A new year is almost upon us and after two years of laying dormant from the greater public for... reasons, I feel confident and safe enough to return to attending conventions following getting vaccinated earlier in the summer. Provided cases don't suddenly jump by Spring 2022 and the cons get closed by the organizers, my goal is to attend the same six cons I made yearly traditions in 2018 and 2019.
For those wondering, I skipped New York Comic Con 2021 and have no plans on attending Anime NYC 2021 either since the state of the pandemic is still deep enough to where I'd rather stay home and not risk getting sick with a con as big as NYCC. Thankfully I did see through footage by others that the booths in Dealer's Room were much more spread out (haven't seen much on the artist's alley but it sounds like its in the same boat) and the overall attendance was cut in half, eliminating much of the crowds that otherwise congested up the walkways and making traversing the con much easier compared to digging and plowing through hordes of people. This especially effected Castle Point Anime Convention since its's a two-day con and the Meadowlands Expo is nowhere near as big as many of the other venues that host conventions later in the year. Even the Long Island Retro Game Expo, another con taking place in a rather small venue at the Cradle of Aviation, manages to corral its bigger crowds into only the first-floor dealer's room, leaving the free play consoles/computers and the arcade on the second and third floors without the large clusters you associate with most cons.
As mentioned above, these six conventions will be my main destinations throughout 2022- this time represented with what would have been the character choices for 2021 alongside the characters for 2022. Since Eternal Con and AnimeNYC have yet to announce their dates for their 2022 conventions, I can't say on when exactly I'll be attending each con beyond "no Sundays or Thrusdays except as a last resort". I learned that the hard way after AnimeNEXT 2016 due to the vastly reduced convention hours on the final day compared to the other days the con takes place once you factor in that I usually don't get to these conventions till around noon and I have to warp my sleep schedule quite a bit for the cons outside of Long Island so I have some time in the mornings to have breakfast and do the final bit of prep before I drive off. And since I exhaust my time at the con throughout the entire day running a marathon across the Dealer's Room, the Artist's Alley, and the rest of the convention borderline breaking my voice, I don't think I can last more than one day anyways.
CPAC 2022 will also be the first big convention of mine since two things from the previous year: The start of the pandemic, and the big hard drive crash I went through all the way back in late 2020 that took all of my convention and cosplay photos with it. Thus, I want to dedicate 2022 to filling in a new album of photos and a gallery of cosplays to show the full experience of the con, and as with previous years I will be posting the full galleries of cosplays on my Facebook for the three anime-focused cons, plus assorted pictures of the con itself on Twitter and Instagram. There are some smaller local events on Long Island that I'm considering as well, two or three of them to be exact, but I will not be providing large-scale coverage of them on social media since their general attendance is much lower. There are some other conventions that I've been thinking of for the potential future, but most of them are too far or don't really appeal to any of my tastes, as much as something like a fighting game con would appeal to me but I don't know of any in the Long Island, NYC, or New Jersey areas (if they exist).
Anyways I'm gonna call this blog post done so I can go get some of my projects and ideas worked on and start thinking of what to do for the up and coming holidays. Catch you all later.
