Two Lost Boys Blog

BronyCon 2015 - A Report

Hello everyone,

This past weekend Jon and I attended BronyCon in Baltimore, Maryland. BronyCon is an annual fan convention for the hugely successful Hasbro TV show, "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" (MLP:FiM), which is now in its fifth season.

Neither of us had been to BronyCon before, but it is something we have wanted to do in the past. BronyCon, for the past four years, has been held at the Baltimore Convention Center, in the Inner Harbor of downtown Baltimore. The convention runs over three days, Friday through Sunday.

Due to logistical reasons for us, this year, for our first one, we decided it would be better if we just did one day. We chose Saturday, since that was the middle day, and not a work day, so overall it seemed to fit well. For conventions you are nearly always given a badge to wear, so that you can come and go as you please. Registration for the badges was open from Thursday afternoon, so as to save time Saturday morning with what we anticipated would be big crowds, we drove down in the evening to collect our badges.

Of course, being a fairly busy city, and the convention centre being in the downtown core, parking was destined to be expensive. We had to park at a hotel next to the centre, which cost a small fortune just for the half hour we were collecting our badges. The convention centre itself was rather uninspired, and although there were some banners for BronyCon, it was otherwise rather dull looking.







We went down to the registration hall, and of course, the first thing I see from the line is this;


I knew then it would be an interesting weekend! I was curious to see other cosplayers and see what wild designs they had come up with!

So Saturday morning finally came, and we were up before the crack of dawn and in Baltimore earlier than I otherwise would like to be, parked in the same expensive hotel again. With our badges in hand we were able to stand in the normal entrance line, while others had to stand and wait in a line to get into the registration area. The convention was due to start at 9am, and of course they didn't open the doors until 9am. If we hadn't have already picked up our badges on Thursday, we would now be rushing to registration, instead of rushing to our first venue of the day!




On Thursday we had been given a program guide that explained all the various events happening at the convention, so we were able to decide in advance what we wanted to try to see and do. Of course, best laid plans always go awry. The photo below shows the program information we were given and our badges, as well as t-shirts we bought to wear for the day.


The main two things we wanted to do at BronyCon were actually related to the same person. A celebrity by the name of John de Lancie (Discord in MLP:FiM, Q in Star Trek, amongst many other roles) was going to be there, and he had a panel (a talk or Q&A session) of his own, and was also signing autographs. Jon went to the autograph ticketing area, and I went upstairs to get in line for the panel. Apparently the previous days' autograph session had been a bit of a disaster, and so they were not selling tickets for photographs with John de Lancie today, only signatures, which was a shame. Jon did however get another ticket for another celebrity, and managed to get a photo and signature one; for Andrea Libman, best known to MLP as Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy.



In the meantime I was upstairs trying to figure out where to stand for the panel, at the "Hall of the Sun". There were very few convention workers around giving directions, which was annoying. Eventually someone came along and said that everyone for the first panel in this particular room (which was not de Lancie's; he was second), should make a line against the wall, and everyone else to come back later. I was really keen to see Mr de Lancie, and even without having been here before, I anticipated he would be popular. We didn't get up at a ridiculous hour only to miss him, so I waited around and unofficially started my own line. So a while later, the first panel lets in, but only minutes before it's about to start, and by this time the line for it was enormous, and the people waiting for John de Lancie had exploded into a huge crowd milling around the lobby with no real direction. Making people form an orderly line wouldn't have gone amiss at this point. Anyway, we were finally told to stand against the wall, and having been there first, I was determined to be in front, which thankfully I ended up being.

When we were finally let into the room, we didn't have long to wait. It was evident that this room was not going to be adequate to accommodate everyone who wanted to see him. It's weird because he is a big celebrity, you would have thought they would have chosen a different room for this, but evidently not (they had plenty of rooms for other panels). Mr de Lancie appeared a short while later to a roaring applause, and the session ended up being a Q&A. There was an open mic, and people made a line to go up and ask questions.



