So this is a pretty interesting case. Last year I went to this convention Alabama Comic Con decided to merge with My Hero Con to make one event and I had a wonderful time. Now Alabama Comic-Con has decided to merge with Kimetsu Con and I was very curious as to what difference this made to the overall experience.

Vendors:

The vendors to me seemed like it was possibly most if not all the same vendors from last year as I recognized a lot of the merchandise. I even recognized one vendor I did some shopping at last year. Now like last year I did like the vendors; however, on a return trip, the vendors were not as interesting to me this time around because I had already seen what I wanted to see on my previous trip. It’s still a wonderful shopping experience and I did buy a couple of items but overall because of this I just didn’t spend a lot of time shopping.

Panels:

I didn’t go to any panels this year because where I went only on Sunday and it turns out all of the panels I would have wanted to see were Saturday only. I did notice that like last year the panels only featured one of the guests and I again felt like that was a missed opportunity. I do like how that makes every guest have their own time in the spotlight but an additional panel with guests of a particular franchise would also be interesting to watch. I mean this convention had a lot of people from Demon Slayer so a group panel for that show would have been amazing.

Guests:

Like last year the guest list was good and in the place of the My Hero guests were a lot of anime guests from Demon Slayer which I thought was interesting. In fact, an actor that is a friend of mine Brook Chalmers did his first convention there and this was the reason behind me doing two conventions in one weekend because I planned for Collect a Con first and wanted to find a way to make this event work too. This changed my weekend from 10 hours of traveling to 16 but it was well worth it. What I also found interesting was unlike last year where the guests from each convention were in separate parts of the building all of the guests were much closer together. They were still separated from guests found at each convention but you didn’t have to walk on opposite sides of the convention floor to meet them.

Misc:

I didn’t have a better way to describe this category but I wanted to talk about things I noticed when comparing 2021 to 2022. Parking last year was a pain but on Saturday only so I have no way of knowing if that was fixed but I had no issues parking this year. But again I only went on the day I had no issues parking last year so that doesn’t mean the issue was fixed only that I avoided it entirely. The two conventions were blended more with each other this time than last year so it felt more like a cohesive experience rather than two conventions happening concurrently.

Overall like last year, I did have fun at this event but also like last year I found myself more interested in the things offered by Kimetsu con and not Alabama Comic-con. I had a great time, but outside of guests, I had nothing else that really captivated me for any length of time. These convention fusions are a lot of fun though and I hope Alabama Comic-Con finds a third event to combine with for next year because I am just fascinated to see how these convention combinations result but where the vendors might be the same next year and the panels will probably ignore the chance to have group discussions it once again comes down to the guest list to see if I come back.