Zenkaikon 2012 Feedback

[gamergirlx]

Feedback thread for Zenkaikon 2012. Please be constructive to help us improve. Thanks for coming!

[Thursdayish]

Overall, I had a great time at Zenkaikon 2012. It was my first ever convention, and I went there looking to see some awesome cosplay, attend interesting panels, and buy quality anime merchandise. I got the first two. However, the latter was a huge disappointment.

The Dealer's Room was ripe with counterfeit/bootleg merchandise. I have been collecting figures for a few years now, mostly buying from Japanese websites and having them imported to the US. One of the main benefits to having a local Anime con is being able to buy pricy figures without worrying about shipping time and cost. However, there were almost no authentic figures in the entire room. I saw poor quality bootlegs being sold for more than their real counterparts. Some examples were a booth selling HMO Miku nendoroids, as well as K-ON! nendoroid petits. I own both of these, and seeing the bootlegs really disturbed me. Luckily, I am very aware of bootlegs, and what they look like. However, I'm sure not all con-goers can spy these fakes, and spend a ton of money on something that is made poorly and breaks very easily. The only non-bootleg figures I saw the entire day were being sold at a plushie stand. These were "prize figures", which basically means they are cheap figures you can win in prize machines in Japan. These retail for about 20~ USD on Japanese sites, but get sold for atleast double at conventions. It's nice that they weren't fake, though. Is there nothing we can do to help regulate the sale of bootleg merchandise at future conventions? I would hate for something like faulty, fake figures to deter someone from collecting, buying, or attending cons in the future.

Thank you.

[Necrosh]

For a con that really got flipped around with location and getting things done in a short time..I was honestly impressed. I will admit I came in with low expectations, but came out quite happy.

Pros
1) Sonny Strait really made the con for me. His upbeat attitude and constant joking was amazing. I didn't go to his first panel Elfquest, but his late night panel on friday was definitely the best at the convention. More guests like him most definitely!
2) Con staff was really helpful and nice. Anytime I had an interaction, you guys were amazing. Kudos on that as some staff at cons can be quite grumpy.
3) For the amount of dealers in the dealers room....there was a decent amount of variety. I was impressed with that as well.
4) The tabletop games corner. Nice selection and the guy I kept seeing there running it. True bro. Best way to describe him.
5) I didn't participate in the pokemon battle frontier, but great idea. Made me really wish I brought my DS.
6) The asian snacks booth in the dealers room...definitely great to book them. Not a lot of cons do or are able to do snack/food booths due to contracts with the building they are in. Really enjoyed having one at this con!
7) Game room had an amazing variety of games to play. I was surprised as hell to see ipad stations. Made me laugh a bit to see the game company do that, but very cool all the same.

Cons
1) Sound issues. In panel 1 and 2 the speakers would blare through as if you were in the other room also. Definitely was distracting at times. Also the video game room and main stage competing a lot. My friend and I decided to give Uncle Yo a second chance as we weren't too impressed the first time we saw him. We sat about 8 rows back and towards the middle walkway...couldn't hear a thing he said most of the time. The problem was there also during Whose Line Was it Anime, but nowhere near as bad. I can understand it's an Expo center though as other cons in expo centers have the same issue. Not sure what can be done about it.

2) This one might be a bit petty, but I do feel one staff member was a bit of a jerk to a guest. During Sonny Strait's late night panel he kept getting cut off by the loud music next door. He was very cool about it and making jokes about it. When he was responding to a fan's question he did the infamous Dragon Ball Z power up yell for about 15 seconds. After that a staff member from the other panel came over and scolded him like a child. Said to keep it down, even though you could hear the music blaring from the other panel at that very moment. Just the way the staff member talked to him was condescending and rude. It also seemed like it offended Sonny a bit. Def not cool.

