Know what that means? I’ve been attending MTAC and cosplaying for 5 years now! Man time flies… I remember my first cosplay–we don’t talk about it– but I’ve come very far. I even have something to show for it! Before I go into some bigger things, lets do a rundown of MTAC ’15. It’s going to get a little lengthy, but there’s a lot to say about my experience this year!
MTAC has returned to the Music City Sheraton. A lot of you older Mtakus might be thinking “That’s a horrible idea. There’s a reason we left in the first place!” Fret not, as we had a second hotel work with us this year.The Nashville Airport Marriott was about a 5 minute drive from the main hotel. When this was first announced a while back, you can imagine many people were upset and baffled as to how this could possibly work. I was very confused but thought, “Well I think they know what they’re doing…?” But you know what? They did. The Sheraton held the panels and gaming/viewing rooms, while the Marriott had all the vendors and guests.
Now the biggest question was, how are we going to get to these two hotels? There was a shuttle running between the two hotels, one came about every 15 minutes or so. You might wonder how that would work, cause I sure as heck thought that wouldn’t work. Have you seen hotel shuttles? They’re tiny! Well, like I said, MTAC knew what they were doing. We had 3 greyhound buses going back and forth the entire weekend. Now, needless to say there was still a line…but it only got really bad on Saturday, when the con was at it’s peak. Of course I did struggle a little on Friday. Friday was just special.
Middle Tennessee was in for some crazy weather on Friday. Long story short, I got to my car as soon as it began to rain, and on my way home I should’ve just pulled over until it died down. It was bad. But it was chaotic back at the hotels, as they had to take the congoers into the tornado shelters. Fortunately it calmed and the rest of the weekend had great (a little chilly) weather.
Onto the rooms! First up we have the Vendors. the Dealer’s Room and Artist Alley were nice and spacious. Rather than cramming everything into one room, we had them spread out in the Mariott. AA got the halls to display their fine handiwork, and the Dealer’s Room was split up so there was enough room for everyone. As I mentioned above, there were two main rooms for the Dealer’s and then there were a few smaller rooms that had maybe 2-3 vendors in them across from AA. There was a very nice selection, and I even found some elusive Touhou merchandise!
The Gaming Room is one place I rarely go into for some reason. I guess cause it’s usually always packed. My boyfriend was my helper this weekend so he went and grabbed a few photos while I was busy doing who knows what. They had many multiplayers such as Halo, Sony Smash Bros Playstation All-Stars, some indie games, Dance Dance Revolution (with some nice pads), and of course Smash Bros (8 Player mode was amazing). apparently they had a Smash tournament that lasted from I think 8 PM to nearly 4 AM!
We stopped by the Analog Room just to see what it was like. I’m not much a tabletop gamer, but it looked like there was a lot of games available and a lot was going on.
I didn’t attend many panels, I usually don’t honestly, but I did attend a few main events: Opening/Closing Ceremonies, the AMV Contest, and of course, the Cosplay Contest. I haven’t entered MTAC’s contest in a while. I really wasn’t liking how they were run. The last time I entered back in…was it ’13? Well it wasn’t that great. I wasn’t bitter that I lost or anything, everything broke on me so I expected it. I had just expected more prejudging, and less Para-para. As for last year, they really skimped on their awards…they didn’t give any out based on rank, which I found very weird. Regardless, I decided it was time to try again, and I revived Gwendolyn. Prejudging was great; the judges actually got up and examined my costume-and noticed a safety pin oops. However they were really nice, and seemed really impressed. I’m going to do a write up on competitive cosplays in the future, so I’m not going to go too heavily in detail. Long story short…
Tada! Gwendolyn took home the award of “Judges’ Choice”. And I swear I’m not saying this because I won, but the contestants that won honestly deserved it! I was so impressed by the other cosplayers, and they were all so nice! I really hope that I can catch them for an interview of some sort in the near future.
Tl;dr: MTAC ’15 was amazing. They really stepped it up from the previous years, despite moving back to the old venue. I do believe they have a new con chair this year: Nicholas Qualls. I remember meeting him a few years back as he was in charge of press, so I’m actually happy to see that he’s up there now, he was very nice and helpful.
I hope you all enjoyed MTAC. Our photos will be up on our Facebook(<—click for photos!), as usual, so like the page, and tag your face! Hopefully I’ll see a few of you guys around in the future, don’t be afraid to say hi! For sure, I’ll see you all next year.
