Monster-Mania Convention 2014 Review

Over the weekend I attended Monster-Mania Con at Crowne Plaza Hotel Cherry Hill, NJ for the first time. It was a convention centered around horror movies and TV shows, and also Batman. What drew me to this convention was the guests list as some actors from my favorite show The Walking Dead was attending.

The one guests that I had to acquire his autograph was Keith David. He played in Pitch Black, They Live, and many voice overs for games, cartoons and anime. My favorite cartoon show Disney ever produced was Gargoyles. If you never watched Gargoyles, I highly recommend you do. You will not be disappointed in the series. Gargoyles TV show made me love Shakespeare's Macbeth play in high school, because so much of the show's plot was centered around the play. So course being a fan of the show, I had Keith David sign my poster of Goliath who he voiced in Gargoyles. I actually bought the entire Gargoyles series at Monster-Mania, because the rest of the series was taking forever to come out on dvd the regular way. I had to settle for the bootleg copy, but it still works.

Me as Pikachu The Purge Version

I did enjoy many of the cosplayers that came out for this con. Some was very scary, especially the clowns, and some not so scary but fantastic as many Batman fans came out. Just like my other cosplayer friends, I also cosplayed myself. Every convention I attend, I have to cosplay or it will feel extremely weird. On Friday I cosplayed a Firefly from The Last of Us game (highly recommended game to play) and Saturday Pikachu The Purge version. It was extremely awesome cosplaying them both as the kids loved the Pikachu cosplay.

Click Here to see pictures taken at Monster-Mania Con.

CONS
There was many concerns I had with this convention. From the beginning, I noticed there was no weapons props check section at all. I walked in freely with my toy rifle, knife, bat and gun without staff checking my weapons. This issues could result in a major lawsuit if somebody brought a prop that wasn't con approved and severely harm somebody with these objects. Monster-Mania staff really needs to address this issue for the safety of congoers.

The programming for the con was a huge disappointment. There was no Q&A panel for The Walking Dead guests, which was why I bought the VIP pass thinking there was one. Actually, many of these guests whom attended the con, did not do a Q&A panel. It felt like these guests were there to come and take our money. Panels is our chance, as fans, to interact with the guests and Monster-Mania con only established a few Q&A panels.

In addition, the programming had no additional panels. Every convention I have attended, there was some type of workshop panel, fan discussion on a topic, even a kid zone section which is always fun to hang out. At Monster-Mania, there was nothing of that in the programming section at all. All they ran was movies in another room. They could have done special effect custom artist demonstration, Cosplay idea discussions, face painting, balloon making, just something else that went along with watching movies.

Besides the charity event, there was basically no programming at all for Sunday. With lack of panels at this convention, I was fairly bored majority of the time. I really hope in the near future, the stuff will explore other creative activities in their programming for congoers.

Furthermore, when I wanted to check pricing for tickets online on Monster-Mania website for a friend, they blocked it out. They covered everything up with a huge sign that read no more online tickets. That sign could have been made smaller or disable the payment option button, for us congoers to still see the admission prices.

Finally, the custom contest was held Saturday night at 10pm. That is way too late for a custom contest to run. Normally cosplay contests are held around 5-8pm because it is more convenient for many people, especially children participating in the contest. The time of the event should be changed in the future to make it more accessible for everybody.

Monster-Mania 2015
Although I had an okay time at this conventions, however, I will not be attending this convention next year. There was way too many cons that outweighed the pros, and I felt my VIP pass was wasted. If anybody would want to attend this convention, I would recommend buying a ticket on Saturday to save money. If I ever attend this convention again, it will be only for one day.

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