Venue / Random Shots

 

Cosplays

Because it turned into a gigantic wall of text, I decided to put each of our impressions inside spoiler tags. Make sure to open them to see the entire post!

「Takaii’s Impressions」

The Venue

Located inside the San Jose Convention Center in the sunny state of California, the first thing that shocked me was just how pretty the area directly surrounding the convention center was. With a park literally across the street and the roads lined with trees and cool artwork from local high school kids, it felt almost surreal just how beautiful it all was. Throw in how there’s a ton of places to grab food literally a block away and a cool lightrail that runs straight through everything, and it feels like whoever designed this place put in some real thought. (For those of you who aren’t familiar, other places like the LACC in downtown Los Angeles where Anime-Expo is held is definitely not as pretty.)

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「Zanibas’ Impressions」

I’ll keep this as short as I can, but instead of focusing on a general overview, I’m going to address some specifics that Takaii didn’t address above. Let’s begin!

Pre-Con Worries

As many regulars to FanimeCon know, the staff really pushed the time limit on starting things up this year. Registration didn’t open until very well into the year, guests of honor were announced very late into the game, and the pocket guide for planning out events was released the day before pre-registration. That’s cutting it close, but that’s only the regular attendee side. Artist Alley registration was heavily frowned upon for being very disorganized amidst the implementation of their new screening phase–many an email that should’ve been sent was not, and opening registration for artists was done very late in the game, enough to cause much discomfort. Honestly, I felt like this year was going to be the worst of my three years in attendance, considering how late everything was being setup. However, upon finally arriving, things are better than expected.

Show Spoiler ▼

 

52 Comments

  1. I admire cosplayers, such high tolerance to self embarrassment. Dressing up like a character and looking nothing alike, appearing like complete rejects, walking proud while doing so.

    Dwarg
  2. I did not think people would have the guts to dress up (or rather not dress up at all) as nudists from Kill la Kill. Kudos to them, and really well cosplayed! (Next time they should try Free!)

    ShanHaxx
  3. Although I am impressed with the cosplayers ability to shrug off embarrassment at walking half naked in those nudist beach uniforms, I feel lacking though as they didnt bother put the iconic censor lights in their extremities.

    n30nl16ht
  4. I’ve only been to Fanime once, and I feel it was more like a huge fan gathering with little content to back it up. Works for people who are into that. Me, not so much.

    Derpymon
  5. You know, for kids!
  6. The secret to avoiding LineCon 2014 was to get your badge at the sister con, Clockwork Alchemy, at the Double Tree Hotel. Both cons share the same registration system and actually had two Fanime lines and one CA line. At 6pm, I parked in the free 10 minute UPS spots (UPS already closed) and got my badge in three minutes (two of which was walking to/from the car).

    Then I headed over to Fanime to gawk at the insanely long LineCon 2014 for the swap meet.

    MarcosV
    1. Everyone I know that went there told me linecon 2014 was non-existent.
      At least for me, it took 5 minutes, 4 of those minutes was walking through the empty plastic line maze at the entrance.

      Geoff
  7. So many amazing pictures! It’s nice that this con had the smaller con charm. Having only been to Otakon, I sometimes wonder if it’d be nicer to be in a more intimate setting than with 32,000 people bustling about, haha. I’m surprised you didn’t mention much about the Home Made Kazoku concert, Takaii. How was it? 😀

    Thanks for your impressions, Takaii and Zanibas. We can live vicariously through you…hehe. \(^.^)/

  8. I didn’t know you were a regular swap meet attendee. That actually makes me happy to know that someone whose blog I read comes to Swap Meet.

    With regards to the line this year, it was pretty crazy. There were a few factors that lead to it becoming the monster that it was. Primarily, it revolved around the space we were able to get this year and the fire codes of said space. Because we weren’t able to get Hall 1 again this year (since the Dealer’s Hall was expanding into it), we had to find another place. In the end, the only reasonable space we were able to get was the civic center. Don’t get me wrong, I really like some of the things about the civic center for the event, but it was a smaller space than we were used to. Once we had the space, we tried to fit as many sellers as possible into the area we had, which we did an alright job with.

    However, with that, there wasn’t as much room for people to come in and wander the sellers. Normally, this wouldn’t necessarily be as much of a problem on Thursday in particular, since so many people would be filtering in as they got their badges. But with registration going so quickly for attendees (which I certainly won’t complain about. Faster reg is always better), it did end up being a bit more of a flood than we were expecting. We know this was an issue this year and we’re looking into what we can do to alleviate it for next year. We’re not sure yet what that will include, whether a change of venue again or working out a way to have more space or what, but we will be trying to find a way to let more people in and/or reduce waiting times for those trying to get in.

    As far as sellers getting in, we did start letting them in on time, but the check-in went longer than anticipated on Thursday. We’ve seen in past years what happens when we let sellers in while still doing check-in and it’s not pretty, so the line unfortunately had to be delayed until that was finished. We started earlier on Friday and were able to finish at least close to on-time to let people in. But then the venue issues still existed.

    Either way, I’m glad that you’re a regular Swap Meet attendee and hopefully we’ll see you next year. Chances are I’ll be staffing it again, so if you stop by (and remind me of this, since it might slip my mind between then and now. XD), be sure to say hello!

    Zelyhon

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