3) Like the above poster said...there was one merchant who was all about the chinese knockoffs. I went to the booth and saw the nice selection of nendoroid and minis...saw the prices and got a bit excited. Then realized they looked like utter crap. The construction, the bad paint jobs, shoddy craftsmanship all around. I can't remember the name of the booth, but it was right next to the booth that was directly across from Sonny signing autographs.

4) Friday registration. I didn't have the opportunity this time to prereg, but realized you guys were amazing enough to open registration an hour before the con started. Me and my buddy got there at about 1:30 and were not that far back in the line. Heck maybe 50 spots back from the front of the line. We weren't able to go about the con until 3:50. I can understand there was an error and it was holding registration up. Still a bummer though. Also, I could be imagining things since the reg process was annoying me, but it seemed like prereg were able to keep going through no problem. Even if they got there way after us it seemed like they picked up their stuff no problem. Now i'm not sure if the issues only effected non prereg people or not, but if it didn't and you just kept putting prereg through...not cool. It should have been an even mix.

5) The game room could have used a few more machines. It seemed like all the stations were in constant use, but there were a lot of people standing around hoping to get a chance at a game. I'm not talking maybe 5 stragglers around the room, but maybe 20-30 people just looking for a game to play, found nothing and then walked out.

6) Video room. I read the other post about the head video guy stating why so little in terms of what is showing and totally understand. Just putting it on here to let you know a good video room would definitely be appreciated. Whether showing some AMVs/Parodies/Movies/Shows...whatever. Maybe 2-3 rooms if able to get some variety!

It may seem with how much I wrote on the cons list that I was unhappy, but I was quite satisfied with what zenkai did with the time you had to pull something together. I am glad I chose to give this con a try over my usual con of tekko in Pittsburgh. Can't wait to see what you guys can pull of next year and will definitely be there for sure!

[miyukiyuketsu]

I've been going to Zenkaikon since 2008, and I was a little bit worried about how it would be after seeing the "layout" on the map, but as with years in the past I had a blast! My only real lament is that it couldn't have been three days. I feel you did a good job of taking advantage of the space limitations, keeping certain activities in the main room active during the raves and the concerts (like the video games).

I've never really been to con with a "trade show/festival" feel, and it felt like since everything was pretty much in one of two areas, I could be "everywhere" at once. Aside for the registration line, lines were basically "non-existent," and not having to line up for events in the main room was a nice change of pace from most cons.

Every criticism I have was basically a limitation of the space, and since you are in a new location next year they will likely be non-issues, such as the sound bleed between the panel rooms.

[deeblite]

Hey there, head of tech ops here. I can't personally address all of your issues, but I'll respond to the ones I can.

Cons
1) Sound issues. In panel 1 and 2 the speakers would blare through as if you were in the other room also. Definitely was distracting at times. Also the video game room and main stage competing a lot. My friend and I decided to give Uncle Yo a second chance as we weren't too impressed the first time we saw him. We sat about 8 rows back and towards the middle walkway...couldn't hear a thing he said most of the time. The problem was there also during Whose Line Was it Anime, but nowhere near as bad. I can understand it's an Expo center though as other cons in expo centers have the same issue. Not sure what can be done about it.

We were aware of (and extremely frustrated by) the sound issues, and like you said, it does come down to the nature of the space. I'm afraid we, too, are not sure what could have been done about it. Hall A was a huge empty space with concrete walls and floors- basically a giant echo chamber. Terribly sorry about it, though.

6) Video room. I read the other post about the head video guy stating why so little in terms of what is showing and totally understand. Just putting it on here to let you know a good video room would definitely be appreciated. Whether showing some AMVs/Parodies/Movies/Shows...whatever. Maybe 2-3 rooms if able to get some variety!

This again comes down to the nature of the space- The room we had for videos was directly next to the main hall. Sound bleed was an issue MOST of the time- if we had videos scheduled in there when stuff was happening on the main stage, you would NOT have been able to hear the videos.
About having more video rooms- we would have liked to, but the expo center didn't have terribly many breakout rooms. If we'd had another video room, we would have had to sacrifice a panel room to do it. We WILL have more videos and video rooms next year.