So this is where I perhaps will cause some controversy. Shows like MLP have a strong message that speaks to many different people of all backgrounds. At times the show can be quite grown up and very direct in its strong moralistic overtones, with stories about selfishness, greed, power, friendship and family. Obviously TV shows have a large impact on peoples' lives, and they connect with them in many different ways. Everyone has that one show they love, and feel understands their plight; and for many, this is My Little Pony. With that all said, however, and without wanting to be intentionally harsh, some people perhaps need to learn a little self control. For the most part, questions were fairly standard, but some people came across as a little creepy, especially when declaring their love for John de Lancie over a loud speaker in front of hundreds of people (literally telling him they are in love with him, and even if he is too old for them, they love him anyway!). It was cringeworthy listening to it in amongst the crowd, and you could see it made him feel uncomfortable, so I can't even imagine what he thought inside. Other questions were a little less odd, but made it clear that some people didn't quite understand that he was not actually the character Discord, or Q, or whoever, but instead a real person, and that must have been a little unnerving for him, too. With that all said, overall it was a fun session, and our waiting for hours beforehand paid off because we were in the front row and got some good photos of him, and a few short video clips. John de Lancie is a very nice man, very honest, and quite humourous. I would definitely see him again if I had the opportunity.

After that we went down to the marketplace area, where lots of vendors were set up selling their merchandise. Sadly, most of the official convention merchandise we wanted was already sold out - on the morning of the second of three days - which is pretty crazy. Apparently some of it had sold out around 2.30pm on the day before, so some items didn't even make it past the first day. Again with the organisation of things (like the panel waiting fiasco), I think they could have better prepared for the merchandise sales, especially since they obviously knew how many tickets they had sold. Overall the marketplace was pretty standard. Most vendors were independent artists and crafts people who were selling their own items that had some vague theme towards MLP. Much of it was incredibly expensive, too. While I don't mind supporting local run businesses, and independent artists, $500 for a plush animal is extremely excessive. We refused to buy any of them that cost that much. We did however pick up one plush that was more of a standard price, the official convention t-shirt, and a few other small items, including a few pieces of artwork.









I took this once we got home of the Blazing Star plush we bought; our small Bing Bong wanted to get in on the act, too!


The odd thing about the marketplace is that there was nothing actually sponsored or officially from MLP, Hasbro or any of their companies and brands. The closest they came were some convention pre-release trading cards that were an official MLP product, but that was it. Even the official convention t-shirt was a convention t-shirt, and not MLP; which leads me into my next point.


The convention had a strange feel to it overall, because there were no actual MLP related posters or banners, with the characters depicted on the ones they did have being non-official ones created exclusively for BronyCon. As you will discover further into this report, I felt I had stepped into this weird parallel universe, that was about MLP fans, but not about the show. More about that later, though.

We decided that we would go to the 1pm autograph signing for de Lancie, and the 3pm one for Andrea Libman. John de Lancie had three throughout the day - we had already missed one of them by this point. Miss Libman had two, again we had missed her first one already. So we waited in the lobby area on the lower level outside the autograph room, and soon discovered more of the chaotic lack of organisation. The line was indescribably long, and we had difficulty finding the end of it in such a cramped space with so many people. Anyway, we finally joined the back of the line, and were let into the hall a little while later. The line moved at a glacial pace, and was painful to endure. 1.35pm rolled around and suddenly it was announced that the session had ended, and we would all be waiting for the 3pm signing now! Well, we were not happy, that's for sure. We did not want to lose our place though, because if we left now, we might not see him at all. It was better to keep our place, knowing how far we had gotten and how slow the line was moving. So 3pm rolled around, and he didn't show up. At around 3.30pm I decided that it had gotten to be beyond ridiculous, and went to find a manager. I did find one, and I explained to him that we had been in line for over two hours for de Lancie, and we also had a ticket for Libman - who was currently signing and on her last set of the day. So would we get to meet her? Had we wasted our money? What could he suggest so we didn't lose our place in line? He told me to leave the de Lancie line and go to see Andrea Libman, as her line was much quicker (like a cheetah compared to a snail to be honest) and that he had my personal assurance that we could rejoin the de Lancie line near the front, to get Mr de Lancie afterwards. I got the manager's name, and took a good mental note of what he looked like, and we set off to meet the voice of Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie. We did get to meet her, and in good time too. She was very friendly and it was nice to meet her.



The way it was set up for the autographs was that there were two lines effectively. One on the outside and one on the inside of a curtained off area where the celebrites were. When we had left the line we were still on the outside. Once we met Andrea Libman we went and got into the inner line for de Lancie. Had a worker said anything, I would have gone to get the manager, but as it happened nobody said a thing. Also, we joined the line for Mr de Lanice not much behind where we had left it, even having met Andrea Libman - yes, his line was that slow (he had also only showed up shortly before we got into his line again, making him an hour behind the posted time)! As per my thoughts from the morning about him being a nice man, he certainly was. It's hard to get a grasp of a person in a brief moment signing an autograph, but you have to realise that they are just people too, doing a job, and that you can't take them too seriously, personally or otherwise (which also relates to what I said above about people being inappropriate). He was polite and signed our pictures, asked us where we were from, and that was that. I'm glad we met him, but we would not endure the insanity of that line ever again!


