While I don’t go to this event every year I find myself often coming back to the convention that started it all for me. Like previous years this event had a roster of guests that my wife and I had to meet, but we ended up doing things a little differently. Normally we make a Saturday trip out of it and only stay for the day, but my wife wanted a VIP pass. So to get the most value out of it we made this a two day trip and thus more for me to think about when I write up this review.

Naturally starting off with the guests it was another great year for them. You had iconic actors from Lord of the Rings, Daredevil, Bones, famous wrestlers and even the original actor for Mewtwo in Pokémon. Fanboy always manages to get an incredible roster of guests, but their more popular guests are pretty tough to meet without a VIP pass. My wife managed to get autographs with little difficulty thanks to a line skip perk, but the lines were so long for general admission I feel like we would have spent all day otherwise. Fanboy does a great job in keeping the lines out of the way of people walking around so I appreciate that, but if you’re going to meet a lot of the big name guests you really need a VIP pass because the lines move too slowly otherwise.

Moving onto the vendors I really enjoyed the layout here too. Last year Fanboy started to move to take up more space in the convention center. It was a move that worked well last year and this year was no different. By dividing the vendors by having most of them in the main hall and artist ally on a different floor the foot traffic was ideal. I had plenty of space to work with and had a comfortable time shopping. I was pretty surprised by the variety this year. I found a lot of stuff that’s new to me and a lot of original merch. It was a nice surprise and I found cool items like a warp pipe Nintendo Switch controller holder, some Pokémon items and more. I like how Fanboy is starting to get a wider variety of cool stuff to look at and buy.

The panels were nice and very close to the vendors which is nice. The new layout makes it easier to go from shopping to panels and back and that’s always something I really enjoy. There’s nothing particularly amazing about the panels here as it’s a series of Q and A panels with the guests. A great selection since they have amazing guests but if you’re someone wanting panels outside of that you will be missing out.

The only real problem with Fanboy is one I have every year. Outside of shopping and meeting guests it doesn’t really have anything to do. That’s one of the main reasons we get a one day pass because for us it has enough to keep us busy for one day. When we switched things up to spend more time at the event we really didn’t find enough stuff for us to do. We actually ended up planning time to do stuff around the city which was a wise decision. So that’s one of my main concern is how you really need a VIP pass if you want to get through autograph lines in a timely manner. Though a weekend pass of any kind only has value if you go for multiple days and fans can easily do everything the event has to offer in one day.

So overall I had a great time at this event. I still think it makes for a great convention to do for a day to shop and meet actors. However, that also is where the convention’s biggest hurtle comes in. Because of how the autograph lines are handled if you want a lot of the bigger names you’ll need to spend most of the day in lines. If you want to have more time for the convention or just don’t want to spend a day in lines then the VIP pass has a line skip option but the convention doesn’t have enough to really keep a fan busy with the extra time you gain from that. So like previous years it’s an event that really to me only has value if it has guests that you really want to meet because that’s really the only reason I feel it’s worth the time and expense to attend.