It may seem with how much I wrote on the cons list that I was unhappy, but I was quite satisfied with what zenkai did with the time you had to pull something together. I am glad I chose to give this con a try over my usual con of tekko in Pittsburgh. Can't wait to see what you guys can pull of next year and will definitely be there for sure!

Glad to hear it

[linumus]

4) Friday registration. I didn't have the opportunity this time to prereg, but realized you guys were amazing enough to open registration an hour before the con started. Me and my buddy got there at about 1:30 and were not that far back in the line. Heck maybe 50 spots back from the front of the line. We weren't able to go about the con until 3:50. I can understand there was an error and it was holding registration up. Still a bummer though. Also, I could be imagining things since the reg process was annoying me, but it seemed like prereg were able to keep going through no problem. Even if they got there way after us it seemed like they picked up their stuff no problem. Now i'm not sure if the issues only effected non prereg people or not, but if it didn't and you just kept putting prereg through...not cool. It should have been an even mix.

I apologize for the delay in getting at-door registrations open. We had a technical difficulty with the cash registers that required a trip off-site, and delayed getting them operational until after 3.

Can't wait to see what you guys can pull of next year and will definitely be there for sure!

Thank you, and I'm glad that you had a good time

[Technowraith]

Zenkaikon 2012 went very well. I applaud all the staff for pulling off a great event given the hiccups of getting the con put together for this year. Really a first class job.

While I don't have a pro and con list per se, I have a list of observations from my experiences at the con this year. I will group them by aspect, as I experienced or noticed each item.

-Registration: Given the situation with getting registration started, the delays at the beginning were understood. I arrived at the Expo center between 2-3, about the time the system was brought back online.Looking at registration area, I saw 4 empty stations. This could have been from lack of personnel or non-functioning hardware. Either way, I was about 20 spots in from the "beginning" of the pre-reg line and it took about a half hour to 40 mins to hit the table to check in. I don't consider this a real issue, as the average transaction to check in may take about a minute or two. I impressed with how fast and easy it was to check in with Pre-reg. I would definitely keep using the system you have now. Chuck was fast and friendly, and in less than 30 seconds I had my badge.

-Dealer's Room: The bootleg dealer issue is an issue the con is most likely going to address if not already having done so. I know that roving staff members were in the Dealer's room. I just never ran into them. LoL. Very crowded it seemed. But the setup was good and traffic did stay in motion.On a few occassions among the high volume dealers selling collectibles, weapons and swords, and games, those areas of the dealer's room got very crowded, with traffic becoming only one or two wide to move along. Photos were being taken in the middle of the aisles, making the issue even worse here and there. Roving staff members in the dealer's room could help alleviate bottlenecks by encouraging traffic to keep moving and suggest photos take place in a less crowded area out of the aisles.

-Activities: The schedule seemed decently rounded out. While the lack of available panel rooms and the sound issues with the main hall and the one room made adding more activities, what was there seemed all right.

-Game Room: I was a bit disappointed in the game room this year. Last year there was much more variety. This year we had really only 3 main types of games: shooters, fighters and dance/music. For a gamer who isn't much into these three genres, the game room offers no enjoyment. Sure these genres are popular, but when they become the predominant genres being offered, gamers who have other interests won't find a reason to stay in the game room for long.
As a suggestion for future game rooms, I would love to see some classic arcade machines in the game room. If only just 2-3 to start out. Classic retro gaming never gets old. and there's always something satisfying about shooting that last alien in space invaders!

-Staff: As always, the staff was friendly and helpful. For a vrief period late Friday night during early Rave hours, there was no one checking badges at the front door to the main hall. I think it was only 10 minutes, though. Not sure what happened there. But I'm gonna venture to guess the gopher there had to take a bathroom break or something. I did notice that during the later hours of saturday afternoon, there was no attentjion being given to badge checking to enter the dealer's room. A gopher was there, but didn't ask to see badges. A couple times I ventured to the dealer's room during these same hours, no gopher was there, but con attendees sitting near where I would assume the gopher would have been. But since I can't pinpoint if it was for a continuous period of time, there was no way to tell if it was a single person or a shift change.

