CMDTA Hits the Road: PAX East

Sometimes you do something with little to no research.  A couple years ago, a friend of mine told me about the Penny Arcade Expo East.  I like video games so I decide to check it out.  It took me a couple years to actually get a ticket and make it down to Boston.

I did little to no research before going.  As a deek you might wonder how I could do something so foolish.   It was simple.  I thought "Why would I need to do any research?"

Reason number one: Thousands of people.  The photo above is the queue area.  They line you up in massive holding pens.  This is about 60% of the final crowd.  There was also a lot of people behind me. If I had to guess at the number of total people, I'd say about 10,000 were there.  It was insane.

Reason number two: The cosplay.  I'd seen cosplay on TV before.   That does not prepare you for the real thing.  The dedication of some people is mind blowing.  Some people pay thousands on their costume and it shows.   As a homage to the truly dedicated people, I'm starting a new blog.  I'm calling it People of PAX East.  There will be roughly 50 of my photos on there and any other people submit.

Reason number three:  The Boston Convention Center is MASSIVE.  It's three floors high and has dozens and dozens of rooms. At any time there are more things happening than you can imagine.  You really have to plan your day to get the most out of it.

 Since I'm still a deek, I have to cover the Disney aspect.  Disney was not there but that does not mean there were nothing Disney there.

Princess Elsa was there!  There area a number of Disney cosplayers in attendance.  Wreck it Ralph was a popular one. I saw three or four Ralphs there.

Now for a side note.  I thought the Disney Community was the most obsessive community out there.  I was wrong.  Sorry friends but we've been surpassed.  The Mass Effect community is the most obsessive community.  The best cosplayers at PAX East were Mass Effect, but that's not the reason why they are the most obsessive. 

I attended a Mass Effect Cosplay event.  I captured it on video and uploaded parts of it to YouTube. My most popular video attracted about 15,000 hits over three years.  One of the Mass Effect videos attracted 500 hits in a day. That blew my mind.   I can't even fathom that kind of volume.  You can see that video here.  If you want to see all the channels, check out my channel.