Well, I had it on my bucket list and leave it to the Geist family in Orlando to provide the experience for me just prior to my birthday. All 4 of my Geist grandchildren, along with Dan and a friend of Jessica’s,  accompanied me, or should I say, “I accompanied them” as they are all experienced ComicCon attendees.

We got there at a good time, lines were not that bad, and the convention floor was not that crowded. We stayed until closing at 7:00 PM and word has it we walked between 13,000 to 15,000 steps…Wow, just wow…I should have worn my Hoka’s! but I was able to keep up with all of them, only declining to separate from some of them to go find others of them as I would have gotten lost for sure.

Several things I learned from MegaCon:

• The individuals that are excited about this and the genuine enthusiasm they have for their love of all things cosplay is wonderful and totally not harmful, at least I don’t think it is.
• There is true diversity in the crowd, with people from all ethnic groups, all races, all ages, you name it and that is awesome to see them all focussed and enjoying the same thing.
• The vendors come from all over the place. It reminded me of walking the streets of DC hearing all the accents and foreign languages coming from vendors and customers.
• Everyone seemed to be very polite. When it did get crowded, if someone accidentally bumped into me they’d apologize right away. I can’t remember ever being in a crowd like this where this happened.
• If you think inflation has only raised the price of eggs, go to a convention center and see what a 12 dollar pizza looks like and tastes like. Cold pizza is good, but room temperature pizza…not so much.
• Katie and Dan’s children are what I’ll call “subtle cosplayers”…as Steven was a Lumon innie, Gracie was a non-superhero-dressed up person from Flash, and Jess was a character from a graphic book she purchased in Japan so not your Marvel/DC character, for sure. Jenn spent most of the day with friends saying goodbye to “The Muppets” as Disney plans to close that section this year, so she didn’t cosplay but she looked very nice, all dressed up for the goodbye party. And I’ve included a photo of Jen from an earlier cosplay.
• I already knew this, but Dan is the person to take with you if you have a party of 8 that needs to stay together or rather get together after they veer off to their particular interests, as even without reliable internet, he successfully got us back together in time to meet up with Katie so we could leave in 2 cars and get home to some good (hot) pizza from Papa Johns.
• Katie was, I’m sure, the behind the scenes director/super hero  of this day for us, and as usual, contributed to this being a successful day for all.
• Even though the freeways here in Orlando are busy all the time, not only did we have MegaCon, it was also “Cheer Weekend” here as well, which meant teams of cheerleaders were here to compete and visit the parks in-between meets. I had 40 of them from Helene, AL on my flight from Houston to Orlando. I was impressed how the traffic moved as we left the convention center.
• Finally, so I’ve checked off this event from my bucket list. Was I glad I went…you betcha. Would I choose to go again, no, don’t think so.

My interest in it began with one of my trips to NYC where a ComicCon was going on and the streets of NY, not just Times Square (those are not cosplay, they are people wanting money from unsuspecting first time to New York tourists with small children), were filled with people in bright, creative costumes happily walking down Broadway and were greeted with smiling New Yorkers.