Parking: Parking at the Connecticut Convention center is wonderful. Connecticon set up a deal with the Marriot parking garage, which is attached to the Convention Center where attendees of the con could buy multi or single day parking passes for a discounted rate. What’s even better is, all parking passes came with in/out privileges!! This is awesome if you want to leave the convention center to get food, have a hotel a few blocks away, or want to go home to change and then come back for evening programming. This year, a one day pass was only $15. So if you filled your car with five people, a one day parking pass was only $3 a person!
Food: Food at the Convention Center is a little limited. They have one vending area where you can get junk food like french fries, chicken nuggets, and lo mien, a cafe where they have coffee, donuts, and apples, and a starbucks downstairs in the Marriot. But that’s all that’s in the convention center. Plus the food is pricey. A small thing of french fries was $3 if I remember correctly. And I mean small. Plus there were not many healthy options. Hartford is a city, and so there is food in the are, but Hartford is also not a very safe city, and you wouldn’t want to have a group of young teenagers in conspicuous costumes roaming the city streets in search of food after dark.
Merchandise: The Dealer’s room was very spacious, with a good variety of items for sale, I thought. They had manga stands, steam-punk booths, girly frilly things, dvds, weapons, and a lot of art and hand-made items in the dealer’s room as well. A big improvement from last year, they did allow bags into the dealers room this year. Last year there was an hour wait to get your bag back from the bag check, and some items were lost or damaged. While the convention still did not allow bags into the gaming area, letting attendees bring them into the dealer’s room prevented a lot of headaches. The Artist’s alley, as with all conventions these days, was over-packed. The room was both too small, and there were too many artists in it. There was not enough isle space to stop and browse, and still let people (in costumes especially) walk past. The lighting was also a big problem, as it was very dim and unreliable. I heard several complaints about the lighting situation, but the staff said they were guaranteed to fix that next year by moving artist’s alley to a better location.
Lines: Overall there were very few lines. Though there were required lines for main events, there wasn’t any problem getting people into the events. There were a few problems with some of the more popular panels filling up rapidly. I myself waited in line to get into the Uncle Yo stand-up comedy act because all seats were filled for the first half of the performance. I eventually did get in, but missed most of what I wanted to see. Connecticon staff did film the act from the beginning, and are going to post it on youtube for those who were not able to get in.
Staff: The Connecticon staff, as always, were very friendly, helpful, and patient. There was one red-head who, though not a member of Connecticon’s staff, but probably a panel leader, as explained in the comments below was really rude and cold to a group of boys in front of me in line for that same Uncle Yo act. When she walked to the front of the line to enter the room, the boys, who were first in line, told her that the panel was full, as we all had been doing for attendees that were wandering ahead of the line without noticing (?) that there was a line. She then proceeded to shove her “event leader” badge in their faces, and point to the title without a word, but with a very angry look on her face. She had no uniform on, and was bringing another what-looked-like-an-attendee into the panel with her. The boys had no way of knowing that she was a staff member (or she was pretending to be at least), and were perfectly polite in their attempts to prevent cutting in line. (There were no other staff members actively guarding the door) But she responded to them with a very unprofessional gesture.
Though the Connecticon staff was very professional, the Convention Center staff was anything but. Now, to be clear the convention center staff do not have anything to do with Connecticon. They are employees of the convention center itself and cannot be held accountable by Connecticon. However, they do have an impact on the convention experience, so I am including them in my review. I found the convention center staff to be generally unpleasant. They all seemed quite miserable and annoyed at the “kids” in Sci-Fi outfits intrusion of their convention center. They were mostly rude, did not listen to attendees when they had complaints, yelled at con-goers for running repeatedly when once would suffice, and even worse, I saw more than one convention center staff openly ogling some of the female convention attendees. If their job was to make guests feel welcome, they did a great job failing.
But again, the Connecticon staff, volunteers and paid employees, were very pleasant!
Main Events/Panels and Scheduling: The only problem with the programming at Connecticon is the there just aren’t enough hours in the day. There was a lot of really great programming this year, and though I was busy all day every day, there was still so much more that I wanted to see. I seemed to end up at a lot of comedic panels and events, which were quite entertaining. But that’s not all that Connecticon had to offer; the variety was outstanding. There was everything from giant robots and drawing with light, to Lady Gaga and “My Little Pony”. I thought that the “Death Match” was very entertaining, and the addition of the zombie hoard to the main events crew was very effective. The comedy tour and “Hater’s Gonna Hate” trolling panel were hilarious, as was the Uncle Yo act. The boffer tournament was great fun to see as I strolled about the exhibit halls, and the con feedback panel was very informative. The screening rooms were a bit difficult to find, and I did not see many people in them, but there were some grate titles on the schedule. I suggest you take a look at Connecticon.org for a complete look at this year’s schedule, if you’re curious to see the vast variety, as well as what you missed.
Cosplay: From what I could tell, there were not as many really well put-together cosplays as last year. There were certainly still some really awesome costumers, and as with the programming, the variety of costumes was very impressive, but in the past I remember looking out over the crowd and seeing a sea of costumed figures. This year, there was a larger ratio of street clothes to fantastic and colorful costumes than I expected. As for the individuals themselves, I found all of the cosplayers that I interacted with to be very friendly, and willing to pose for pictures as well as talk about their costumes.
The general population’s response to my own cosplay was very positive and well appreciated. I received a lot of compliments on my appearance this weekend, and even those who did not have a camera on them went out of their way to tell me, and other cosplayers that they looked great. The staff was also very understanding of the challenges that go with cosplaying. I myself stored my convention badge in my boot so that it would not be in my photographs. Because of this, it took an extra second to pull it out and show a staff member before I entered an event hall. All staff was patient, and some, just seeing that I was in costume, and the chain of the badge poking out of my boot, said that was sufficient evidence that I was a paying attendee and let me through without me having to take out my badge (even if it does only take a second).
Other notes: Though not perfect, Connecticon is constantly making improvements; at the convention feedback panel at the end of the weekend, the staff let the audience in on many of the changes that they plan to implement next year. All of which sounded great to me. The most significant improvement to look forward to, I think, is the release of a new website. Connecticon’s website has long been known for how terrible it is. We are a community of nerds–surely by our powers combined we can do better than a site a that looks like it was built and hosted in 1999 for free. Well apparently this issue is finally being addressed, and soon Connecticon will have a site that suites its awesome.
Anyway, I give Connecticon 2011 4.5 out of 5 stars. I heard a lot of attendants say that this was the best weekend of their lives. I don’t necessarily share in that level of enthusiasm, but I still had a really great time. As I said earlier, I wish that there was more time in a day so that I could experience more of Connecticon. There was just so much going on, I feel like this con could run a second weekend no problem. The people were great, the activities were great, and the parking was so affordable! Yay Connecticon! Keep up the good work.
Thanks for reading!
Shauna's Cosplay Pages 