General

I'm in orange county so it's a bit of a drive but not crazy to hit for a day and not deal with hotels. If there are people you want to meet or see, it's a good time. But it's a huge hassle with traffic, parking, and lodging.

i haven't been in years but if someone is doing a photo op booth you can usually make that happen if you prioritize it, and it's a neat experience to do so. But there is just a lot of nuisance and overhead to getting to that point.

(Not at the SD comic-con) In 1990 I waited in line for like 2 hours to have Todd McFarlane sign his new Spiderman comic and for me to say hi. I treasure that experience to this day.

If you've never had the 'cultural experience' of going to the con and overpaying for everything and standing in queues and you are okay with varying degrees of personal hygiene and personal space, then give it a shot .You can say you did it for the experience. Otherwise, it's fully a commercial event, used by studios to promote films (but not-during strikes.) and the way it is run is largely a crap show.

I've lived in San Diego for 16 years now and have never attended. For several years, I worked close enough that I could walk by the event to people watch and see some of the booths outside. If you didn't like the crowds at Dragon Con, you're not going to be happy with the crowds at SD Comic Con. Attendance this year was about double what was at Dragon Con.

That being said, an old co-worker of mine goes every year as he's a huge Marvel and anime fan. He's taken some great pictures of people in their costumes, but almost never does pictures with celebrities or get autographs. I'm sure there are some opportunities, but the lines probably get long quick as there are enough people that are willing to camp out and miss out on quite a bit of other things going on.

I heard the SDCC last year was a refreshing experience for comic fans because the strikes caused it to be far more of a COMIC con than a movie advertisement extravaganza. I’d still like to get out there someday. The Boston Comic Con was fun enough the one year I went.

Thanks all. I've done the convention scene since 2015. I attended Texas Frightmare Weekend that year as well as Dragon Con, but I mainly HorrorHound Cincinnati, except for 2020-2021 due to COVID stuff... I've also done Hamvention (Amateur Radio) in my younger years with my parents and Computer Expo stuff as well before they stopped doing them due to internet making it cheaper. So I'm very familiar with convention scene.

It wasn't that I didn't like Dragon Con, but rather I learned a lesson for big conventions like that, and unless it's really all you go to conventions for, don't schedule a bunch of photo ops because events as big as Dragon Con you won't have much time to leave the area and come back for the photo ops. Also, hotel rooms are ridiculously priced... and that one time I went, I shared a hotel room with 9 other people. Interesting experience, but there were ridiculous rules by the main person that had the room in their name and 10 people in a 2 bed hotel room is just crowded as heck.

I'm going to try to attend Texas Frightmare 2024. I had to miss out on 2023 due to financial issues. I mainly wanted to go for photo op with John Carpenter, which I had a ticket for and sold that to someone else going.

Unfortunately, SDCC passes go on sale this weekend and turns out I won't be able to partake... again for financial reasons. Going to try to plan for Blizzcon 2024 with my step-sister and others, and we're going to also try to plan for San Diego Comic Con 2025 as well.