26 Nov Vienna Comic Con 2015
Wow! What a weekend! We waited so long for the Vienna Comic Con to finally happen and now it’s already over. I have so much to talk about and so many photos to show, that I decided to divide the whole review into multiple posts. Today I’ll talk about the event as a whole, the next post will be about my cosplay photos from Saturday, the next one after will show cosplay pictures from Sunday and last, but not least I’ll show you our loot from VIECC.
If you want to read my preview before the Comic Con took place as well as the ticket ordering process, you can find the first post here.
Ok, then let’s start talking about the Vienna Comic Con 2015 in general:
Location
The Vienna Comic Con took place in Vienna Messe hall D. It really easy and pretty fast to get to from wherever in Vienna you might live. It’s even easy to reach from the airport or one of the many confusing main railroad stations since it’s really central. It took us approximately 50 minutes to get there, but we live pretty much near the city limit, so it’s okay.
The hall itself is the smallest of the four exhibition halls, but while it was pretty crowded at times (especially around noon on both days, but Saturday was worse), it was sufficient for the first time. If there were too many people in one corner you just went to another and so on. You could also use the entrance hall and the outer hallways for taking photos or relaxing a bit. On both days together, there were about 17.000 visitors. Unbelievable!
I also made a really short video of us how we managed our way through the crowd:
As you can see it wasn’t that bad at all (in comparison to other conventions)! It would be really awesome if they could get a bigger hall (or two halls) for the next time so that there could be even more exhibitions, shops, and space.
Organization & Service
We first arrived on Saturday at about 10:30 a.m. We had planned to be there a little bit earlier, but with a toddler and having to equip all your cosplay gear (XD), it took us a little bit longer. There were a lot of people waiting in line but because so many people were assigned to give out the badges, we only had to wait around 5 minutes. They scanned our ticket, we got our really nice and high-quality weekend badges without any problems (if you’ve been to other conventions, even simple tasks like this may cause problems or confusion @_@, like OMG, there were already hundreds of people with pre-order tickets, what do I do now, if another one wants to convert theirs?). After that everyone good a paper bag with an information and program booklet and we were asked if we have any weapons with us. First I wanted to say: “Yes, my mind is my weapon!”, but I rather kept it to myself to not cause any problems…
The whole crew seemed really helpful, friendly and organized. Even the announcements weren’t annoying since they were kept short and concise.
There was also a cloak room, where you could conveniently deposit your jacket or other things for €1 a piece. Because there were also many staff members in charge, it was done really quickly.
If you wanted to, you could even have your Instagram pictures printed out as a souvenir.
Or you could buy some Vienna Comic Con merchandise such as a t-shirt (€23) or hoodie (€39). I have to say that I found them a bit on the expensive side.
Guests & Panels
As I already mentioned in my earlier post, I wasn’t overwhelmed by the guests, but maybe I expected a little bit too much for the first Comic Con here in Vienna. I’m not into Breaking Bad or Dr. Who and we still haven’t watched the fifth season of Game of Thrones (scandalous, I know o_O!!!), however, I totally enjoyed watching the first four seasons. I really appreciate it that they got all those guests, though, I think they were just not the right ones for me. But I was nevertheless happy to be able to take a look at them at least XD. Now I can tell everybody that I actually saw them. I’m very excited about who’ll be coming next year.
I have to confess that with all the action, we totally forgot about the panels on the main stage ^.^°. But we attended some panels on the panel stage, and those were surprisingly interesting. We are thinking about watching even more panels next year. It’s also really nice to sit down for a few minutes and relax.
Attractions
Now I’ll show you some of the small (or bigger) attractions from Vienna Comic Con:
Let’s start with the Assassin’s Creed “Leap of Faith”. I just didn’t dare to jump, but Tom decided he wanted to do it, so we lined up as the second thing right on Sunday morning (after visiting the Iron Throne). We had to wait for around 20 to 30 minutes I think and then Tom was finally allowed to climb the lifting ramp. You could jump from either 10 meters or 7 meters of height. Tom went for the full 10 meters of course.
And here’s a video of the jump:
With the new Star Wars movie out really soon, there were, of course, many Star Wars related things to see. The biggest and most impressive piece from the whole convention was this really cool replica of Darth Vader’s Tie Fighter:
There were also Star Wars fan groups, who did cosplays (photos will be included on the next cosplay posts), lightsaber fights and showcases of helmets, weapons and more.
Cerealkillerz, Blogdot.tv, and Master of Dirt brought this awesome K.I.T.T from the TV series Knight Rider (you know, the one with David Hasselhoff back in the 80’s) to the Vienna Comic Con. It really was a crowd puller and I still got the theme stuck in my head!
Sky had a small stand with an “Iron Throne” from Game of Thrones, where you could sit down and get yourself photographed as the ruler for 10 seconds. They posted all of the photos on their Facebook page, which is pretty cool, but here are the photos we took:
There was a really good looking Deadpool promoting the upcoming movie. You could take pictures with him and then you received some coupon which you could trade in for a Deadpool Movie poster for free. Nice! Tom approves!