-Venue: The Expo Center was certainly a decent place. Not ideal, but the "festival" feel of the con seemed to work. My biggest gripe is really lack of food options. Several local restaurants were there, but with the exception of Bob Evan's (A quick 10 minute walk away) you need a vehicle to get to reasonable food options. Not really a con fault, just the location of the expo center.

I give Zenkaikon 2012 an A+. This con is growing, and with the move to our new, larger venue next year, I think things will only get better.

[ForesakenFaerie]

Overall, I had a great time at Zenkaikon 2012. It was my first ever convention, and I went there looking to see some awesome cosplay, attend interesting panels, and buy quality anime merchandise. I got the first two. However, the latter was a huge disappointment.

The Dealer's Room was ripe with counterfeit/bootleg merchandise. I have been collecting figures for a few years now, mostly buying from Japanese websites and having them imported to the US. One of the main benefits to having a local Anime con is being able to buy pricy figures without worrying about shipping time and cost. However, there were almost no authentic figures in the entire room. I saw poor quality bootlegs being sold for more than their real counterparts. Some examples were a booth selling HMO Miku nendoroids, as well as K-ON! nendoroid petits. I own both of these, and seeing the bootlegs really disturbed me. Luckily, I am very aware of bootlegs, and what they look like. However, I'm sure not all con-goers can spy these fakes, and spend a ton of money on something that is made poorly and breaks very easily. The only non-bootleg figures I saw the entire day were being sold at a plushie stand. These were "prize figures", which basically means they are cheap figures you can win in prize machines in Japan. These retail for about 20~ USD on Japanese sites, but get sold for atleast double at conventions. It's nice that they weren't fake, though. Is there nothing we can do to help regulate the sale of bootleg merchandise at future conventions? I would hate for something like faulty, fake figures to deter someone from collecting, buying, or attending cons in the future.

Thank you.

After reading this I had to go and check some of my stuff. I believe my baby paca is fake. I checked with the Arpakasso guides and according to them my paca doesn't have anything they mentioned. All she has is a tag under her tail that says "Made In China" but official ones are supposed to have cloth tags near stomach or legs that say "Amuse - Made in China" and are double sided. I knew something seemed weird when she didn't have a paper tag as well but I had contributed it to maybe had fallen off from packing and unpacking. Oh well... I still love and adore her but it'd be nice is the dealers were honest and didn't charge the same or more for a knock off.

[LadyNorbert]

I love Zenkaikon, wanna say that first and foremost. Even though I'm really in the Lehigh Valley and not the Philadelphia area, I consider Z-kon to be my 'home con' and ever since I discovered it last year, I have been determined to attend every year. I only got to go on Saturday this year, so my comments will be limited.

The staff are friendly and helpful and seem genuinely glad to have everyone there. I don't know enough about anime merchandise to tell the difference between real things and knockoffs, unfortunately, so I'm unable to comment on that which others have mentioned about it.

My only real complaint is right along with most everyone else's - the sound quality. My group and I attempted to attend the masquerade, but most of the time we couldn't understand a thing that anyone was saying (we were quite toward the back) and we ultimately left in favor of attending panels. The lighting on the stage also made it impossible for me to take a decent picture of Uncle Yo. But I realize that these are technical things that have more to do with the venue than anything, and I'm sure next year it will be much better in that beautiful convention center.

I was really very surprised by the decision to merge the dealer room and artists' alley, but I think it worked out well. It was nice to not have to go from one end of the building to the other to visit all the vendors.

Sonny Strait was hilarious. I only got to meet him for a few minutes, but his autograph on my FMA poster will forever attest to the fact that he is a wicked, wicked man and I kind of love him for it. I hope you can get him to come again sometime.

