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The Newest content can be found at: www.popartsplace.com/now |
Webposted: March 2003
by: Kay Kellam
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MegaCon in Orlando, Florida has the distinction of being our first convention of 2003. As such it can not avoid being compared to past conventions, but more importantly it set the tone for us for conventions for the year.
No convention is perfect, any person who goes expecting a perfect experience will be disappointed, in large part because no two people have the same idea of perfection -- but as conventions go this one was a tremendous amount of fun and while the crowds were not "MEGA" the amount of fun the average person seemed to be having could well be described as... MEGA!
This is not a small convention... check our coverage of Plano from 2001 and you'll see a small convention. A quiet one where you never bumped into people. MegaCon is a medium size convention, with crowds that measure a fraction that of San Diego or Dragon Con -- but this crowd may well have been happier. You weren't competing with thousands of people to find a seat in a panel... though there were fewer panels for the fewer people gathered together to line up for.
The big white "block" in the image to the right is the Orlando Convention Center... a sizable venue that MegaCon currently occupies a small portion of, which leads to the added fun of seeing how people from other conventions react to seeing Mega Con. Like the two cheerleaders to the left who begged Catwoman to pose with them as their friends took pictures for them.
I truly never thought I'd see the day that Cheerleaders would be asking their parents to give them money to go into a Comic Book and Science Fiction convention, and yet I saw exactly that going on in the corridors around MegaCon!
MegaCon is a wonderful experience, using the Public Address system in much the same fashion as your typical small convention, and yet attracting star-power like the best of the big conventions.
Whether you are talking about the official media guests like Dina Meyer, Michael Rosenbaum and Anthony Cistaro, or the guests like Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Jamie Farr, Erin Gray, Gil Gerard, Lani Tupu, Jonathan Hardy, Virgnia Hey, Robert Trebor and Kathy Garver who spend all day in the autograph area, just waiting for the chance to spend a moment with you and exchange kind words, and hope you'll want to take home an autographed photo from this wonderful little visit.
And there is always the added fun of walking around the exhibit hall floor and suddenly realizing that you are standing next to Walter Koenig as he looks at the display at a booth, or Virginia Hey as she talks to an exhibitor, or any of the other guests who have found a spare moment in which to check out the floor and see what it is the rest of us have come to see.
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Another Decade of San Diego Comic-Con Coverage:
