conbravo 2011

[davemerrill]

Went down to Burlington this weekend for the Con Bravo. It did 300+ attendees last year and was a pleasant show that people enjoyed, and we were happy to see it return. I was wondering how well it was going to do this year - same weekend as a bunch of other shows including Otakon and something by the airport called 'Atomic Lollipop'. Happy to report that Con Bravo met the organizers expectations with attendance at around 1000 and hallways full of people having fun.





This is a line for the Live Action Mario Party, sort of a board game played with people, as seen here:



The con has moved away from traditional convention guests and towards more modern celebrities, mostly pop-culture oriented YouTube-podcast personalities all of whom were bigger draws than last year's guests. One guest led a conga line of chanting fans around the entire facility, including the restaurant where we were having lunch.



The dealers room was at least five times larger than last year's and had a good mix of cosplay items, manga, graphic novels, video games, etc. I don't know how well they did; the crowd seemed to be more interested in hanging out and participating in games and activities than spending money. But from what I heard they did OK.





Our Mister Kitty's Stupid Comics panel was on Sunday. I had no idea how many people would come to this panel. If we got more than five I'd be happy. As it happened we got about 30 people in the room to watch us slideshow through some examples of terrible cartooning.



We handed out flyers and free comics, fielded questions from the audience, and everybody seemed to have a good time.

In general Con Bravo felt a lot like the shows I went to when I was 18-19 - young crowd, young staff, everybody's friendly and relaxed, people are chatting, enjoying themselves. Nobody was flipping out about their costume not being perfect or not getting into the guest autograph line. The hotel itself is a good fit for a show Con Bravo's size- the hallway got congested but never blocked totally, there's a good mix of large and small rooms, and a lot of open space. The staff seemed amused and pleased with the business; I don't think Burlington gets a lot of the fan convention trade.



For us getting down to the show on Saturday was kinda hellish. The Caribbean Festival (formerly Caribana) blocked Lakeshore with its parade right in our neighborhood, which meant we couldn't get onto the expressway. Normally we'd go down King to Queen and get onto the highway further west. But King was closed for track work and Queen was a parking lot. We wound up having to go up to Bloor, out Bloor West, down Islington and onto the QEW. Took us an hour just to get onto the highway.

Returning on Saturday night, the traffic was all leaving our area. Which wasn't too bad until we tried to navigate the intersections near our place, full of people inching through red lights and blocking traffic with their left turns. Sunday was much improved; there was some backup on the QEW but once you're past Oakville you can take the side roads.

Anyways, a fun show and a fun weekend. Thanks to Con Bravo for letting us do our stupid panel and hats off to the team for another con well done!

Comments

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

Reminds me a whole lot of some of the Babelcons, like our first year at the Hilton.

*sigh*

'scuse me while I get all nostalgia and crap up in me. :)