Wow, this is going well all in all. there was one minor scheduling mixup, but it was more a "that would have been cool to go to"
rather than a "Aww man, that was the one thing I wanted to see!" So, after just barely making the plane in the morning things have gone
quite swimmingly. The weather is Chamber of Commerce beautiful. Gorgeously sunny skies, temps in the mid-70's and zero humidity.
It is impossible to have better weather for an anime convention than that. Seriously, it's completely perfect. It's a special treat, considering the usual
convention weather consists of either scorching heat, oppressive humidity, many feet worth of snow, bone chilling wind, the occasional
hurricane, or some combination of the above, and that New England just had record smashing floods this past week.
The theme this year is "Mad Science", though I can't say I see too many people doing a whole lot of cosplay along those lines. Probably because mad science cosplay tends to look just like regular cosplay. So far it's the usual cavalcade of fur suits, Nintendo characters, girls is skimpy school-girl outfits, Shonen Jump characters, Final Fantasy outfits, crossplay of both genders, people on leashes, lost ravers and people wearing random sets of cat ears. It's just kind of like that, as are the majority of other anime cons to a greater or lesser extent.
To say things are flowing smoothly is probably way understating things. Anime cons tend to be barely controlled chaos. Rooms overfill, times get moved at random, lines snake all over the place to no end, and everything is generally a mess. Not a single mess to be seen at Anime Boston 2010. Everything is flowing smoothly, from the registration line to the big event lines to the small panels. It's as close to perfection as an all volunteer gathering of 15,000 people can be.
This year's layout is quite a bit different from previous years. For anyone not familiar with the Hynes Convention Center there's the main entrance level with one huge exhibition hall and some meeting rooms, a second level with a big arena-like main events room complete with balcony seating, another big exhibition hall and some more meeting rooms and a third level with several large ballrooms and more meeting rooms. The dealer's room used to be on the second floor, but it has been moved downstairs, the artists alley has moved from a series of meeting rooms to the ballrooms upstairs, live gaming have moved out of the Hynes Center to the attached Sheraton hotel, all of the meeting rooms are now in the WiFi-enabled Hynes Center, and there is a new secondary events room where the dealer's room used to be. All in all, it works really well. Traffic flow is excellent all over with fewer massive clog points.
Now, lets roll this bad boy on. Onward, to glory!
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