This year I find myself once again at Fanboy Expo the event where all of my travels started. Despite the fact that it is one of the closest events to home I don’t go every single year unless they have someone my wife and I really want to meet which was why we decided to attend this year. It always seems like every time we go there’s always some issue that just makes it an ok experience for us and really lessens our motivation to attend so going into this we were hoping for something different.

The guest list was by far the best I’ve ever seen from this convention. They had several big names from the Lord of the Rings, Dragon Ball Z, Wrestlers and even three of the kids (now adults) from the original Willy Wonka and the Charlie Factory movie. However, due to the incredible guests we also got an incredible crowd and that resulted in some issues. First of all it was pretty tedious to just get into the vendor/autographing area. The line was long enough to span well into the floor above where the line started to begin with. I think this bothered other people more than me because I’m used to lines like this a lot but it was very abnormal for Fanboy to have an entry line anywhere near like this.

The line issues also caused trouble once you got inside. Autograph lines were so long that they were consuming walkways and space vital to the nearby vendors so it made it hard to walk around and shop. Some members of the staff were very quick to cap lines to deal with this issue which I greatly appreciated; however, that was not the case for all of the lines.

The vendors had some really incredible merch but truth be told I hardly got a good look at a lot of them. The crowd was too much to really spend time looking at each booth so we picked a few that struck our interest and left it at that. Plus it seemed like it was a lot of the same vendors that we’ve seen there in previous years. That’s not in my opinion a bad thing but it also means that since I’ve gone several times unless the individual vendors had something new I wasn’t going to be likely to buy something this time around. I still think the selection is great for those who haven’t shopped at these vendors before though.

Fanboy also had some cool panels with the guests which were Q&A panels. I didn’t see anything but those on the schedule so if for some reason you didn’t want to attend any of the Q&As the panels weren’t going to grab your attention though I did love how they grouped some panels by franchise which are some of the more enjoyable Q&A panels by far. I think this is an area that Fanboy needs to expand on; however, before doing this they have to get a better handle on the crowd itself.

Another issue we dealt with was the venue itself. In a previous year I noted how the area was so hot one of the actors passed out mid autograph session. It wasn’t near this hot this time around but it was still humid enough that I opted not to get photos with any of the guests that I met because the heat caused me to sweat and honestly I didn’t think I was presentable enough for a close up photo because of that.

Overall Fanboy had a lot of good things going for them. An impressive guest list, fun vendors and nice Q&A panels with the guests; however, it has a few issues that just prevent it from being an experience I find worth going to unless they have someone I really want to see. The venue is consistently too hot and in this case it was very crowded. I do know that the convention noted the crowding issues on their Facebook page and plan to do something to resolve those for next year so I’m looking forward to seeing what they do but once again I had an experience where I did get what I wanted but nothing beyond that which would motivate me to go to this event outside of a particular guest which is a shame because this event is an hour from home.