DeathJester

Otakon 30th x Asian Kung Fu Generation.

I don't think that schedule is final since they haven't made any announcements and haven't pushed the Guidebook public yet. Its almost a guarantee that panels will get shuffled around before the start of the con.

I am only posting this here since the amount of people still watching these forums are minuscule... but you do not need to stay at the Marriott to use the tunnel entrance. Most people are just unaware that the tunnel entrance exists.

They might have turned on the activation page too early- I got my badges yesterday and the activation link wasn't up then. Today I am having the same problems of the badge ID not being found so I'll try it again next week.

From https://www.otakon.com/info/general-policies/ (with bolding on what I feel like are the relevant lines) Permitted Prop Weapons Staves, bo sticks, boken, shinai, and wooden swords will be permitted as long as they are handled responsibly and meet all other criteria. Resin cast or solid rubber model guns (such as red/blue training weapons) that are easily identifiable as toys/props, or are clearly marked with a non-removable orange tip. Fake, prop, or made-up weapons (i.e. made of tissue paper, plaster of Paris, cloth) are permitted if they are safe and not dangerous to

I just hope they do proper line management on the outside streets so that the Entrance #1 and the L Street Entrance lines don't run parallel and inevitably intersect.

Unfortunately we are not going to see convention hotel prices drop, likely ever. Even with all the new hotels the demand is still far outpacing the supply as evidenced by the majority of partner hotels being sold out a full year in advance. The reality is that if the Otakon hotels wanted to charge "market rate" based on demand we'd likely be looking at $300+ per night. You certainly could find a cheaper option outside the Otakon block if you're willing to stay 1+ miles away, but then you have to factor in the cost of the taxi and the inconvenience from not being able to walk back to your ro

Convention staff are already at checkpoints such as dealer's entrances / panel rooms / autograph areas checking for badges, wristbands, and the like. I won't pretend that its not stressful to enforce because of attendee pushback, but we never complain about having to enforce badges throughout the convention center either. Besides, by your own example you consider Katsucon a failure in enforcement but even you admit that it was a minority of attendees that disregarded the rules. As an attendee, if I am concerned about health exposure I would rather see clearly when someone is brea

Huge disagree on this statement. The vaccine check is the toothless requirement at this point since you can flash a 15 cent cardstock printout from Staples and get your Covid bracelet for the whole weekend. Masks on the other hand are very easy to visually inspect at all times. Besides, after two years of requiring vaccines its not like the Otakon demographics are going to flip overnight and suddenly the repeat attendees are going to be outnumbered by first time anti-vaxxers.

Its that time of the year again I'll be ordering the Asian Kung-Fu Generation Guest Request please!

Clearly the Help Desk and Facebook messaging did not work in coordinating the Saturday entrances this year so Otakon needs a better system to rapidly address mass groups of attendees. It was a really bad look when all the convention socials were blowing up over the long lines and the only official word out of the Otakon Twitter was a scheduled post advertising the Masquerade happening in the evening. Having volunteers with megaphones trying to shout out up-to-date information can only go so far when everyone else is relaying unofficial info across socials. Even something as basic as the 20

Yeah, I'm not suggesting that they do away with the actual website since that is the primary source of information regarding the con. The problem right now is that Otakon.com is only capable of one-way communication. If attendees have questions or comments they are currently spread out independently among Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Discords, etc which resulted in bad information being spread like wildfire this year (See the conflicting information about the Saturday afternoon entrance queues). It is a dangerous game of telephone when an attendee posts information they overheard from someone

I love this place and it always fires up in activity during the summer when the Otakon crowd is rolling in... but other than archive posts is there really a reason to keep this as the official forum platform? There is only a handful of us actually posting here which means it is no longer any very good at answering questions or disseminating relevant information to the general attendee base. Is it time to retire the BBS and make another platform the social media forum of choice?

Add a big win on the GOOD SIGNS column: New York City announced that it will fully reopen (no restaurant, venue, or business restrictions) on July 1st. Given that we were the hardest hit last year, this is optimistic news for when we can expect the attendance limits to be dropped.

I can't think of a single example of where the virtual convention did bigger business than the traditional con so I highly doubt that will become the new norm going forward. ... except maybe for E3 since that show was already in a bad place prior to the pandemic.