Niagara Falls Comic Con 2019

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Niagara Falls Comic Con 2019

Comic Horror and Gaming Convention

Niagara Falls Comic Con is set to take place over three days on June 7, 8 and 9, 2019!

The event takes place just steps away from the majestic Falls and will feature more than 200,000 square feet of exhibitors, comic books, movie cars, cosplay contests, celebrity autographs and photo-ops, a video gaming arena, Falls Horror Fest and more.

Guests:

Bruce Campbell – Actor
Billy Dee Williams – Actor
Billy Zabka – Actor / Director

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Niagara Falls Comic Con
Average rating:  
 2 reviews
 by Josh
Mystery Box (70 item)

Hi, want to write a review to give anyone a heads up encase they're thinking of buying one of these. So it was 70 complete random items, so I suggest if you buy it, you like a large variety of stuff. There were No funko items. It felt like vendors just filled the box with the stuff they don't sell in stores. In my box I received two really out dated phone cases and a 2017 calender; wasn't happy about obsolete merchandise.

 by Simon
Terrible Con Experience

We attended Niagara Falls Comic Con for the weekend of June 7-9 2019 to celebrate our engagement.

To say the experience was less than fun is an understatement.

My fiancee and I attend cons together on a regular basis (we actually met while cosplaying) and this was the first one we've been to where we just could not enjoy it no matter how hard we tried.

Let's start from the beginning.

Day 1 - We arrived at the con after driving for two days from Niagara falls. After being cooped up in a car for two days we were eager to get our cosplay on and get to the con. We arrived and headed for the ticket counter.

First thing we noticed was that they had jacked up the prices that were listed on the website. Previous prices had been scribbled over with marker and a higher price added. So for example, Christopher Lloyd and DeLorean photo ops were originally listed for $150 and upon arrival they were raised to $160. On top of this we only received a single print photo for our $160. If we wanted digital prints then we needed to pay an extra $10.

More on Christopher Lloyd later.

Upon entering the con floor we discovered that they'd crammed pretty much everything into a single room in the convention. There were other rooms available that could have been used for vendors, celebrity booths etc. Instead everything was jammed into a single room and the photo ops were put in a single corner of one of the other large rooms. So basically the con organizers didn't bother to properly allocate space.

It was very tight inside the con, not a lot of room to move around and we were constantly being shoved by other congoers. More on that later as well.

We shopped around the con floor for a bit. The people running the booths were very polite and quick to assist if we were looking for specific items. We even went up to chat with the cast of "The Office (US)" and they were very polite and happy to see us.

We saw Billy Dee Williams but he was less than enthusiastic to see his fans. We noticed he basically stared down his nose at anyone who came to his table and his manager was incredibly rude.

Anyway after a while we went for our photo op with Lance Henriksen.

Here's an issue first off. The convention center is a decent size. Now we were in the big convention hall and it had 3 main doors. Now if you picture the convention center please imagine a big main room and then a hallway that wraps around the center and goes in behind the main room.

Now imagine that you are only allowed to leave the main hall by one door on the far right of the building just so you can go all the way around the building to an entrance waaaaaay over on the left rear side of the building. Now imagine that there is no real signage to point you in the direction you want to go and you have to rely on vague directions from bored and/or overwhelmed con volunteer staff. That's pretty well how the situation went for us.

Now Lance Henriksen was absolutely charming and pleasant to chat with. While we were there though we noticed that security had been given a different schedule than the con goers.

People were scheduled for photo ops with Doug Jones at 530 and at 510 security was doing last calls for those photos before people had even arrived. Considering the price of photo ops I feel like perhaps they should have communicated those timings better to the con goers. Especially since the times for the photo ops were stamped right on the photo op cards that people were given at the time of reservation.

Speaking of which, not allowing the option to reserve photo ops online and then only taking cash at the entrance is super inefficient. Especially since there were limited ATMs and a mad scramble for everyone to get to them and withdraw cash. Thankfully we bought cash with us but not everyone planned for this.

Because of the issue with celebrity timings and poor communication from the organizers we decided to head over to the photo op with Christopher Lloyd and the DeLorean about 15 minutes early to ensure we didn't get screwed over by an early last call.

This time the opposite happened.

It turns out that Christopher Lloyd had decided to take a day trip to the US side of Niagara. No one at the con seemed to know where he was. None of the PAs could find him, the guy running the photo booth had no idea where he was and the con organizers also had no idea where their celebrity guest went.

