Comicpalooza 2018
5/26-5/27
Drop the Spotlight members Darthy Day and Sir Nick Justice visited well known Comicpalooza held at the George Brown Convention Center.
This was my fifth year attending Comicpalooza as I have loved my experiences in the past. One thing I always love to tell people about Comicpalooza is the amount of space and time it takes to go through the con, since it will take at least an hour to two just to visit the first floor.
Entry:
We arrived at the convention to be welcomed by the remodeled convention center that had been going under construction in or around the building the last few times. This time It was very much complete. First time seeing the front blocked due to full underground parking garage across the street from the convention.
Layout:
The convention layout is as best described as a modern architecture dome like building. It has 3 main levels with multiple rooms on the second and third floor which hosted different activities and vendors. Mostly gaming arcades from what I encountered. The main floor where the guests and vendors are feels like an extremely long airplane hangar since it has more space than you could ask to walk around in.
Guests/Cosplay:
The convention itself has been growing as the years have brought with it, this year they had headline Tom Holland appear which is crazy since Avengers Infinity War had just come out a month before.
The wait time for these lines a bit all over the place. For most guests it was about a 10-15 minute wait for people such as Krysten Ritter, Michael Chiklis, and Peter Mayhew.
The wait time for the photo op with Tom Holland was much different than usual as it had an 45 minute late start for photo ops with a crowd of about 5 long lanes vs an entire fleet of con goers of which I had anticipated. Following into the room where we would eventually take our photo with Tom was another room which had metal detectors everyone had to go through.
The regular attendee vs cosplay was probably 1:4 (which I felt was a bigger ratio than most). There was of course a ton of spiderman cosplays due to Tom, a giant Gundam, many vendor cosplays such as evil clowns, and many cool booths that stuck out with vehicles for perfect cosplay backgrounds.
Overall, I believe Comicpalooza is really nailing the headline guests they have been bringing each year since most of these you don’t ever see for a few hours at any other Texas convention. I love the amount of space there is in the convention, although this year felt like the hottest inside which made cosplay uncomfortable. Lots of space to walk and not bump into others unless standing in the middle isles. Overall had a great time with meeting the guests, visiting the vendors, and enjoying the company with new cosplay friends.
