The A-Kon 27 Experience

by Gaby

This Year A-Kon 27 delivered quite well! Despite Fan Expo being a few minutes down the road on the same weekend, it seemed that attendance at A-Kon was still quite well.  This is purely my opinion but A-Kon is the better convention to attend if you are in it to make friends and be social.  Ok sure if you want to see some big stars like Stan Lee and William Shatner, go ahead make a trip to Fan Expo, but A-Kon has a lot more social events that last well into the night.     The Cosplay is also way better at A-Kon...again purely my opinoin.

A couple of pros and cons that I do want to mention at A-Kon this year...

PROS: 
* The registration Line was FAST!  I went to pick up my badge on Thursday and this was the fastest ever! I expected to wait in line at least half an hour to an hour (Last year I also went on Thursday and waited half an hour), but the line went by so fast I basically blinked and I already had my badge!   That's right the scan and go method this year was superb!

Otaku Acoustic at a Demo space

*I didn't see much of an elevator line, I was in the atrium the whole weekend and I never had to wait forever for an elevator. Not sure how the tower was doing but every time I passed by I didn't see a huge line.
*There were a lot of really well placed demo areas for performers, It was also really great that they were actually on the schedule so that people could stop by and watch these performers do small concerts.
* The dealers room and artist alley where actually pretty good.  For there being two cons in the same weekend, the dealers room and artist alley seemed like they were pretty well packed with dealers.

 *They got rid of the hotel food ticket system food court, I personally liked this because it was such a waste of time to go get tickets and them cash them in for food, instead where the food court was in years past they had the registration set up, what they did for food instead is they put out tables in an open area where people could just go in, either pick pizza, chicken tenders, or wings and basically go in and get out, ok so they didn't have places to sit, but at least there wasn't a line to get food!

* A-Kon Facebook Group was amazing! I highly recommend if you ever attend A-Kon to get connected to the Official A-Kon Facebook Group, many people were kept informed through their own peers on Facebook it was a really good way to get in the know of what was going on throughout the convention. 

CONS: 
*Everyone complained about the badges....  They were printed on heat sensitive paper too so if you went and had them laminated they turned black and were voided by the convention.   What I was understanding from people on the Facebook group was that the convention should have warned everyone about this, so that people could bring their own badge covers....or better yet they could have provided a plastic badge cover along with the lanyard, especially because it was raining pretty hard on the first day of the convention.
*The one day pass badges looked like the 3 day weekend pass and people were abusing this.  Unfortunately it seemed like badges weren't getting checked as thoroughly as they should have been so a lot of people were mad they paid for a 3 day pass and someone with a one day pass kept using more than they were supposed to.   From what I understand is that there were fewer volunteers at the convention than anticipated so that is kind of a bummer.
*There was no courtyard this year at the Hilton Anatole.  It was under construction because they are building a new aquatic center set to open next month, so basically everything was indoors and photo shoots had to be relocated to smaller areas around the hotel.
*And this is just a personal one I wanted to throw out...THE DANCE WORKSHOP ROOM WAS TOO SMALL!!!!  I went to several dance workshops and they were all in the same tiny room! It was unbelievable, you would think that they would assign the dance workshop room as a larger room because people need to move around when they dance, but instead they put everyone in a tiny room, people still had fun being squished in there but I heard from a lot of people that they wished the room was bigger.

Well all in all I think the convention was great! Great socializing, I even made new friends!  Be sure to check back later this week because on Day 2 of A-Kon I got to check out the Neko Neko Maid Cafe, I'll show you and tell you all about it!  And now without any further delay, here are some pictures from A-Kon, Be Sure to checkout the Facebook Gallery as well for all the pictures I posted during the con!

*For the Facebook Gallery Click Here!!!!

The Neko Neko Maid Cafe

see what I mean about the dance workshop room...too small!!!