I’ve gone to two different Galaxycons in the past and had a great time with them both, but I’ve heard Raleigh was the biggest and best of them all. Naturally this peaked my curiosity and I finally had a chance to go and see for myself.

First the guests are amazing. Like all Galaxycons we have a wide range of fandoms represented here including several stars from Daredevil, Scream, Avatar The Last Airbender both the live action Netflix series and the animated versions, several wrestlers, comic book creators and this barely scratches the surface of the entire guest list. Now the problem is how challenging meeting the more popular guests can be. On Friday it wasn’t too difficult but some lines like the one for Matthew Lillard stayed capped most of the day. Then Saturday happened and several lines stayed capped throughout the day making it extremely difficult to meet a huge portion of the guests and the crowd was so great it was very challenging to walk around the area they had the guests. I will say that the staff did an incredible job trying to be proactive and keeping walkways as clear as they can but the reality is there was just too many people in the area trying to find a spot in lines that stayed capped.

Now for the guests that were there the entire weekend or just guests that were not the most popular ones of the event, their lines eventually calmed down at some point. For example I was able to get all of the autographs I wanted fairly easily since most of the ones I wanted were from voice actors. My wife had a lot of ease meeting the live action Avatar cast as well. However, I was also hoping to meet John Bernthal and gave up on that rather quickly. It’s clear that if you’re there to meet several of the more popular guests that you really need the fast pass which here I think was only given to those with the VIP pass. I definitely was looking for the option to get one for booking a convention hotel like Galaxycon Columbus, but no luck. I think ideally finding a way to get the autographs lines moving faster such as not allowing photos at the table would really help here because I saw a lot of people try and only got some of the autographs they wanted.

Next up I’ll talk about the panels because this time I did a lot of them. They had all kinds of group panels for a lot of shows like Avatar, The Mandalorian, My Hero Academia and more. A wide variety of fan panels, parties and all kinds of activities to do. These panels are incredibly fun and easy to get to as the rooms were spacious. The only issue here is that there’s no room clearing between panels so while you could always get a seat at a panel you had to camp at the previous panel if you wanted a chance at getting a really good seat. Unless you’re VIP as the front row was reserved for VIP pass holders.

While I don’t like the fact they didn’t clear the rooms I do think allocating the front row to VIP only is a great incentive to get the pass while not locking out general admission from having great seats because I managed to get close to the front in several panels. Plus for some of the ones I went to they did a photo of the guests on stage with the audience in the background and you could buy a copy of the photo for $20. It’s a great incentive to get a seat close to the front and makes for a fun photo to celebrate with. I got a couple of these myself.

The vendors and artists were all amazing. You had a lot of shopping that you could do and like the guests you had a variety of stuff to choose from. Your wallets will cry for sure, but what I like the most about this area is how easy it was to walk around. Unlike the autographing area I rarely struggled to get around the vendors which were directly beside the guests and I had an easy time shopping which may have been bad for my wallet but I’m sure it will forgive me, maybe.

Overall Galaxycon Raleigh definitely showed it was the biggest of the Galaxycons and while for the most part I was able to do everything I wanted to do I feel like part of that was because I didn’t want to meet a lot of the more popular guests they have. If you’re not aiming for autographs from them then you can get an amazing experience with any pass; however, if you’re looking for an autograph haul and the best spots at panels you have to get the VIP pass in order to do that. So where this Galaxycon is much further than the one in Columbus for me I feel like I’m more inclined to take a shorter drive to go to a smaller Galaxycon where the crowd at the autograph area wasn’t as massive. Plus I don’t feel like I need the VIP pass when I can just get a fast pass by staying at the host hotel. I had a great time but I definitely prefer the Columbus one.