Rocky Mountain Con Anime Hangout 2022

 

This weekend was Rocky Mountain Con's Anime Hangout. This was their first time putting on the event and they are hoping to have other such small events to keep the geekness going year round. I have noticed and explosion of cons and geek events past covid. It's as if everyone is trying to make up for all of that lost time. For this anime hangout they were trying to help bring people together in a more laidback way. In the below video I talk to Tim about what they were aiming for with the hangout and what things we can expect in the future from Rocky Mountain Con.

The con for me felt really different then I'm used to. Normally I'm jumping from panel to panel and this con was much less structured. It felt odd to me, but the way they built it did leave room for more chances to interact with others. In one of the anime rooms at one point I did interact with some of the other viewers. We had all jumped in on the end of Steam Boy and we were talking about how weird the ending was. If the con wants more interaction I think actually turning one of the anime rooms into a heckler room would actually be really fun. It would be like Mystery Science Theater 3000. There could even be designated hecklers for different chunks of time. At one point I also saw some people playing a board game in the lobby area. This could also be expanded with a game room or rooms.

It had been years since I had last seen Full Metal Panic.

Like most cons they had a cosplay contest and I was actually surprised at how good many of the cosplays were both days. Below are some of my favorites. 

They also had an arcade game area where they did host a few contests. I will fully admit that I got over confident on Mario Kart after getting first place the first time I played, but then got kicked out in the first round of the contest. Oh well, I just need to work on my arcade game skills. They also had the Area 51 first person shooter game that brought back fond memories of playing in arcades as a kid. I also got to play Pokken for the first time and it was a lot of fun.

The dealers room: So first off I would like to thank the con for having the tables spaced so that they were ADA friendly. This is something that several cons lately have been overlooking. There were several empty tables that had people's names on them for being reserved, but they never showed. This left the dealers room feeling a bit empty. I was also surprised that local venders, like naniwear, that you see at anime cons did not have a booth. 

Even with not a lot of dealers there were many fun products to be found. One dealer had nothing but model kits and it seemed really popular. Most of my money got dropped at one dealer that had a lot of Pokemon items, but they had some really cool things that I hadn't seen elsewhere.

They also had some reps from the Colorado Itasha Alliance there.

The hotel: I've been to this hotel before for other cons, like Colorado Festival of Horror. The public areas are kept very clean, unlike how the Gaylord was for NDK. I also liked how for this con the hotel did have some cheaper food options for people. They gave you the option of either a turkey sandwich or a burrito combo for $8 that also included a drink and chips. For the next one I would also recommend an instant ramen option as well to match the anime theme. 

Then as stated above the hotel did keep their setup ADA friendly and in compliance with fire codes. Actually other cons could learn a few things from them. The only thing I could ding the hotel on was that I found only one water station in the main event room and it would have been nice to have one in the main lobby area as well.

Picture 1 From: http://www.rockymountaincon.com/

All other Pictures and videos were taken by the Chief Geek.