Inside Comic Con Experience 2016!
- 4 de dez. de 2016
- 5 min de leitura
Finally, CCXP happened, and I can say: it was epic, just like they’d promised!
Since April, the CCXP Comic Con Experience tickets were opened to buy, and I waited to December anxiously. More than just a festival, CCXP Comic Con Experience is an event that changes our lives. Take this for me: before going there this year, I would never imagined Comic’s proportion. And the best part: besides great booths and the presence of many celebrities, we are invited to come into the world of our favorite movies, series, animes and comics, surrounded by cosplayers and fans. The Comic Con Experience happened between December 1st and 4th 2016, in São Paulo Expo (SP, Brazil), and brought about 196 thousand people into there, according to the event’s page on Facebook.
But what is Comic Con? It’s a pop culture convention, which started in 1968, in Birmingham, England. In the beginning, it was a comic fan meeting, but it became so popular that today another kind of fiction stories are part of the event, like cinema, TV series, games, and so on. Our CCXP Comic Con Experience is, proudly, the third biggest in Latin America, behind New York Comic Con and San Diego Comic Con.
This year, we saw many different kinds of things there. Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, The Walking Dead — there was a place for all of them. The fans had to have courage to face the rows, but in the end it was all worth the patience. And talking about something that every real fan loves, the artists this year were just incomparable. We had Natalie Dormer (from Game of Thrones), Neil Patrick Harris (from How I Met Your Mother), Vin Diesel (from The Fast and The Furious), Carlos Villagran (from Chaves), Ruby Rose (from Orange is the New Black), and other personalities, besides famous Youtubers. I could see just Evanna Lynch (from Harry Potter) and Mauricio de Souza (Turma da Mônica’s author) — even though it’s by far, I tasted theirs sympathy with their fans.
One of the best things at CCXP Comic Con Experience was the booths. If your idea is going there to spend money with things you don’t need, but you want to buy because you’re a crazy and consumerist fan, you’re going to the right place! The São Paulo Expo is huge (100.000 m²). Now, imagine this place full of stores selling shirts, bottoms and all the kind of costumed things about the characters that you most love. There was Panini, Nickelodeon, DC Comics, Piticas, Mundo Geek, and lot of other stores crowed. The prices were good if you knew where to look for: Mickey’s thermal cup, for example, was about 90 reais at the Disney’s booth, and 60 reais at the smaller bothers. Riachuelo also had a booth, and a lot of fans bought their t-shirts there, where the prices and options were great.
The experience at the thematic booths was just fine. The Game Of Thrones one had a museum where fans could saw clothes, maps and objects of the serie, beside the floor with a light show that impressed the fans. “It was really exciting because the serie’s opening is contagious and become one of the best parts of who watch it. When you came into the booth, it’s dark and there is just the map there, you aren’t waiting for that. Mainly when the kingdoms begin to shine. It was worth standing in line”, said Larissa Bomfim (1JOD), a casperian who was at the event on Saturday.
The Harry Potter’s booth was a mess, and the fans complained. The official store closed and opened several times during the days, because of missing stock. The row was huge (about two hours waiting at least), the magic wands, dolls and other cool products were too expensive to buy. Most of us bought just a Marauder’s Map (40 reais), which was more affordable. But the fans were so anxious that even when the row was closed, they created a new row to wait the first row opening again. Beside the prices, it was very nice see the Tom Riddle’s Diary and the Nimbus 3000 behind the shop window.
The attractions didn’t stop there. You could make a real tattoo at the Tattoo You, and a fake tattoo at the Warner’s booth. At the Telecine’s booth, a scary experience was offered to show the public a new brazilian horror movie, named “O Rastro”. The AXN booth had an amazing Scape Room, and the Bandai booth brought the most exclusive thing of the event: Knights of the Zodiac’s gold armors. At the Fox booth, a special jump of the Assassin's Creed balcony. Saying like a super hero fan, I miss a Marvel booth there.
The coolest booth was the Netflix one: the booth was amazing, full of interactive games that we could play and (guess what) win free prizes, like shirts, posters or costumed pillows. And each game was about one of the Netflix’s series or movies. There was our loved Stranger Things game, and to win a poster you just had to make 5 points, choosing the correct sequence of lights that glowed on the wall. Other cool game was the mimicry one: two strangers were selected and one of them rotated the roulette wheel. When the wheel stopped, the Netflix character selected by the wheel should be imitated by one of the players, and the other one had to find out from what serie or movie it was about.
Talking about the food, it was predictable: expensive and few options. Me and my friends ate at a place that was selling awful fries and chicken, and when I was tired enough to need desperately a cup of coffee, I couldn’t found it cheaper than 5 bucks (one coffee shop was offering a 10 bucks coffee with milk!). The bright side is that when you’re there, you’re absolutely too busy to be hungry.
At the auditoriums, the expectations were high. The planning includes celebrities’ presentations, comic events, a Disney’s movie premier (Moana, 2017), and other special events. And all of that was separated by different auditoriums: Ultra, Cinemark and Prime. The worst part of going to CCXP in just one of the days is that is impossible to see everything that you want, and the auditoriums maybe be forgotten. But it doesn’t mean that the attractions inside there weren’t good enough to see, not even close: a proof of that were the infinite rows outside the Cinemark’s auditorium.
Comic brought Anime Friend and the Twiche’s booth, one of the most loved booths by the gamers. At there, a lot of famous players were playing games like League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, in championships. Sergio Campelo, a 19 yeas boy that is a huge fan of games, commented: “The booth was very well done; it was like all the championships that the community participates, even the official ones. The public did not expect to see players like Felipe "BrTT" Gonçalves commenting with Twitch's storytellers, or the presence of Alexander "Abaxial", a former Intz coach. As an opening for the finale of the XLG Super Cup, a band made a cover of “Warriors”, from Imagine Dragons, which was composed for the 2014 World Cup, and was awesome”.
Now, the best part of the event: cosplayers. Creative and incomparable, they shone at the festival. And there’s no words to describe, so we’ll show you some pictures to introduce you the real CCXP Comic Con Experience reason to exist. I hope you enjoy it!
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