NDK 2024: Through Pictures

Due to the personal negative impact that this con had on me this year, I'm just not able to do my normal full detailed coverage. You can find out a little more about that reading my other NDK 2024 post. Below will be some of the pictures I took with some captions included.

FRIDAY

They had some cute blow ups around to help give the hallways more of a festive feel.

The con turned in the badge artwork from previous years into these large displays. Kind of a cool idea.

The kaiju had this badge on it.

This was an area where people could do photo ops and chill. The mood lighting was kind of nice and hard to capture with a camera. At some point the normal lights got turned on which was kind of disappointing.

These were some of the the best costumes at the con.

Colorado Itasha Alliance was there. On Friday they even revealed a new car that joined their ranks.

They had the items for the charity auction set up in the dealers' room in a corner. The most impressive thing up for grabs this year was this Gundam cosplay.

A view of the artist alley side of the room.

A couple of photos of the dealers side of the room. At least the spacing between the booths was wide which helped with crowding and made it more ADA accessible.

They finally finished the construction in the main area of the hotel. They destroyed their restaurant offerings including the cheaper Mexican place that used to be down there. They destroyed the beautiful area that this used to be and got rid of most of their water features. They then put in a horrible modern bar in the middle. Whoever designed this should be forced to return the hotel to what it used to be. This just adds to the bad decisions of whoever is running this hotel.

This was opening ceremonies. I was actually glad that I didn't sit near the front. The arrow he shot actually bounced off of the target.

Kikuko Inoue and her translator.

I didn't make it to any panels this year, so I didn't get to see any of Dr. Freedman's new stuff. 

Kiba Walker returned this year. Also brought his friends for the Ready Player Drag.

SATURDAY

Con started out bad again. I had spoken to the director of the con on Friday and he said that he would get this worked out and it was still a mess. So a bad start to day 2. Once again the hotel creating negative experiences for people that then impacts their whole day.

This was the nonprofit this year that the charity auction was supporting. When Mommy Geek saw their table she told me that she had to use their services back in the day. This is an organization that has been helping the community since 1977.

This picture was of the inside of the cat cafe. You got 20 minutes for $10. All of the kittens were up for adoption. The problem was that they were only allowing locals to adopt even though people come from out of state for the con. This actually blocked some of the kittens from getting homes. I saw posts online of people that had wanted to adopt, but were told no just because they were not local. To me finding a home for an animal should never be limited. My dog was an out of state adoption and I feel like this organization may do more damage then good with their stupid rules. With this I could not support this organization and would recommend people go through different organizations if they are looking to adopt a new family member.

I was able to catch some people dancing in here. At another point I went back to try and catch some more dancers, but the area was then being used to play some type of card game. This room kind of felt like a waste of space that could have been better used, like for a video/anime room.

There were some interesting pieces in the model show. It seemed like this year there was much more of a focus on painted miniatures instead of the model kits. 

Some of the cars had additional items around them to show off more.

This was one of the "video" rooms. Too much light and too many distractions. They really need to movie this back to a private room or have this in addition to a few other rooms. The schedule showed that there were supposed to be 2 video rooms, but I never came across the other one as I walked around the con. Also the choices of animes on the schedule was not as exciting as in the past. Actually it would have been funny if they would have themed this area with food animes or episodes that were food heavy. Maybe not Food Wars, if you have ever seen it you would understand why, but there are many other choices that could have been fun.

This was the costume contest awards. It was so empty. I had never seen so few people interested in the costume contest. Normally this is one of the events where they have to cut off the line. If this doesn't speak volumes to the overall attendance and engagement at the con to the con's leadership, I don't know what will. I think this shows that the con is on life support and needs major changes to save it.

This was the only event that I made it to the whole thing was Ready Player Drag.

Kiba was once again the host/MC.

The show was ok, but did not seem as engaging as last year. Also the costumes last year were way cooler and this year the show just felt anticlimactic. 

SUNDAY

Once again there was issues with the panel/event lines. The con created a new rule according to one worker that people couldn't line up for things more then an hour before it started. We tried to explain that we were ADA and it was too hard for us to go wonder around and then try to rush back. This new rule negatively impacts ADA including when the whole panel area is massively lacking sitting areas. The hotel has this problem in general, but this section is super low on areas where ADA could sit if they didn't want them lining up. As is I had to get help from a different staff member to track down a chair for Mommy Geek to use. Back in the day the panel and event rooms used to have at least one chair by the doors for ADA people to use at the old locations. Ever since moving to the Gaylord sitting places have been in short supply. As to the model make and take itself there was a small charge of $5 this year to help cover the increased costs of international shipping for the kits. They had both Pokémon (the easier kits) and Gundam to pick from. 

Both Mommy Geek and I went with the Pokémon kits. 

The only "good" experience I had this year happened at this dealer's booth. I had been going around to the different booths selling games asking detailed tough questions. My questions were around the playability of their games for people who have had a stroke and the need of easier games to play. I do this because I have a family member who both loves games and has had a stroke. More complex games are just not playable for them so I'm always looking for less complex games. Most of the booths just kind of glazed over and said that they thought that their games were too complex for people that had had a stroke. At this booth I asked a guy and he gave me the same look, but then a female who worked there piped in that they had two games that might work and offered to show me how they played. This was amazing at the detailed type of help she was willing to give and even asked me questions about the level of functioning that the person still had. I did buy one of the games she showed me and will review it later as a game review. I thanked her for her help and she said that she understood how hard a situation like that can be and that she was happy to help. This level of caring is mostly missing today. Because of the interaction I had with the worker from Japanime Games I would highly recommend the company and I will buy again from them in the future.

I went in the quiet room for awhile to just cut off the sound of the con for a little while. When I went in there was no one else in there. There were lots of coloring sheets and coloring books with markers and coloring pencils. Some people had even made cute free styled drawings that they left behind. There was also a small stack of manga you could read. I wish that they would have had more manga to read, but they also didn't have any staff monitoring the room to make sure it wouldn't get stollen. 

This booth was giving out raffle tickets for every $10 you spent. They would do one raffle each day 1 hour before the con closed. The problem is that security didn't like people gathering for the drawing. This is a time when security needed to step back a little and just let people be. Security could have just made sure that there was a walk way space for other people instead of just trying to force everyone to disperse or giving this business grief for doing something nice for shoppers.

The table in the center was the check in area if you wanted to see a panel. This area could have used a lot more sitting places for people when it wasn't time yet for them to line up for their panel. This has been an issue with this area for the past 4 years. Also by moving the press room upstairs there was less room for panels. The offerings felt very small and not as good in past years. Even when I did have free time, they just didn't have any panels that seemed that interesting this year.

Video Game Room

The video game room gets it's own section because it was very disappointing this year. I don't know the details of what happened, but this year games were in short supply and they didn't have the Japanese games that they have had in the past. I think the con lost it's partnership with whoever normally brought in the Japanese games. Kind of like the weirdness that impacted the celebrity interviews last year. There seems to be things happening behind the scenes at NDK that is negatively impacting the con as a whole. People are only seeing little pieces of it and I do not think many con goers are putting all of these pieces together yet. 

Below are a few examples of how others felt about the game room.

Picture From NDK's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/nandesukan

Picture From NDK's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/C_ZTe5evU-f/