AniZona - Apr. 9-12, 2009
Review by Mikoto Chan
Easter weekend Thursday night through
Sunday 2009 held at the Embassy Suites in Phoenix.
The Good- Registration was easy and painless. Even though they couldn't find
VWG and Lifelike on the list, it was a simple trip upstairs, fill out a form
and presto-two memberships. The vendor room was very impressive, there was a
great selection and a familiar face from Stillman Blades The artists were all
so friendly and I found the coolest hat ever for a lolita outfit. There was
a booth with water and snacks- which was nice. I also love how the masquerade
prizes always go to the most deserving, because the judges are experienced seamstresses
and recognize what is hard to do. The hotel staff was friendly to us and housekeeping
never invaded our space-which was a nice change. The rooms at the hotel were
awesome as always and the hallways proved to be awesome for picture taking due
to the craziness of the purple and gold carpets. There were some awesome cosplays
(my fav was Morriagan and Bison) and a lot of friendly faces to kill the time.
The Bad- There wasn't very much room in the panel rooms and it filled up very
quickly, causing people to sit on the floor- or in our case- not to attend.
The masquerade room could only hold maybe 100 people-so we caught the end of
it from peeking in the door. It smelled very funky in there. The masquerade
was on Friday too-which was weird. The fashion show was also on Friday and it
had some really awesome outfits- although we had to sprint to the bathroom to
change and the line up had to stand inside the room along the wall. This was
no fault of Guernica, he did an awesome job with the space given to him. I just
hate it when people get to see the outfit before you actually go out on the
catwalk. Personal pet peeve of mine. The tea party was a little lacking in games
and food. For the first time ever no one brought anything- so there was just
cookies and tea provided by the AniZona staff- and some of the cookies were
burnt and bland. I am still kicking myself for not bringing something along.
Another thing that really bothered me- maybe I'm getting old- was the amount
of crazy teenagers running around doing stupid annoying things- like riding
the elevator up and down so it was always crowded. Someone was also pushing
all the buttons and then getting off-really annoying. There were also a lot
of really bad cosplays- that hurt my eyes- because I'm a crazy perfectionist.
The Ugly yes- there is an ugly part. The program was absolutely useless. Instead
of having a grid of the programming- with events/panels in order of when they
happen- there was just a list of ALL events in alphabetical order- for ALL 4
DAYS. It made finding what was going on terrible difficult and annoying. It
was easier to just go and look at the list on the doors- but by then the panel
was full anyway and you couldn't go in. Which is the main reason we didn't see
many panels. I also guessed one of the staffs cosplays wrong and he was really
rude about it and made me feel really embarrassed. It was while I was helping
them set up for the tea party-just to be nice-and it kind of ruined the party
for me.
All in all- It was fun-because of friends and family- not really because of
the programming or anything else. But I honestly didn't go to this con for the
programming so I got what I wanted out of it. It wasn't a bad con, but it wasn't
the best either. I would probably go again- just to hang out with friends and
have fun cosplaying.