Yerba Buena park and the Moscone Center for old time’s sake. Continue reading →

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It’s looking more and more likely that WonderCon will be staying in Anaheim again for 2014. That makes it easier for me to attend, but I still feel like the show’s out of place. I’d like it to return to the Bay Area even though it means I’ll have to travel.

I’ve been in San Francisco this week for a training course. Tuesday night after dinner I wandered down Market St. until I recognized the pedestrian path that led toward the Yerba Buena Gardens, Metreon mall, and Moscone Convention Center. I had to look.

There was an art installation in the path, a set of benches including an open-air whisper gallery. The church nearby was covered with scaffolding. The nearby buildings were lit up, as was the Martin Luther King, Jr. waterfall at the south end of the park, and I decided to try taking some night photos with my phone. HDR mode surprised me by turning out astonishingly well for a phone.

MLK Waterfall at Night

Compare that view of the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial waterfall to this daytime shot from 2010:

And here’s a look at the buildings on the east side of the park:

Yerba Buena Gardens at Night

Would I have liked to have a better camera with me? Sure. But the software did a great job of counteracting my jittery hand and the low light level. It probably handled the image stabilization better than my camera would have.

I walked on across the bridge to check in on the convention center itself, for nostalgia’s sake, and noticed for the first time the children’s museum and playground in the same block. If WonderCon ever does make it back to San Francisco, we’ll have somewhere to take our son in the middle of the day. Though the way things are going, by then he’ll be old enough to enjoy a full day at a comic con anyway!