Edinburgh Comic Con 2023
Last Saturday I attended Edinburgh Comic Con. Whilst this is not what I would call one of the “flagship” Comic cons, it was still quite a busy event, at least during the hours that I was there. Last year approximately 10 thousand people were in attendance and I can believe it. The two main halls at the Royal Highland centre just south of Edinburgh airport were just about at capacity it seemed.
The first hall was to be partitioned into two halves. The right side of the hall was reserved for sellers and was heavily crowded throughout the day. I am not a regular convention goer, so I couldn’t point out regularly attending sellers, but a couple of standouts included two shops selling props/ cosplay accessories as well as a stall selling some very high quality Pokémon terrariums. These display pieces mimic an open pokeball, showing a small diorama encased in a resin sphere.
The other half of the first hall was set aside for queues to get autographs and I assume photographs with some of the major guests. There were some big names there, including Andy Serkis, Elijah Wood and John Barrowman, though there were quite a few others.
The second hall contained vendors selling food, mostly sweets and baked goods as far as I could see, though this was only 4 or 5 stalls. Connected to this hall was a third room accessed through a tented outdoors area. This third room was lined with small sets and character actors who would take pictures with visitors. Lots of star wars themed sets, some doctor who and some miscellaneous fantasy.
Overall I found the event quite pleasant, however, there were a few issues that I noticed on the first day, which may have been addressed on the second. First, although there is an indoor cafeteria at the centre it was not nearly sufficient for the number of attendees. Other food (ie, not sweets) was available at stalls outdoors and I had a nice beef burger at a foodtruck outside, but there was heavy rain all day and no cover outside.
The second problem was one of signage. There was very little (no?) indication of what was in any of the three halls from outside, which led to people milling aimlessly between rooms. Not a problem in and of itself, however between the first 2 halls there is a connecting chamber that also leads to the toilets, which created a major bottleneck. Between the second and third halls there was no separation of incoming and outgoing traffic, which meant once you were inside the third hall you were locked in to a queue to get back out.
I would like to end on a possitive note though, so I have saved the best for last. Whilst I was there I saw a ton of great cosplay, lots of Demon slayer, Chainsaw man (mostly Power), Starwars, Resident evil, even Bayonetta. So many great costumes that you could have spent a whole day stopping people to ask for photos. Whilst I didn’t take any photos myself, I would encourage you to check out footage of the event on youtube to get a sense of the scale.
I had a great time and look forward to going again next year.
