As many of you know Smoky Mountain Fan Fest is an event that has become one of my go to yearly events.  So much so that I skipped another event that previously held this status to attend this year.  With a new year comes a lot of new things for this convention such as a new venue and a slew of new VIP experiences so naturally with all of this the experience boils down to one question.  Did these changes improve the overall experience?

First I will talk about the guests again as this is something the convention continues to excel at year after year.  This year was a huge blast from the past getting voice actors from Courage the Cowardly Dog, Thundercats (the original) and Digimon (also the original cast).  Plus one of the Impractical Jokers, actors from Charmed, Power Rangers, The Boys, Arrow, Twilight and so many more.  They had another successful year in bringing amazing talent and I had no problem meeting everyone that I wanted to see.

The panels were a lot of fun too as the actors got to do their own Q&A panels.  I went to a few because the convention once again had the panel room in the same room as the vendors.  Now I still think the best approach personally is to have a separate room for the panels, but I will say this convention has greatly reduced my disdain for this approach as they provided plenty of space between the panels and vendors that foot traffic was not an issue.   Plus it was easy to take a break when I needed to and find a seat to sit back, relax and enjoy a panel in the process.  That was actually how I wound up at the Thundercats panel which was nice.  I do wish the panel schedule was easier to find in the convention itself as I often didn’t know what was happening unless I made a plan to attend a specific event prior to the convention but that is really the only suggestion I have for panels as a whole.

Moving onto the vendors this was actually a big highlight for my experience this time around.  You did have some cool vendors from previous years but some new ones that I’ve never heard of.  For example they had a vendor named Galacticacity that not only sold some amazing Pokemon merch but had this experience where you could go up against their gym leader in Pokken Tournament or Pokemon Scarlet/Violet to win a gym badge.  Something that sounded too fun for me to miss out on and I had an incredible time getting a badge.  I also got to find some cool stuff for Dungeons and Dragons, some new pins for my pin board and some new artwork even a Fire Emblem piece which was not something I expected at all.  On top of that there was plenty of space so shopping was a seamless experience.  The only thing I can say that could improve is there were some franchises heavily advertised for the event such as Twilight to naturally draw in fans of the movie series, but the vendors themselves did not have Twilight merch.  Now since I’m not a fan it didn’t bother me personally but I did see a number of people wishing there was merch to buy.

Now lets talk about the venue change.  For the last two years the convention was held at the Gatlinburg Convention Center in Gatlinburg, TN but this year moved to the Sevierville Convention Center in Sevierville, TN.  This to me was unquestionably a smart move as this was not only a nicer venue but parking was way easier and the venue has more access to nearby hotels.  Plus it was an easier drive.  If it wasn’t for the fact I was doing two events this weekend I would have booked a local hotel and attended at least two days. 

Last year I noted some hiccups regarding the photos ops. Mainly that we bought a photo op and found out it was going to happen on a day we weren’t going to be at the convention.  This was of course resolved but it was still not the most seamless experience.  This year that issue was entirely resolved.  The convention offered photo ops as soon as they knew what days they would be on and it ran smoothly.  My wife and I went to two of the photo ops and had no issues at all.

Then we have the VIP experiences something new to 2023.  The convention is no stranger to VIP passes but this year they started doing more exclusives to VIP pass holders as well as various tiers for the passes.  I only had a Saturday pass but I did speak to someone who had a Twilight VIP pass who provided me a detailed recollection of their experience but wishes to remain anonymous.  They stated for the Twilight VIP the add-ons included autographs and a photo op from the two Twilight guests, an exclusive Twilight panel and some convention swag.  However, the person I spoke to stated all of this occurred on Friday and only three hours were allocated for all of the photos, autographs and the panel which wasn’t enough and caused the panel to be two hours late resulting in some of the photos to be moved to Saturday.  Additionally, they noted at least one person that was there as general admission got to attend the exclusive panel, but overall they loved what was offered and thought it was a good idea.  After hearing this to me it sounds like this is your standard situation where a convention tries a new idea but it’s just not perfectly executed but I would imagine this is something that will get refined a lot more to fix the issues presented this year. 

They also noted that for all VIP tiers you got to attend a show at Dave and Busters where you got to watch some of the guests perform stand up comedy which they stated this was a very fun experience.  I honestly wish I got to go to this one and if I was going for the weekend I would have absolutely splurged to get a VIP pass for this.  It’s just the newest idea of the list of unique experiences we have come to expect from this convention.

So overall from my perspective as someone with general admission my experience was a really good one.  I had an easy time going in and accessing everything the convention had to offer and enjoyed all of the things I’ve grown to expect from this event.  While I did not have a VIP pass I did hear about these experiences in detail and it sounds like that’s an area that needs to be refined a bit to run smoother.  Now that the convention is offering various passes it’s grown from just your standard attendee, vendor, guest and staff kind of event. Now it has various tiers for attendees alone and where it’s grown in attendance there are more attendees to sort so personally more prep time to ensure that the staff is able to ensure that everyone at the convention is going where they are supposed to be in a timely manner is the next step in this convention’s growth to manage their myriad of excellent ideas and execute them perfectly.

Though another way to also look at it is that the event has grown to need that level of refinement because it’s getting a greater crowd to warrant that level of planning so while it needs a little work for some of there newer ideas the reason behind it is actually a positive one and where the convention continuously works to improve year after year I have very high hopes for if I attend in 2024.