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| - The mighty have fallen far this year, as Wizard World Pittsburgh did not impress me in 2016. Even though they decided that since they're not returning to the city in the future, I would have hoped they would have tried harder to give their current attendees a better experience.
Unlike last year, the celebrity lineup wasn't exceptionally fantastic. Don't get me wrong: I was delighted on Sunday to enjoy panels featuring the cast of "Daredevil", not to mention Evan Peters. But those were really the only big names in this con - paling in comparison to last year's roundup of "X-Files" cast members, James Marsters, Shatner, and more.
Sadly, in addition to gutting the guest attendance, there were also half as many vendors as last year - although from what I hear that may not be WW's fault and simply a result of bad sales in 2015. Our area just may not be big enough to provide the financial support some of the vendors need to justify attending a bigger, more expensive con. (Also, I have to ask, to echo a common complaint shared by other attendees: why why why were there home improvement and eye surgery booths at a pop culture comic con? Why?!)
And then there's the third strike against this year: the security added a new level of difficulty that quite frankly would have ruined the weekend at a bigger con. Any time you wanted to enter the vendor and main stage area, you had to get your bag checked and get scanned for weapons. Sounds reasonable, right? Not when you consider that literally any time you wanted to leave the area to go upstairs to a smaller panel, you had to go back through security to get to the vendors and main stage again. Security like that belongs at the entrance of the con where you scan everyone once and you leave them alone after that - not in the middle of the con layout. One guard even asked if she'd already seen me a few times that day on Saturday, and I had to explain that yep, she did. Because the design for security was awful. And if more people had attended and this con had been any bigger, it would have created a massive backup in the line.
It really saddens me that this past weekend was the lackluster sendoff for this con in this city. Again: the guests we did get were delightful and great sports, and I left with a few super cute art prints and a new comic to enjoy. But the weekend definitely did not make my top 5 con experiences. And even more sadly for me, with Wizard World heading out of the 'Burgh and my avoiding another local con now, it looks like I'll have to travel out of the city for my future nerdy splurges. Thanks for a good 2015 experience, WW - but for your sake, I really hope your other locations do better than 2016 in Pittsburgh did!
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