I very much enjoyed the two panels I attended. One was about cartoons based on video games, which was a lot of fun (and I won lots of candy and cookies so yay), and the other was Iron Artist: Zenkaikon, which was a stroke of genius and I sincerely hope you guys hold it again next year.

All in all, good show once again. Thanks very much to the entire staff and volunteers for all their hard work, it paid off! Can't wait for next year!

[miyukiyuketsu]

-Venue: The Expo Center was certainly a decent place. Not ideal, but the "festival" feel of the con seemed to work. My biggest gripe is really lack of food options. Several local restaurants were there, but with the exception of Bob Evan's (A quick 10 minute walk away) you need a vehicle to get to reasonable food options. Not really a con fault, just the location of the expo center.

I know it's a little late now, but there were other food options closer, actually (Bob Evan's was all the way down by the Hampton Inn). There was an Asian Bistro of some sort and a Max and Erma's (really good burgers) right by the Oaks Regal. I think there might have been others too.

[miyukiyuketsu]

Just another thing: I absolutely loved the "festival" feel. Since most cons really aren't set up in that manor, it was a welcome change of pace from what I expect at an anime convention.

[Ramothhe]

Overall, I had a great time at Zenkaikon 2012. It was my first ever convention, and I went there looking to see some awesome cosplay, attend interesting panels, and buy quality anime merchandise. I got the first two. However, the latter was a huge disappointment.

The Dealer's Room was ripe with counterfeit/bootleg merchandise. I have been collecting figures for a few years now, mostly buying from Japanese websites and having them imported to the US. One of the main benefits to having a local Anime con is being able to buy pricy figures without worrying about shipping time and cost. However, there were almost no authentic figures in the entire room. I saw poor quality bootlegs being sold for more than their real counterparts. Some examples were a booth selling HMO Miku nendoroids, as well as K-ON! nendoroid petits. I own both of these, and seeing the bootlegs really disturbed me. Luckily, I am very aware of bootlegs, and what they look like. However, I'm sure not all con-goers can spy these fakes, and spend a ton of money on something that is made poorly and breaks very easily. The only non-bootleg figures I saw the entire day were being sold at a plushie stand. These were "prize figures", which basically means they are cheap figures you can win in prize machines in Japan. These retail for about 20~ USD on Japanese sites, but get sold for atleast double at conventions. It's nice that they weren't fake, though. Is there nothing we can do to help regulate the sale of bootleg merchandise at future conventions? I would hate for something like faulty, fake figures to deter someone from collecting, buying, or attending cons in the future.

Thank you.

Hey there. Bootlegs have never been allowed at our con, and we actually have all our Dealers sign a contract where they agree to not bring bootlegs before we allow them to have booths. But sometimes we staff can't catch everything, so when attendees find something, they need to tell us right away during the con so we can fix it. It makes us very sad that some attendees wait until after the con to tell us about problems when we can't fix them since the Dealers have left already. That being said, we are aware of the problem and are working hard to fix it. But we encourage Attendees to tell us right away during the con when they notice something, and tell us which Dealer is doing the wrong thing so we can fix it right then and there.


The same thing goes for any other problems that attendees notice. We have had cases of attendees waiting until Closing Ceremonies or later to tell us that other attendees were doing things that were very much against our convention policies and we couldn't fix that because the bad behavior happened 2 days before it was reported to us. Reporting things at the time that you see them is crucial for us to help fix them.Thanks!

[Jabberwack]

This has been my second year attending Zenkaikon, and it was, including Zenkaikon V, my third convention. The other one was New York Comic Convention, and I can truthfully say that I (and the others I spoke to agreed with me) that this years Zenkaikon was a much more enjoyable experience than NYCC. I too will post a pro-con list like the people above me, because I can't think of another way to do this.

