My husband Joel and I been going for the last few years, finally since Planet Comicon isn't on the same days anymore.
This year had to be the worst year of them all for us.
Let's start with Friday
We saw in the booklet "opens at 10" we drove from home to the con excited that we could check the vendor room out til our first panel at 5, yes that is a lot of shopping but we had dvds to hunt for!
We get there and the first staff person we ran into we asked what time the vendor hall opened, they hummed and hawed for a moment then checked their phone, another person showed up so we asked them while the other person was looking at their phone. Then they both say, "oh not til 4".
We asked why the book said the con opened at 10 if nothing is gonna open til 4? They said, "well your welcome to go anywhere else the first panel don't start til....... " Looks at phone again "5".
My husband and I drove all the way back home after this cause there was ZERO point to sticking around for 6 hours.
Now mind you its about a 30min drive for us give or take traffic of course.
We went home, grabbed a nap (we are normally night ppl) woke up & grabbed noms and headed back around 3ish.
We got upstairs, found a purple shirt at the top of the stairs, asked where the line for the vendor room was, he said, "here" and pointed to where we stood, so we got in line, seconds later, "oh btw the rest of the line is down there somewhere, we can't block this area" we looked at him "so where?" he points to down the hall, which you couldn't see with all the people "somewhere over there just look for (name of some person we don't know) hes setting it up" So we wonder in the crowd looking for some person we don't know, no purple shirt to be found but we did find a group of people in sorta a line..... we asked them if this was the vendor line, thankfully one said "yup" so we got in line. Purple shirt finally showed up with yellow crowd control posts and was setting them up.
We finally got called over and the vendor room line finally started to move.
Vendor room:
Talk about Cluster Fuck. The one side where Funamation was set up was nice and spread open pretty well, wasn't so squished. We made our way though, we noticed not all of this room was open for some reason, they had screens blocking off about 1/4 of the room, as we got closer to the other side of the room where the exit was, paths got smaller and tighter for maneuver room. Artists alley was so tight and so packed though, it was very claustrophobic, why oh why didn't they open the room more since they HAD the room instead of as you got over more in the hall it was like Alice going though the small door to get to Wonderland as she started to grow taller.
We finally did get though all the dvd vendors though, we tried to stop and look at our maps but it was dang near impossible since everyone would crash into you. So we just walked our way though hoping we would find everyone and look at a map later when we weren't in such a crowded room. Not to mention trying to get cosplay photos, never gonna happen without holding up the lines of 100s of people and them getting pist off.
After all said and done with the vendor room, we made our way to the car to drop things off then grab some snacks and drinks, sit and wait for the Kabuki concert.
Kabuki:
As we stood in line purple shirts were setting up the yellow posts to crowd control, my husband and I were one of the first 10 people in line to get in. We sat and waited.
Finally they let us in, we got pretty excited to see a room full of chairs, kinda like how they had it for the Final Fantasy mini concert they had last year, "we can finally sit and be comfortable, which is great my back is f'in killing me" I told him.
We got right up in the front and took a seat, i snapped off a image of the new NakaKon sign!
Suddenly some of the purple and black shirts come up and ask us to stand up, they were talking the first row of chairs. Okay fine. Then the guy goes "maybe 2 rows" my husband said, "well how many rows are you planning to take here?" The guy finally replies, "about 5" seconds later "wait im being told all of them" now mind you last year when the Rondonrats came to preform they had tables/chairs off to either side of the room for people to sit. Joel then asked "are you guys gonna leave any chairs?" the guy said he didn't know. Suddenly this gal gets on the mic and tells us to clear the room they need to clear the chairs.
As we exit the room we are being told to get back in line. I turned and asked the girl "the end of the line!?" She said, "yes" I told her "no wait a min, so you mean to tell us the first 20-30ppl you guys let in have to go to the BACK of the line behind all these people even tho we were FIRST in line and its our fault you guys let us in early even though the chairs had to be removed, that isn't right"
Finally seconds later she directed us to the VIP/Media line for all those that got kicked out, by this point about half the people that were in line first already got scrambled by the rest of the line and we couldn't find them all, we stood and waited. There was two older ladies in front of us that one couldn't stand for long, a purple shirt got her a chair so she could sit and wait in line, that was nice. My husband then stopped the purple shirt and asked about chairs in the concert since he wanted a chair to sit on. They said they will see what they could do. I even mentioned the lady in front of us that will be needing a chair inside also.