The new fantasy series Wienerland also had a really interesting booth, where you could take photos of yourself on an interesting motorcycle. The guys behind me weren’t statues by the way but either cosplayers or actors. I might be a little bit too cute and colorful for the theme, but hey, I thought it looked funny. They also showed the premiere of the first episode of the series at Vienna Comic Con to everyone who was invited.
At the Libro & Nerf (Hasbro) stand you could do a Nerv shooting game and win a small Nerf gun (what else?). On Saturday, we had to score at least 2 out of three shots into some specified pipes, and I really hit twice and actually won a gun (yay!). On Saturday, we had to score 3 random hits out of 6 shots, but I only got two hits, because the little arrows always got stuck… But it was funny anyway.
Games
Gamers also had something to look for: Nintendo, Ubisoft, Xbox and more were present as well. Let’s start with Nintendo’s colorful stand:
You could play Mario Kart, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Mario Tennis, Yokai Watch and more:
We also had the chance to take a look at the new indie game FAST Racing NEO exclusively for Wii U by developer Shin’en. FAST Racing NEO is a futuristic racing game, that is most similar to games like F-Zero or WipEout, but also a little different. I’m really looking forward to December, when it’ll be out at the Nintendo eShop because I loved playing F-Zero on SNES or Extreme-G for N64.
And here’s also a short video of Tom trying it out:
In my opinion, it looks really good. The fans remind me of Mario Kart Wii’s Koopa Cape XD.
And here’s the Mega Wool Yoshi Amiibo in comparison to the normal one. I always wanted to have a normal wool Yoshi Amiibo, until I saw one in reality and it just didn’t look like I Imagined it would look. But the Mega Wool Yoshi is just really cool and looks way better!
Here’s a preview of the new Wolf Link & Midna Amiibo. I loved Twilight Princess and I’m excited about the HD edition for Wii U. The Amiibo looks great, Midna is just the best Zelda character ever!
And the new Animal Crossing Amiibos. K.K. is so cool!
Ubisoft also had some games available to play like Assasin’s Creed, of course, but we actually didn’t take a look.
Libro and Xbox had Just Cause 3, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Deadpool, but we only had time to play Deadpool (the other consoles were already taken).
Then there was also a big Media Markt stand and they had some Virtual Headsets to try out. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of it, but we tried out one of those Samsung Set and it was pretty cool. Even Tom could see the 3D effect! The also had the HTC Vive headset and some 3d printers, which they tried to sell XD. And I think Uncharted – The Nathan Drake Collection, which we already played, so I didn’t pay too much attention to it.
Shops
Okay, let me show you some impressions of the shops. There were many different shops selling figures, merchandise, clothing, anime, manga, comics and more. Some people noted that for a Comic Con there was only very few seller selling comics and too many selling anime & manga stuff. In retrospective, that’s right. I also imagined that there would be a lot more comic sellers like at Vienna Comix, but for me the selection of shops was okay. I didn’t go to Comic Con to buy comics (or manga for that fact), which I can get at every book or comic store (or even amazon), but to get some more special or rare goods.
Artist Alley
The Artist Alley was impressive! So many great and talented artists. I especially loved the sculpture creators:
All figures on the pictures above are by Halimaw Sculptures. These were some of the most impressive figures I’ve ever seen in my life!
Observing these artists live at work was really cool as well.
Food XD
All around the hall you cool find small food stand with things like ice creams, soft drinks or pretzels. The pretzels were unbelievable! They smelled so good and when we finally bought one, they were still warm and soft. We also had a really good Schaumbecher (it’s really hard to explain, but they are similar to Dickmann’s if you know them).
In front of the hall, you could also find the “flash cafe” (we wondered if they renamed it just for the Comic Con?), which sold sandwiches, bagels, and hot dogs. The things weren’t cheap, but that’s the prices you have to pay at a fair. At least the quality of everything we bought there was really good, so there’s nothing to complain about. On the second floor of the hall entrance, there was also a panorama restaurant, which was expensive as well, but also really crowded at all times, so we decided to not buy anything there. But the food looked and smelled really good ^,^°.
I just wished the had been more trash bins around. Not like it was dirty anywhere (it was really clean for that many people!), but you always had to run to the other side of the hall because this was the only place we found a trash bin. Maybe they gave out the paper bags as trash bags?
Atmosphere
I don’t know why or how, but I wasn’t the only one who felt that the atmosphere was really nice in comparison to other conventions. There were people of all ages and interests, but everyone was really nice and in a good mood from my experience. All the cosplayers I asked for a photo were totally friendly and patient.
So altogether I can just say, that we had a great weekend. It was definitely worth its money, and a great event for the first time. We really want to go again next year, and maybe skip the AniNite for it (which will be at the Multiversum AGAIN @_@!). I just hope there will be even more to see, and also some more special guest. Maybe we’ll also take Flynn with us on one day, I think he’ll love all the people and things as well (and he’ll be almost 2 and a half year by then).
That’s all for now. In the next days I’ll post some of my cosplay photos of all those great cosplayers I saw at Vienna Comic Con. Stay tuned until then!
Bye, Raya