A run down of my @Momocon experience #MomoCon2014

This was the first year my kids and I attended Momocon.  They're both big into anime, my daughter has a passion for crosplay as well.  We'd tried going to DragonCon a couple of years ago, but really didn't enjoy the experience.  So we looked for an alternative to give them some of the same opportunities.  For those that haven't had the chance to go, I thought I'd give my point of view of the con and let my kids (eventually) speak for themselves.

Friday was the start of the craziness that is a convention.  We arrived around 10a and checked in (we had preregistered).  The crew consisted of myself, my two kids and my daughter's best friend.  I was actually in costume as Mary Poppins (in her black outfit including her umbrella).  I didn't get any full photos of me though quite a few others did. If one crops up, I'll share it later.  My daughter was a hunter from the video game "Left for dead" and her friend was a survivor.

At any rate, I did catch a couple of panels.  The first was one for a potential new kids show called True Tail.  They had the "commercial" that would run to preview for the show on TV as well as a mock up of the first full episode.  I thoroughly enjoyed it as did my daughter.  I also went to a panel that was changed at the last minute called "Steampunk and Recycled Cosplay".  My type of panel with the recycling.  My Mary Poppins costume was completely put together by thrifting at Goodwill and my daughter wants me to turn one of the outfits I have at home into something Steampunk.

Beyond that, mostly on Friday I people watched.  The kids went to various panels and checked back in regularly.  We headed home around 6p.

Saturday the kids did most of the con on their own.  I was costumed sort of as an elf dragon trainer.  My daughter was Jack Frost for part of the day.  I went to the tabletop gaming room to check it out and ended up in a couple of RPG games.  One called Dream Catcher that isn't published yet, hopefully to eventually be released on Kickstarter.  She pulled me from the first game to go to what was supposed to be a photo shoot for the "Big 4" (Jack Frost, Elsa, Rapunzel, Merida).  Turns out the time they put on facebook wasn't correct and they held it 3 hours before we expected it.  They posted on facebook about the time change, but we weren't monitoring facebook at the con, so we missed the photo shoot.  My daughter was disappointed, as were the extra Jack Frost's she'd recruited to go too.  She changed after that into a "royal elf". Unfortunately, she couldn't find her ears so she wore mine instead.  I simply morphed my outfit into a Dragonrider of Pern, which didn't really fit with Momocon, but I was gaming so I didn't care.  She took back off with her friend and I went back to the gaming room for my second RPG game, Eclipse Phase.  I missed seeing the Animaniacs reunion while I was gaming, though my daughter did attend.  She even videoed some of it for me.  The kids finished up about the same time I did, we came home around 8:30p.

Sunday my son had decided there wasn't anything that he was interested in seeing, so he stayed home.  I dressed in my Wonder Woman running costume and took the girls back up to the con.  My daughter dressed as Kenny from South Park.  The girls only had a couple of panels, but there were none I was interested in. So I took the chance that the game room would have something else new that I could play and headed back there.  I ended up playing an intro round of Shadowrun, followed by a full module.  When I finally finished (about 2p) the girls had decided they were done and we came home.

I did take pictures of some of the costumes I saw.  I didn't recognize quite a few and since the kids weren't with me I didn't have a good way to identify them.  The pictures I took are available on pinterest if you want to check them out.  The one labelled "Beatrice" was a cool costume. The lady told me which show it came from, but I can't remember it now.  Next year the con is at the World Congress Center and is expanding to 4 days.  While I suspect we'll go, I'll wait a bit before getting tickets.