I’m sorry about the lack of updates recently. I have a few things to put up in the near future. I have galleries to update (namely Hawkeye, Spike, Crowley, and Bilbo Baggins), and I am finally editing Episode 2 of CosTALK. That will be up in the next few days.
Katsucon 19 Review
I have been an attendee at Katsucon for seven years and seen it through three different hotels. This year was it’s fourth at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, MD. It was host to the World Cosplay Summit preliminaries again, and welcomed many guests including Steven Blum, Chris and Greg Ayres, Crispin Freeman, Monica Rial, and the Symphonic Anime Orchestra.
For me, it was incredible. Truly incredible. So many friends, so many photos, and so many good times.
There were some issues with another convention that was at the Gaylord at the same time (the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization International Conference, or BBYO IC). There were several incidents from both sides, but I will not go into specifics because I only witnessed a few of the minor conflicts.
Katsucon security is notorious for being even more overbearing and frustrating to con-goers than other convention staff. This year was no different. I, myself, had a few run-ins regarding my bow and arrows. The bow I can understand because it was in the prop guidelines, but the arrows were no where in the prop guidelines. The people that confronted me on them were also very obnoxious about it. If nothing else, Katsucon should be training their security staff how to deal with people without being arrogant and obnoxious.
The hotel, too, treated Katsucon members with little respect. We called at one point to simply get toilet paper sent up. One of our roommates travels a lot for work, and deals with hotels at least twice a month. She is a gold member for a few chains, including the one we were staying at. Therefore, she knows how a hotel is supposed to respond to it’s guests. The way the Gaylord behaved, especially in this situation, did not correspond with proper hotel etiquette. The woman that answered the phone asked which convention we were with and when we told her Katsucon, she abruptly said we could have one and hung up – essentially implying that anyone from our convention was too immature to handle two rolls without using it to TP the hallways or something.
Aside from these two things, the convention was amazing. Friends from all over the country were there and, though official numbers have not yet been released, I believe there were over 10,000 attendees this year.
I was a participant in 3 professional photoshoots over the course of the weekend (Sherlock, My Little Pony, and Supernatural) and took home the award for Best Novice of the Weekend in Hall Cosplay.
Overall, I would highly recommend Katsucon to anyone and you can be sure I will be attending again next year.
Special Thank You To:
CT Graphy
Lionel Lum
My Duckpond Family
Katsucon’s Links:
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