10mins or so later they came back and informed us of 10 chairs off to the right hand front side for media and those of us needing a chair.
They finally got us inside, late start cause of the chair removal. I went front stage my husband went to get a chair, they almost didn't let him sit in one even though we had been told that he could (this was what my hubby told me after) but he ran into the guy that told him he was welcome to sit in a chair outside, he told him that they were for media and staff only, my husband told him that he mentioned chairs for him and others to sit in they finally let him. Once he sat down someone gave him trouble for not being media and he informed them that he was told by a purple shirt he could sit there, they let him be after that"
After about another 10 or so mins the concert finally started!
Yay! Also didn't see no rule about taking photos so i got a few
It was a awesome show, now i have to say this is one thing I do enjoy about Naka, them getting bands/guests right from Japan. It's always a great experience. After the show we made it to the line for a shirt and I got them to sign my Naka-kon book by their names. After that it was time to head to the "night life in Japan" panel and "you Don't know Japan"
We made it upstairs, got carded for the event and made our way to the room. Come to find out that "You don't know Japan" was just finishing. We asked one of the girls in line waiting for "night life in Japan" what was going on. She informed us that the "Funimation Peep Show" was canceled cause the guy didn't show up or something so they moved up the "you don't know Japan" Which right there is stupid in my opinion, if someone don't show up just leave the damn room empty, don't change panels around cause you see fit, that just screwed up everything for those of us that were gonna stay after "night life" for "you don't know". It only makes sense!
The girl told us that Naka updated the phone app to reflect changes, again stupid on their part cause not everyone has a damn fancy phone, we still run landlines in my house no fancy phone to be had.
So FAIL Naka-Kon!
No night life in Japan the way its described in the booklet it sounds like we are gonna learn about things to do in Japan at night, clubs, places to eat and so forth. Boy were we freaken wrong!
Guest of honor makes a magna about this "night life" were girls get guys to drink and spend money and pay for them to hang out with them, they even have bars like this for girls. This is all they talked about for the WHOLE PANEL!
So basically talk about whoring one-selves for the whole panel.
That isn't what we wanted, we thought "night life in japan" again like i said above, we were looking to learn about what to do/expect when we visit Japan some day and learn about what we can do at night, what places to eat etc.
That was a waste of time, then our panel to be canceled after cause they moved it up (during the time the Kabuki concert it got moved too) so it didn't just mess us up but many others that showed up hoping to do both panels.
Another FAIL Naka!
After this we just headed to get food and head home to crash and hope that Saturday turns out better.
SATURDAY!
Well thankfully the gal that had the app Friday night informed us the Funimation favs was cancelled for the same reasoning before we left Friday night.
So we could sleep in a extra hour before having to be back at 11am for Maid Cafe.
Now mind you this is our FIRST and LAST Maid Cafe. Reasons why follows.
We got to the hall, didn't know where it was, finally made it upstairs to the info booth, my badge flew around my neck so it was hanging down my back, i didn't realize this, the girl at the booth asked if i was there to buy a pass, I informed her "No i just needed directions to maid cafe" she wasn't going to tell me cause I didn't have a badge, thankfully my husband when i started to panic about my badge realized it was hanging behind me, whew!
Anyway we were told that it was across the street at the hotel, so off we ran.
We got inside and sat down, one of the maids brought us our little dessert plates. No explaining what was what on the plate, we just saw a brown blob and a green one and this white disc that was hard as a rock. I proceeded to poke it with my fork. Explaining to my husband that I was guessing the green one was green tea and brown was maybe chocolate and not to bite the white one cause it was frozen solid that you could probably break your teeth on it.
One maid finally came over and asked us, "tea or water" we both came back with "tea" now we could hear other maids asking flavors of tea etc. Ours just "ok be right back" Thankfully she returned with Earl Gray, a fav of ours so no biggie.
