Denver Pop Culture Con 2019

This Review will be broken into 2 parts: The Convention & Personal Experience

The Convention:

                I did very much like what they did this year for line control. They opened the building early and got people inside where they could either go upstairs to wait in the lines for the dealers’ room or they could go to the panel room area. The only problem was that if you were in the ADA/Speed Ticket line and didn’t have your ADA wrist band yet you had a hard time getting to one of the places that could give it to you. We were directed to back through two different check in points to be able to get to the ADA booth even though we could see it across the room from where we entered. It was also amazing that they did not clean out the panel rooms either. This is great because you can see panels back to back and also cuts time standing in lines or having to sit on the floor. Even with them doing this the panels in the Captain Colorado room, for the panels I saw at least, never filled all the way up.

                The dealers’ room/artist alley had a good variety of items and dealers. Some of the items were really overpriced, which could be seen in booths nearby selling the same item for a fraction of the price. The best find of the day was one booth where all the items were only five dollars. Most of the items were Geek Fuel past and current items. I did a price check and some of the things I bought were still full price on their website.

                The panels, all 2.5 of them, that I was able to get to were ok to amazing. We got in on the tail end of Lana Parrilla’s panel which may have been better if we saw the whole thing, but I give it an ok rating since out of what we heard the take away I got was her back to herself focus which I can admire. The whole reason I decided to go to this con this year was I wanted to see George Takei before he either stopped doing cons or died. I missed out of seeing Leonard Nimoy and after hearing one of my coworkers rave about Takei that she got to see at the

AACRAO conference, I was not wanting this chance to slip by (which it nearly did, but that will be covered later). He was everything I had hoped for and more. If you have never looked into this man’s life you should. He has lived through some amazing things and has been active in civil rights. He also has 2 new works coming out (yes, he did a plug for them), but I know that I am going to at least try to look them up through the public library system when they come out. If you ever get the chance to see him speak I would highly recommend that you go. The last panel I got to see was Christopher Lloyd and Tom Wilson. I was glad that I got to see Christopher Lloyd but I wish that this panel had a little deeper content. It seemed very superficial so I’d also give this panel just an ok rating.

Best Cosplay! Very realistic.

Personal Experience:

                This was my third time being at this con. Twice as a visitor and once as a volunteer. Each time I have had a negative experience. None of the experiences have come from the con itself, but from other visitors just being rude and showing the worst parts of humanity. This year as my mother and I was leaving the dealers’ room someone knocked her down and didn’t even stop to see if she was all right. I had been bumped into in the dealers’ room a few times with one guy giving me a dirty look for him not watching where he was going. BUT to knock down a person and not even stop takes a truly horrible person. I admit that my mother has several disabilities, but it would still take some force to knock her down. She was not able to describe the person that did it because of how fast it happened, and could only say that she felt someone push her. When I asked the staff that helped us if they could check the cameras to see who had done it they said that they didn’t have any outside of the dealers room. Really!!!! In this day and age there should be cameras in all public areas like this in case something goes wrong especially if you are dealing with large volumes of people. Basic safety 101 and emergency management. This raises a lot of issues I have with not only how the con is ran, but also how safe it is to do anything at the convention center at all. They really need to look into these areas and provide coverage or look for a new location. I will say though that even though this was a bad experience, the EMT/staff that showed up were great. They were not only nice, but seemed to care about what was going on. I would like to thank them for their help.

                My mother and I are such Geeks that we decided to at least stay for Takei. With some pain meds and not bending her leg, my mother was able to tough out a little more of the con. She said that even though a bad thing had happened to her she still considers it a good day because of the time we had before the incident and that we were still able to see Takei.

Overall I’m very on the fence with this con. The con itself is great, but the visitors that it gets can make for a very bad time. I understand that the con cannot entirely control who goes to it, but I think that if they had more cameras up they could catch and ban some of the people that make it horrible for everyone else. I may go back to this con if there is someone I really want to see, but it will not be a yearly one for me because of the bad experiences I have had here. I would not recommend this con unless there is a person that you really want to see that also doesn’t do other conventions.