Midoricon 2015!!! Amazing isn’t it, just a few short years ago this small convention started at Salt Fork State Park in Cambridge, OH, made it to its fourth year overall, and enjoyed its second year at the beautiful Maumee Lodge in Oregon, OH. I would like to start this, by saying that I do love Midoricon. It’s one of very few conventions where you can easily meet up with people in a close, intimate setting. That being said, this year was boring I did not attend some of the events, such as the Live Action Mario Kart, so I can’t provide and opinion on them. I will also note that this year, there is no interview with one of the guests.
As every year, I went to Midoricon with the same group of friends. On Friday, we got up early (which is amazing in itself!), got our badges, and started our weekend adventure by simply wandering around. Around noon, my group split in two. Some of us headed over to the Nerf Wars event going on, while the rest went elsewhere. While the guys (Reckless Krew) running the event were awesome and it was fun on a whole, my group of 4 people were the only ones that were actually there for the entire event. It seemed to be really poor planning to put an event in a time slot, where not only are there few people at the convention (more on attendance later), but also have very little advertising for it. We only found it by accident (wandering around and happened to see Reckless Krew setting up the Nerf guns).
Friday night also posed another problem. A bonfire was scheduled for 9pm. You’d think a bonfire would be easy to find. Nope. While actually looking for the bonfire, I came across a group of other con-goers who had little luck finding it either. They said they found a fire-pit that looked like it was setup, so they hung around waiting for it to start but no one else showed up. One girl also told me that they had no maps except a big one at the registration table and one drawn on a dry erase board. I know that they had small booklets provided that I THINK had small maps in them, but a digital map would have been nice that con-goers could view on our phones. The schedule was visible online, so why not a map? It was suggested by multiple people (myself included) two years ago when Midoricon was at Shawnee. It took someone going back into the lodge, hunting down a staff member, and being pointed in the right direction to finally get where we were going.
Saturday, we got up for Day 2! One again, we all split up to go our own things. Around 2pm, some of us headed to the amphitheater for Midoricon’s Got Talent. Last year, I missed this event and didn’t hear much about it, so I decided to check it out. The event seemed very unorganized, and like no one knew what to do, or what was going on. About 20 minutes in, my group and several other large groups got up and left. Later that night brought us the Beach Party!…or it should have. It was set to start at 6pm and end at 8pm, around 7 o’clock, I got down to the beach to find….nothing. No con-goers, no staff members, no one. One of two things happened I guess, either the party didn’t happen, or I was at the wrong beach! Either way, it didn’t happen for me. Saturday night did bring us Tea Time with Deadpool, which was the highlight of Saturday, and the highlight of the entire convention.
Earlier I had mentioned that there was only my group that attended the Nerf Wars due to a low number of people at the convention at that time. That being said, it seemed like attendance was very low this year the entire weekend. Even Saturday, which is the busiest day for any convention, seemed like low attendance. Maybe it was because Maumee is bigger than Salt Fork that created the illusion, but this year’s attendance even seemed like it was less than Year 1’s (I’d almost bet anything this year’s attendance was MUCH lower than last year’s). Even the Tea Time with Deadpool event, which normally fills a room over-capacity, was barely half full this year. Maybe I’m totally wrong and attendance is actually up this year, and it certainly looked lower.
One thing that could attribute to low attendance was the lack of guests. Midoricon 2013 brought us Mr. CreepyPasta, a well-known CreepyPasta Narrator and YouTuber. Midoricon 2014 brought us the guys behind Marble Hornets. While both of these guests are not huge, they both seemed to draw in a sizable amount of people.If Midoricon wants to continue, the convention needs to procure some actual guests (somehow).
I will give the convention props on both the Dealer Room and the Artist Alley. In both areas, either there were less vendors, or the spaces were set-up differently than last year, which made it MUCH easier to actually walk around and browse through stuff without much of a fuss about blocking walkways or anything.
While my group DID have fun, I mean c’mon it’s almost impossible to not have fun at a convention, we are tentatively holding off making plans for going to Midoricon 2016 unless something decent is announced . Unless the convention grows a little, or brings in something to draw us back, we may not be returning. This is a real shame as this was our favorite convention.
