I had the pleasure of visiting MegaCon in Orlando this past weekend, along with fellow contributor Adam Poncharoensub, to report on the convention for DKN, which made for a busy weekend because this convention—which has always been huge, hence its name—has grown even bigger.
We missed Thursday and arrived late in the day on Friday, but there was still no shortage of things to do and the crowds had not died down at all. Parking and finding our way toward the convention floor were hectic at first, due mostly to the size and the amount of people. But once we were inside we quickly got ourselves situated.
There would probably be no way to make the dealer room less hectic, but it still felt overwhelming, especially at the height of the crowd around Saturday afternoon. Still, for the amount of people roaming around and constantly stopping for pictures with cosplayers, the room was actually very well laid out and easy to navigate. There’s always been at least one thing at this convention that I’ve never been able to find, but that didn’t happen this time. If anything, there were things I didn’t have time to see. But that comes with the territory for any large con.
The events that I saw were both great. The Dark Knight III: The Master Race panel was really informative. Brian Azzarello and Andy Kubert are apparently men of very few words, so the panel was dominated by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson. They talked about how the project came together, how they saw it going and how its changed since its conception, and then took fan questions, most of which were directed at Miller.
Adam West and Burt Ward’s panel on Sunday was a little short due to a change in flight schedules, but the actors are pros at this. They run their panels like a well oiled machine, knowing just when to tell a joke and when to try and give a serious answer. They even dished some semi-details on an upcoming project that will reunite their incarnations of Batman and Robin.
I didn’t talk to too many of the guests, but the ones I did talk to were very nice and all of them seemed happy to be there and happy to talk with their fans. There wasn’t much of an air of negativity, aside from the occasional fans which can’t really be helped. There will always be people angry about something, especially in a crowd that huge.
Sunday was a much calmer day, though. But whereas it felt like MegaCon just cleared out on the last day in previous years, there was still a definite crowd. It’s interesting, because I can’t help but think that the con was expanded to four days as a form of crowd control, yet this year was as big as I’ve ever seen it.
If cosplay’s your thing, then MegaCon is definitely the place to be, because there were some amazing costumes that were clearly painstakingly put together. For most people, I think, that’s always been the biggest draw of the show. I know plenty of people who go only to see the costumes that fans have put together.