After that epic fiasco, it was almost time for the marketplace to close for the day, so we went downstairs to look around one more time. Following that, and after some much needed food, we decided to check out some of the other panels. For anyone reading this who was there, or happens to know what I am talking about, here are the ones we saw (whether that be in its entirety, or just in part): Making Bling and other Metal Things, Ponyinabox: All of Time and Space, Ask-a-Pony, and MLP:CCG Design a Card. Earlier I mentioned the oddness of this convention, and here I'll expand upon that. These panels were a little strange to me. None of them actually related directly to the show. The metal one had nothing to do with anything as far as I could tell, and we walked in, sat for a minute, and walked out again! The Ponyinabox one was presented by a fan panel who made their own MLP radio and internet shows. They seemed to be pretty popular, too, even though we'd never heard of them. The Ask-a-Pony was cosplayers who were pretending to actually be the pony in question, and guests could ask the "ponies" in-character questions, which the cosplayers would answer. Again, we didn't stay long for that. The Design a Card panel was some card game makers who were getting fans to interact and help "design" next years' MLP BronyCon exclusive card. I suppose if you're interested in the cards and are going to be there next year, it could be neat, but again, we sat for a few minutes and left again.

We also checked out Bronypalooza, which people were waiting for about two hours for. We had walked past the line on the way to dinner, went to dinner, came back, and people were still waiting. We were curious as to what exactly it was, so we waited for the line to be let in, then just followed them in. It took us about 5 minutes of waiting, and I'm glad that's all we waited. Apparently it was some sort of fan concert. As with the rest of the convention features, I wasn't quite sure what the point was. I think the musicians on the stage were MLP fans who were performing as though they were in character, but the music was nothing to do with MLP. So overall, I have no idea! We walked in, it was dark, loud, and people just jumping up and down to some guy singing, so we left again.








We also walked into the arcade, which I thought would be people playing MLP games, but apparently it was just all videos games of any kind. I'm not sure I'd waste convention time playing regular video games. There was also a table top game room we walked into. There were a variety of games in play, some were MLP related, others not. We checked out the cosplay photoshoot. I expected more cosplayers to show up, but we honestly saw more walking around during the day than we did at the photoshoot. Seeing as I haven't yet shared any, I'll put below my photos of all cosplayers from throughout the day, photoshoot or otherwise.










Later in the evening there was the Grand Galloping Gala, which takes its name from an event in the TV show. In the show this was a big party held by Princess Celestia, which during one such gathering the Mane 6 (the main characters) made it "interesting". This gala though was really just a formal ball. There was piano music and people in formal attire. I thought it was a shame that they didn't take a leaf from the TV show and make it a more inclusive, fun event, that reflected the changes by the characters in the one particular episode.

So, overall, as you can probably gather, BronyCon wasn't what I thought it was going to be. I felt as though I was in some weird parallel universe that was about MLP fans rather than MLP itself. Nothing officially recognised MLP, and there was no such sponsorship or endorsement. All the panels were fan based ones, about fan made things, or nothing to do with MLP altogether (and not just the ones I mentioned, too, there were many more!).

I wouldn't say I disliked BronyCon, but I think perhaps it needs to embrace the TV show more. As much as I am sure many of them are very talented, I don't personally care about an hour long panel about someone's fan fiction - I want to hear about the show. It would be nice to have had more (well, anything, really) involving the writers and creators of the series, which I feel would have brought the actual show into focus more. I liked meeting the two celebrities, and I enjoyed de Lancie's Q&A, but the disorganisation of them both - especially the autographs - was ridiculous, and stressful. Also, not having any convention merchandise left after the first morning was a disappointment, and something I think they need to address.

We will probably go next year, if nothing else to go for the first day to try to actually get the cool merchandise, and to get some of the more minor celebrity pictures, however, we won't wait hours and hours for one of the huge stars like John de Lancie again, as it was simply too much.

I'm sorry that this report ended up being so long! Even though we were just there for a day, there was so much involved, that it needed a lot of explaining!

Have a great week everyone,

Dan.