Megacon 2014 Review

Megacon, located in Orlando, is the biggest sci-fi convention in Florida with an estimated 83,000 people in attendance. They drew some of the biggest names in the genre, Stan Lee, Yaya Han, George Perez, Jason David Frank, David Morrisey, Danai Guria, Neal Adams, the comic men and many, many more. This year, they probably had their biggest turnout ever for attendance as they had two convention halls at the Orange County Convention Center booked. This is the fourth year going and it was a much different and interesting experience this year. We drove up from South Florida to Orlando and arrived with no issues to the location with no problems. When We got to the exit of the interstate We noticed something funny, we ended up where it was bumper to bumper stand still but everyone was getting off and backing everything up. Parking did take some time but we did arrive.

Once We were in, we were able to check out the items in the first hall such as the four different time machines from the different shows and books, a photo op with two Hulks, Bill and Ted with their phone booth as well as the car from Back to The Future.

When we entered into the main area, there was not much room to move around in as it seemed very small place for a large amount of people. One of the weird things we noticed was there was lines drawn on the floor for the artists and other guests that were going to have lines but no real ideal way to follow. The layout used one room.

Many great cosplay costumes as and some super nice people all around but many of the con goers were saying the same thing about needing more space. We were not able to get a program because by the time we got there in the morning, they were already out and none of the volunteers really knew what was going on. We tried to go to attend the Stan Lee panel but we were out of luck since we did not know where or when it would be. We did not see any signs or heard any info over the loud speaker. We did hear them repeat people’s names of people who had become lost but nothing else. Lastly, they closed the convention at 6:00. This helped the large crowd towards the end of the day.

Now, let me say this, we did have a good time. We were able to chat with George Perez, Dan Jurgens, Mike Mayhew, David Finch, Peter Mayhew, Austin Janowsky, Jeff Balke, Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner about different things. The 501st had a huge presence, the Ghostbusters as well as Heroes Initiative with George himself brought in over 7800 plus for them. Not to mention all the areas were you could get pictures with sets from Star Wars.

When we were leaving we came into the same problem with traffic. Everyone was trying to leave at the same time and very few people were allowing anyone to get in. Because of this, it took my group about an hour and a half to get back to the interstate. This could have been handled with someone stopping one people from exiting and allowing another to go and switch this up.

Overall, we did have a good time but there were things that diminished my experience. We have the utmost faith in Megacon that the issues will be worked out next year. Who knows, we could actually attend our first 100,000 sized convention next year. In my humble opinion, we give it 3.5 caps out of 5.