South Texas Comic Con
4/28/18
Drop the Spotlight members Darthy Day and Sir Nick Justice visited the McAllen South Texas Comic Con And what a drive it was for a day trip coming from San Antonio (7 hours total).
This was our first visit to the convention as well as the city of McAllen itself. It felt like a mini San Antonio with reflections of the Corpus Christi feel as it was near a body of water. The con had a few talking points such as the experience, guests, crowd, and more. 
Entry:
We arrived at the convention to be welcomed by a grand modern looking convention center with giant park, 6 surrounding hotels, and luckily parking (It was super crowded). The entrance to the convention was a little confusing as there was an 30-45-minute entrance line that not even some of the people standing knew whether it was to purchase tickets or if they already had them and just needed to enter. They had what felt like a single operated table that was doing security check followed by a counting meter you had to go through (Good luck if you are in a big cosplay).
Layout:
The convention layout was an L-shaped floor plan where you have the main body being in a big hall and on the other side was a single hallway that had two rooms, the wrestling room and the kid’s activities which had 3D printing, bounce house, and more. There was two points coming from the hallway to the hall where traffic was a nightmare as it was a pinched funnel with everyone to go to and from the points. I felt if they dedicated less space where the ticket booths were (which were less crowded than the entrance line door) this could have been avoided. Also attached to the Big hall was a theater auditorium for the Q&A which I felt should have been in a different room as you will need to speak louder to the guests nearby (such as Sean Gunn and JDF) as it was loud and in your face vs being closed door or further away.
Guests/Cosplay:
The convention itself has been growing as the years have come with big crowds and guests you don’t usually see at other conventions. They had (to name a few): Michael Rooker, Jason David Frank, Will Friedel, Bam Margera, Kristian Nairn, and Yaya Han.
The wait time for these lines were fantastic! In fact, the longest line in the whole con was probably Jason David Frank who had about an hour wait line vs the others which was typically 3-15 minutes. Darthy Day and I had a great time meeting Yaya Han, Sean Gun, and our personal choice Will Friedel. Overall, we were able to knockout our collections within 2 hours of being there.
The regular attendee vs cosplay was probably 1:8 with the majority being kids cosplays (which is awesome to see). Some notable cosplays we saw were a creepy IT cosplay, Banshee and two-face, and even vendors own characters just to name a few
. 
Overall, If you happen to be close to the convention or they have a guest, you NEED for your collection/experience then this is the con for you. But if you live farther than 2hours away, be prepared for a longer drive than experience since the con is still growing and hopefully can switch to an even bigger venue as this will outgrow itself within the next year or two.