Another couple (who our maid kept thinking was our kids cause they were young, not the case, they were just a young married couple but whatever lol) Didn't even get there sweets til the last 15mins, drinks same.
Our maid didn't even come over to entertain us til the last 20mins, now we never did this before so we had 0 idea what was to go on, no one explained nothing. Our maid finally came over and we started to play 21.
Not even 10mins later another Maid asked if we could use more tea, we said, "please" she came over with a tray asked us what flavors since they were now outta Earl Gray. We both wanted English Breakfast. She said "ok brb" well then we hear them talking about drawings and a dance they are gonna perform for us. Maid still no where to be found with our tea, oh wait she's up helping with the drawing!
So mind you instead of making sure everyone had a ticket they just started to draw #'s. Come to find out someone didn't have a ticket after they drew the 2nd number, oh look they got a ticket and had the winning number, shocking! So not fair at all!
So they finally got to their dance and our tea? no where to be found, our maid, in the dance.
So after the dance they directed to finish up and leave the room, our maid that was to get us the tea, no "oh im sorry brb with tea" nothing, we just got told to leave the room.
A waste of $15 times 2. $30 and that's it? Waste!
So we made it back over from across the way to the RightStuf Industry Panel, it was okay. Nothing to hoot and holler over but info source grabbed, now we went by there table at the convention they clearly had there stuff marked up at the con. Bad move on their part.
We had time to kill so back to the squishy vendors room. We sat and chatted with a artist friend of ours while he was working on a commission for a bit, then went and wandered some more. Always nice catching up with friends, thankfully he was at a corner booth so we didn't hold up traffic and that corner was fairy big in size for ppl to get around.
After that we headed to "Action Underground" this panel was a joke. It seems like every panel we got too over the weekend NO ONE could figure out how to work the damn projectors.
They just kept playing trailers and saying "highly recommend this one cause.....its a great anime cause of story or whatever they decided to follow up with " Some even they said "can't show this cause its 18+ or talk about it" or whatever excuses they were going with. Some trailers ended up having 2-3 diff animes in it but they couldn't tell us which was which and some because they were 18+, about 15-20mins of this crazy crap, we just got up and left along with other people, not to mention they couldn't turn down the lights cause it would effect all the rooms in that area. So after all that and straining our eyes, enough was enough.
So after that we just went to grab food, another beyond pist off day already and we wanted to hit up at least 6 other panels, one we most looked forward to was Godzilla (since it was nice to see a panel finally about it) as well as maybe hitting up some Bubblegum Crisis!
After we ate my husband and I also didn't have much of a great experience at Subway so it was another nail into the coffin for Saturday, we decided to just go home, we didn't wanna experience anything else to go wrong with the convention or we were just gonna start cussing even more so then we already were. (we drove and went to the Subway half way home from the con cause the one by the con was we were sure stupid busy since they were last year)
We made it home and first thing we did was sleep. We are normally night people so I guess this was one way to get our schedule back to normal. When we woke up we went though our convention hull of animes, marking our lists and then making orders for some though websites cause they had them cheaper then some people at the convention. Lucky i made the list of price comparing it helped save some money. After that we ordered pizza and just watched anime til 5am and went to bed.
We didn't even set a alarm for sunday, even tho we planned on sake and the wrestling panel we were looking forward too, which we didn't know if it was gonna happen since another wrestling (hardcore) panel was introduced Saturday evening cause a panel got cancelled and pist more ppl off. So the money we spent for sunday and not even go cause that's how bad the convention pist us off this year.
We woke up around 4:30pm today and now I been writing this review, drinking coffee, we played some video games and still in some cases but took a break to write this review since Naka posted about wanting to hear from us about our experience this weekend, well here is my review and experience.
My husband and I used to love going to Naka, even with the few bumps, but this year was the worst yet, same with Planet Comicon getting awful.
We dont plan on going to either convention next year at this point cause we are getting SO DONE with conventions at this point and now awful they been getting and we keep getting more disappointed each year.
I will get off my soap box now, thank you.
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