At other cons we've been to the Celebrity has a PA that is assigned to them. If the celeb wants to explore or go out then the PA accompanies them and ensures they are back in time for their con commitments. Considering that Christopher Lloyd was being paid to be there, we found it incredibly unprofessional for him to decide to bugger off. We found out later that he'd not been at his booth or his normal photo ops all day.

Anyways he ended up showing up nearly two hours after his scheduled photo op which coincidentally was also about 30 minutes after the convention closed.

So here's a couple gripes. First off for $̶1̶5̶0̶ $160 you'd expect that you could take your photo with Christopher Lloyd and you both sitting INSIDE the DeLorean. Instead we were told to kneel outside the DeLorean while he sat in the driver's seat.

Now I'm a disabled veteran of the Canadian army. I am living the rest of my days with severe anxiety and a spine injury that is slowly breaking down my lower spine. Kneeling for me is incredibly difficult and painful so I ended up leaning against the car.

Add to the fact that we were standing in line for nearly two hours because the celeb guest was late and the organizers had no idea where he was. My spine was not happy. Luckily after about 90 minutes someone noticed that I was having trouble standing and got me a chair but previously when I asked for a chair I was ignored. As a result of this my photo with Christopher Lloyd is not a good one as instead of a cheerful "Yay! I'm in a photo with my childhood hero" photo I instead have a photo that says "Fuck me I cannot stand any longer. Please don't let me pass out in front of my childhood hero." So yeah. Thanks for that memory Niagara Falls Comic Con.

The photo op wasn't even great. Normally you get a minute to say hi to the celeb and then you snap the photo and bugger off. With Christopher Lloyd we were quickly hurried in and out of the photo with barely a hello. I can partially understand. The con was closed and people wanted to go home but again, this could have been avoided if the con had been properly organized and the organizers kept a better eye on their people.

The con organizers decided to apologise by giving us a coupon for a free coffee at McDonalds. But only a local McDonalds. Just a thought here but perhaps it might have been a better idea to instead comp people and give them their digital photos for free instead of charging the extra $10 for them.

Because of this incident we cancelled our plans to get anymore celebrity photo ops in fear or either being screwed over with jacked up prices or being stuck in line for hours and being treated like cattle while waiting for them to possibly not show up.

Day 2 - We decided not to bother going in cosplay for the second day, still having a bad taste in our mouths from the previous day. Instead we opted for just a relaxed day of exploring the convention and doing some shopping.

First thing we noticed was that when we tried to enter the convention we were ordered by security to throw out my water bottle. We were not allowed in with a bottle of water. It was a very hot day but apparently that didn't matter.

Again, the vendors were amazing. They had lots of great swag and were very pleasant when we asked questions. It was very cramped inside though. The congoer population had doubled on the second day and now every few feet we were being shoved and push and told to "fuck off" once or twice. I actually got shoved so many times that I wrenched my back and ended up spending the rest of my holiday in pretty severe pain. We also witnessed someone's small child get bowled over by congoers. I actually think they left their own review on here saying something to that effect.

Security seemed so busy with the doors that they weren't paying attention on the convention floor. I caught someone trying to pick my pocket while I was at one of the sword booths. Luckily I was reaching into my pocket for my wallet and found a hand instead. A quick elbow to the ribs of the person doing it discouraged them from trying again but of course security was nowhere to be found and the would-be thief was gone by the time I managed to turn around.

At this point I began to have a panic attack. Severe spine pain and PTSD do not do well when both aggravated at the same time. We made for the doors and were told by security that we could not leave through this particular door even though we saw no signs or markings to that effect. The security volunteer pointed us to another door and told us to exit there. We tried the other door and were given the same speech by another security guy who in turn pointed to the next door down the line. At this point I was panicking so hard that when we got to the third door and were AGAIN told by a security volunteer that we couldn't exit through that door I ended up shouting at the poor fellow. I felt horrible and immediately apologized and we left through the fourth door.

After the repeated horrible experiences we did not bother to return for the third day.

We paid for two three day passes and ended up using only two days. This was our weekend to celebrate our engagement and it ended up being ruined by disorganization, aggressive con goers and security, late celebrities and jacked up prices. Let's not forget the fact that Carey Elwes was cancelled at the last minute. There's not much that can be done about that but the rest of the experience was terrible.

Now I reached out to the convention staff through Facebook chat to talk about our experience before posting this review and my message was seen but not responded to. I don't like leaving bad reviews and wanted to sort this out internally but my message was unanswered.

We will not be returning to Niagara Falls Comic Con. Worst vacation ever.

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