It is Saturday evening of my first Matsuricon here in Columbus. The evening of Friday was spent walking about the convention floors, but not having a pass to anything. The young age of the crowd surprised me and despite my daughter’s encouragement to take pictures of other people, I felt too creepy to take many. During lunch on Saturday I decided I had to get a pass.
The line for passes midway through the second day was far longer than I would expect. Perhaps people came and then decided later to sign up, I’m not sure. On Friday evening, they closed registration down a bit early and many of those who pre-registered did not get their passes and could not attend Friday evening’s festivities. The organization for passes seems to need some work.
Once the line was down to a manageable length, I queued, filled out the form and then had sticker shock. Here it is 1:30 on Saturday and thinking the 3-day pass at the door was $40, I was surprised that just Saturday was that price. Oh well, at least I can go to a few panels today.
Attending some panels was good experiments. Now with a pass, I felt less like “creepy old dude” while walking about. Still shy to ask for many photos, I did get a few. The newly purchased PNY 32GB SDHC cards however, continued to give fits. Friday night they kept messing up and only a scant few minutes of video was shot. Practice time with the Glidecam XR-2000 was also too limited and the video was not the best anyway.
I’m sure I’ve walked miles today. Waiting for the elevators takes too long. Good thing we are only on the eighth floor, so walking up the steps is not a bad option. No need for cardio this weekend.
Overall, the experience was not bad. It is definitely not the place to just walk about taking pictures. More than once someone told me that Ohayocon is better. There are so many kids here running around. Doing Cosplay seems to be a mid-twenties thing and down. If I come next year though, I’ll be rocking some old school Cosplay. Which character to dress as?