Pros:
~Much more open space at this convention centre, which made out for meeting lots of new cosplayers and connecting with people you wouldn't think you would.
~Only one floor made no need to climb up stairs for antendees with...intricate cosplays.
~The space outside was great, so you could go quickly from the hot day outside to the cool convention centre.
~There was parking. Lots of it.
~I go there a few hours after the convention started, so I may have a different idea then the people that got there on time, but registration was a snap.

Cons:
~The lighting made it hard to take pictures.
~There were very few consols in the video gaming room.
~The floor was dirty.
~For cosplayers wanting to sit down, near the registation was too busy, across the main hall was dark, close to the entrance blocked the entrances and we had to be removed. The one place we could sit and play our game (Werewolf, I think it was called) was near the stage, which was loud when some of the punkier bands played.
~I know no one can control this, but there was one creepy guy that was taking pictures of people that weren't in cosplay.
~The food was overpriced I heard, but, hey, I'm a New Yorker, I'm used to that.
~The tabletop gaming area was confusing.
~The overall spread of the convention was hard to navigate, I spent more than 20 minutes trying to find "panel room a" as my mother called it when giving my careful directions.
~There were less panels than last year, and this may've been because of the few rooms in the centre.
~Though I had signed up for it very previously, the LARP was impossible to figure out.

If I have anything else to say, I may repost, but these were my main ideas.

[Ramothhe]

This has been my second year attending Zenkaikon, and it was, including Zenkaikon V, my third convention. The other one was New York Comic Convention, and I can truthfully say that I (and the others I spoke to agreed with me) that this years Zenkaikon was a much more enjoyable experience than NYCC. I too will post a pro-con list like the people above me, because I can't think of another way to do this.

Pros:
~Much more open space at this convention centre, which made out for meeting lots of new cosplayers and connecting with people you wouldn't think you would.
~Only one floor made no need to climb up stairs for antendees with...intricate cosplays.
~The space outside was great, so you could go quickly from the hot day outside to the cool convention centre.
~There was parking. Lots of it.
~I go there a few hours after the convention started, so I may have a different idea then the people that got there on time, but registration was a snap.

Cons:
~The lighting made it hard to take pictures.
~There were very few consols in the video gaming room.
~The floor was dirty.
~For cosplayers wanting to sit down, near the registation was too busy, across the main hall was dark, close to the entrance blocked the entrances and we had to be removed. The one place we could sit and play our game (Werewolf, I think it was called) was near the stage, which was loud when some of the punkier bands played.
~I know no one can control this, but there was one creepy guy that was taking pictures of people that weren't in cosplay.
~The food was overpriced I heard, but, hey, I'm a New Yorker, I'm used to that.
~The tabletop gaming area was confusing.
~The overall spread of the convention was hard to navigate, I spent more than 20 minutes trying to find "panel room a" as my mother called it when giving my careful directions.
~There were less panels than last year, and this may've been because of the few rooms in the centre.
~Though I had signed up for it very previously, the LARP was impossible to figure out.

If I have anything else to say, I may repost, but these were my main ideas.

Thanks for the feedback, Jabberwack! You will be happy to know that for our new venue for 2013, there is not only lots of well lit chill space for attendees and cosplayers that is not only clean, but carpeted and with lots of couches, but we will have more panels and a better spread of room locations....and plenty of great places to eat within watlking distance, nice locations for cosplay photoshoots, and a ton of other great things..you can see more in our preview video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x80eGlIs6E8

[giove_dea]

6) Video room. I read the other post about the head video guy stating why so little in terms of what is showing and totally understand. Just putting it on here to let you know a good video room would definitely be appreciated. Whether showing some AMVs/Parodies/Movies/Shows...whatever. Maybe 2-3 rooms if able to get some variety!

We will be going back to a multiple room video set up next year, and will be bringing AMVs, Parodies, and a variety of movies and shows, both anime and live action back into the mix. I'm hard at work already trying to get a greater variety of visual entertainment, so stay tuned.