Colorado Anime Fest 2022: Overview

 First off let's look at other parts of the con that ran the whole time and were not just day specific.

Charity Auction

Charity auctions are a common sight at many geeky cons no matter the type. The charity at this con was Lending A Hand. At present the organization's focus it to help out the people that were impacted by the Marshall Fire. The con was also offering free badges for those impacted by the fire. This shows that this con is very in touch with what fans in the community are dealing with and shows that they actively do what they can to help that community. Those impacted by the fire had other things that they needed to spend their money on, but the con understood that being able to go to the con anyway could be a mental break for those with so many negative things in their life.

Dealer's Room

The Dealer's room was actually a combination of dealer's room and artist alley. The artist alley wrapped around the dealer booths. Also in this room was where they had a meet and greet area with the special guests which cut into the overall space that they had to sell products. There did seem to be a good spread of basic goods, but there was not really many actual dvds of anime to be found and manga was also in short supply. The prices of most of the mystery bags had also really gone up. You could find a few cheaper ones, but they were either really small or from the artists. One of the nice things about this con is that they did set up the room with plenty of space between the booths to be able to handle both mobility devices and people walking.

This is actually one of the best products I have seen at a con. I wish these would have been out years ago when I first started going to cons.

This booth was really cool and the artist running it was very helpful. I'm used to people having to order ball jointed dolls all the way from Asia, but no American artists are getting in on the action.

Board Game Area

This area was actually broken into two areas/rooms. It was a good place to interact with new people or to just find a way to get off your feet. At the same time I don't think that they needed two rooms for this. The other room would have been great to actually be an anime room where they could have focused on exposing people to different animes (basically a video room).

Other Con's Tabling

Cons that let other cons table at them are a great way for people to see how large the geek community is and how they can have geeky fun throughout the year. Daku con had a pool where you could pay a small amount of money to go in and grab a prize out and they also had fun anime stickers that they were handing out for free. Anime Onsen was also there and you can look for Geeked Colorado's review of there con later on since it will be one of the cons we will be covering this year.

Kids Area

The kid area was a place where they had set up basic crafts that changed each day and had a little play area to help keep them entertained.

Quite Area and Manga Library

This is actually a great things for cons to have and it shows that they understand that people at cons have different needs. Not everyone that goes to cons are extraverts, and some can get easily burned out with all of the sensory information. The library also gave a place where people could also check out manga that they may not have enough money buy so they can see if they like it or not.

Anime Bar

A lot of cons will work with the hotels to come up with themed drinks for the event. In this case they created an area to serve as an adult hangout. First off the drinks were not the same size and it felt like on some of them you did not get your monies worth. They also did not have enough seats for the amount of people and we had to take our drinks to the hotel lobby just to find a place to sit down.

Cosplay

There were tons of cosplayers here of all ages. 

This was J'ADORE COSPLAY doing Mona Megistos from Genshin Impact. She was the main cosplay guest and is a local to Colorado.

Kai Schild cosplaying Aizawa Shota. Tiktok: Kittoan_Cos

Covid

The con was having people show proof of vaccination and people had to wear masks.

The Hotel

This hotel is not good for cons in general and since the remodel it has gotten worse. My recommendation for any con is find a different venue. My biggest complaint is that this place is not ADA friendly in many different ways and even though they have had years since the remodel to improve both the hotel and how they do business.

This is an example of how much of a price hike the hotel was. A plastic glass, a can of coke, and a 1oz shot for $8. If you were to bring these items in yourself you would spend under $3. This just proves that it is worth the effort to bring your own food and drink to cons.

Overall, even with all of the craziness and bad things that happened at the con, I still feel like overall the con is a good one. The con staff seem to care about the guests, their experiences, and the community. This con actually, really reminded me of the early days of NDK before it got so big. If I hadn't had seen the advertising around I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. I think some of this comes from both the staff and volunteers having their own experiences in the past with NDK, yes there is a lot of cross over because that is just the anime community in Colorado in general. I would actually recommend people attend this con especially if it is their first anime con. A different location would be nice and I would be willing to help make a training for panelists over ADA (if you saw Mommy Geek's post she volunteered me up for it).