New York Comic Con jumped from high gear on Friday to light speed on Saturday. By sundown or so on Friday, the show floor was packed pretty tight, making cruising the aisles a slog. But by Saturday, Javits topped the spillover point by noon. Human gridlock brought nearly every aisle to a standstill. And if planning on attending a panel session, you needed to arrive and wait on line for hours ahead of time. Yuck!
I overheard numerous disgruntled attendees grousing over long waits on lines, many even be turned away as rooms filled to the bursting point. Everyone remained polite (“what can you do, man?”) but there also were frequent groans trying to navigate the show floor. Comparing it to sardines is an understatement. It’s a bummer to attend a show like this and then have to spend all your times waiting on lines or absolutely crammed in aisles. You don’t really get to experience the con.
It’s all the more annoying because there were several massive empty halls in the building that the NYCC organizers should have rented out. This thing has to be generating multiple millions, so spend some of it to accommodate your attendees and vendors who are putting a lot of green in your pockets. I know people who were diehard San Diego Comic Con attendees who quit going because of the exact situations I mentioned above. It stopped being fun and became stressful.
All those bodies generate heat, so I ventured outside several times to cool off. The weather the first two days of the show was sticky, humid, and rainy, but Saturday was a beautiful fall day, albeit quite windy. Outside the Javits was another show. Loads of people had spilled out into the lot and photos sessions sprang up everywhere as cosplayers were plentiful and eager to be photographed. I found a lovely woman named Cara Nicole, who seriously was rocking a Power Girl costume. The windy conditions made it perfect for pictures as her cape flapped in the breeze (a little tough on her hair, though). She looked fantastic.
The Javits Center, however, is looking pretty bad these days. Despite cosmetic upgrades, the place is showing its age, and, again, it’s just too small for New York City. Chicago, New Orleans, Philly, and even San Antonio all have much larger, nicer convention centers, so New York needs to get its act together and bulldoze this antique bread box and build a proper facility.
More later, as JB would say. Day 4 coming up!
Check out my NYCC pix here.
About Michael Rogers
I totally agree! It needs more space that’s for sure. We took our 6 year old on Sunday for kids day and at times it was more stressful than fun because of the crowds and trying not to get separated. It took at least 30-45 minutes just to get inside as we queued around and around the basement and by the time we got in we couldn’t get into the 11:00 panel we wanted to attend and we arrived at the Javits at 9:45!! I will definitely reconsider attending next year as I’m not sure I would say I had fun exactly either. We did get some cool stuff from Cartoon Network and Hasbro but didn’t end going to any panels as it just wasn’t worth the hassle.