This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.
Done now? Done now.
Part 1: http://www.crymore.net/2013/12/27/anime-conventions-a-guide-of-sorts-part-1/
Part 2: http://www.crymore.net/2014/01/01/anime-conventions-a-guide-of-sorts-part-2/
Topics covered this time around: things to bring, and misc. Yeah, I need to work on my naming sense.
Things to Bring
Essentials
Phone device
You’re gonna want to stay in contact with those friends I said you should have back in the first article. If you don’t have friends, now’s the time to make them.
Camera
You can bring one of these and a fanny pack and pretend you’re cosplaying as a pedophile. Otherwise, you can just easy-mode it with a phone camera.
Remember, you’re grabbing ~memories~ with pictures, not fucking art to hang in a gallery. And yes, sometimes you can masturbate to those memories. Nothing wrong with a shameschlick.
Food/drink
Already covered.
Condoms/birth control pills
For water balloon fights and crushing up to sell to the homeless, respectively.
Toiletries (weird fucking name for the things, I know)
While hotels generally have soap/shampoo available, you’re on your own for everything else.
If you’re gonna be traveling via plane or something, grab some travel-size shit from Target for like $1 each. Or you can throw stuff you already own in some smaller bottles. Trust me, people aren’t gonna fucking judge you on what your shampoo looks like in the hotel’s bathroom.
Cell phone charger
If it’s small, I’d suggest keeping it in a pocket or your panties or wherever you keep things. Reason being, there are lots of outlets in convention centers and if your phone gets low on juice, you can get a recharge instead of having to go back into your room for it. Sitting near an outlet in panel rooms is a solid choice.
Having an extra battery already charged will work if you want to go that route instead.
Cash
Try to not be poor.
Bonus Round
Surge protector
This is really only needed if you have a lot of people in your room and a lot of electronics to power.
Ethernet cable
Depending on the hotel, they may have an ethernet jack but not ethernet cord. Might as well be prepared in case you’re bringing a laptop or something.
Stupid stuff
You want more streetpasses? Bring your 3DS and you’ll have a hundred in a minute. Huge TCG player? Bring your deck; you can always find people playing Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh, and they’re usually glad to play with someone new. And yeah, they probably play other games too.
If you’ve got a niche, you’ll probably find other people into that niche at the con, so bring something with in the eventuality you find like-minded souls, even if you just keep it in your room. Hell, I see people walking around with ball-jointed dolls all the time, so even future sex offenders have a place at the con.
Less
Don’t bring too much. For example, if you bring your PS4 hoping that people are gonna play Resogun with you, you’re wrong. That game is only fun for 10 minutes and you’re weird for liking it so much.
Misc.
Registration lines are long and will only get longer. Get into them ASAP. Some cons will even let you get your badges on Thursday night if you preregistered. Go that route if you can.
Friday and Saturday are the best days because people care about the nights. Sunday is a day when people leave and nothing happens on Thursday, so if those are the only days you can hit up the con, you might want to reconsider your plans.
Be sure you’re fed/beveraged throughout the day, especially if you’re going to be drinking liquor later on. Some pansy fainted at the last con I went to and it shut down the rave. Don’t be that guy.
Read the fuck out of the program guide. You don’t wanna go into this thing aimlessly, cuz you’ll just waste your time on stuff you don’t care about. Make a schedule and go from there. Sometimes cons have smartphone updates that you can use to make schedules. They’re quite convenient (but also absurdly expensive, so smaller cons will likely not offer this).
Schedules can — and often do — change at cons, so be sure to check for updates every now and then. If the con offers a smartphone app, it will let you know when times/rooms change for events. Others have Twitter or will post status updates on their website. This ain’t a huge issue — more of a convenience thing.
If you plan to be spending a lot on your credit card (again, you have to realize a lot of places won’t take cards), call your credit card company ahead of time to let them know you’ll be spending a lot over the weekend. This way you won’t get your card denied like it’s a voice actor hitting on someone who has standards.
End
That’s all I’ve got. If you have any questions, fire away in the comments.
For some reason I see cosplayers going in their outfits to strange bars/clubs not affiliated with the con. If you want to go out dressed up (really need some attention I’m guessing) then talk to the staff if you are unfamiliar with the city on where you can go without being fucked with.
>Cash
>Try to not be poor.
This makes me cry;(
That’s just how it is, unfortunately. You can try going super-cheap if you don’t have any other options, though.
Badges can be substituted for walking around open, public areas at the con.
Hotels can be substituted by crashing with friends if they’re close to the con… or if you really wanna risk it, sleeping in halls/video rooms (though you’ll be contributing to the “con funk” everyone hates).
Food… can’t really be substituted, but bringing your own will make it cheaper.
Honestly, you’ll get more out of it if you treat it as a vacation you have to save up for. But you can get through it for under-$200 easily if you’re careful and split the hotel cost with friends.
The popular con center in my area has 3 a year, and it’s a bus ride away from my house. I’m literally in Con Heaven when it comes to lodging and food.
However, cons in my area are ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE and despite having friends interested in going to every single one, cons without panels (yes, WITHOUT PANELS), with no fanwork outlets and very small artist’s corners (exclusively for art schools and local magazines, with zero tolerance for indies), failed projection rooms (WHO THE FUCK THINKS IT’S A GOOD IDEA SCREENING VIDEO IN 480p), very little tolerance for cosplayers (they’re allowed at the con, but the convention hall is the only place where it’s allowed to be in cosplay), and 90% of the con floor is the market (where everyone is selling exactly the same thing and 40% of the stuff is counterfeit)…
No. Just. No.
Hell, there was a time when the convention center was taken by some metalurgy exposition or some shit and the con staff booked a different, little bit more upscale con center even closer to my home. The people at the con center -forcibly removed the congoers from the premises at noon on Day 1, forced the con staff to refund the badges, refused to refund the booking fees to the con staff, and blacklisted them for life-.
And this was a no-booze con.
I forgot to mention: The convention center’s hotel DOESN’T LET CONGOERS BOOK ROOMS. And neither does the hotel across the street.
That’s less than excellent.
I have several here in Columbus as well. There’s Ohayocon, Anime Punch, and Matsuri Con, as well as, comic book conventions. Don’t get to go to them often enough though.
If you’re in Columbus and you’ve been skipping Ohayocon, you’ve been doing it wrong. You should come hang with us for a bit for this year’s con.
Conventions in the state seems like a cool place to hang around.
Back here in Australia, we got nothing but cheap “conventions” with shitty events and cosplays.
The only place where I can actually enjoy going to convention is going to Comiket, WonFes etc in Japan… which as you know, isn’t quite cheap.
Well, interesting advices.
The fact is that even in France, conventions are more cash machine than an artistic place. The Japan Expo in Paris is not so bad, but there is way too many people. Furthermore, the 4-day-pass is pretty expensive, and the indie presence null.