This is actually my second time going to Megacon; however, when I went last year I did so little at this event that I honestly did not feel I could do the con justice with a review.  This time I went and did a lot more and have a lot more to offer to show what kind of event this convention is.  What really made me curious this year was this con’s acquisition of Florida Anime Experience, a con I went to last year and really loved.  I was pretty excited to see what all this con had to offer plus what the combination of these two events would create.

Guests

As I’ve said time and time again, I go to most of my cons for the guest lists and this event had some amazing guests such as John Cena, Lucy Lawless and Charlie Cox and that’s just the tip of the iceberg of the amazing guests here.  However, the guest list was not quite what I hoped for.  This convention usually has about five anime performers show up so with the acquisition of Florida Anime Experience it seemed as though we would get more anime performers and harder to find guests in the industry.  The problem was we did not get this at all.  Max Mittleman was the only difference in the anime list than what you would expect at most Megacon events.  Don’t get me wrong I loved meeting Mittleman, but when a convention combines with an anime con and a good one at that, you get a certain expectation, this expectation was not met.  So it was a great guest list but there was no indication of the fusion of two cons having any impact here.

Panels

Yes I did go to a panel this time.  2018 seems to be the year where I skip panels but I made time to go to one this time.  This convention had some good panels but a vast majority of them were Q&A sessions which are a lot of fun to go to, but usually those come with long lines so you really need to be there early to get a decent spot so I don’t try for two many of these.  There were a few other panels such as some discussion panels and improv events so there were some other things to do but I just did not see a lot of panels that made me go, “I have to do this.”  I saw an increase in anime related panels which was where most of the discussion panels came from and some of them looked like they could be fun.  Overall there were some good panels and I loved the ones I went to but you can easily use of a lot of time at this event going to panels and only see a handful of things so I recommend keeping the number of panels low if you want to do autographs and shopping.

Vendors

I had a lot of fun shopping at this convention.  As you can see from just this picture there were a lot of vendors present at this event.  I spent most of my time shopping and looking for stuff to buy.  The variety was impressive and it takes a long time just to go from one end to the other which made for a fun experience finding stuff to purchase.  My fiance found some nice fans for her grandmother, I found the only amiibo I did not have for my super smash brothers collection and a lot of things that made me afraid to get my wallet out but I was still tempted to purchase.  Self control is needed for these vendors because of all the amazing stuff to buy.

Overall

I loved going to this event.  There’s lots of amazing guests to see, lots of vendors to go to and quite a few panels.  This is also an event you need to be careful at because the panels can eat up a lot of time, the vendors can eat up a lot of money and the guests were not quite what I expected after this con combined with Florida Anime Experience.  While I greatly enjoy going to this event, I’ve concluded my only reason to go to this event is because it has what makes my fiance happy.  Which in turn makes me happy, but it’s clear that the anime and video game representation at this event is a low point which makes it a con that just doesn’t have a lot of things that would strongly motivate someone of my interests to go to.