There was one aspect of Otakon that I forgot to mention in the other places we talked about the event. There were an odd amount of cancellations of panels this year. When I listened to the Cockpit review of the convention they reminded me of all the cancellations. Overall it did not really affect me too much. With eight panel rooms worth of content, I always had something to do. In fact, with all the premieres and guests I went to fewer panels than I usually do. Still, it is a bit odd. It is a little hard to guess why this happened especially because every panel cancellation can have its own very specific reason. I know there was some speculation that the move might have caused some of the cancellations but it also could have been various circumstances in the various panelists lives that cased dropped panels. Neither reason seems more or less prone to be cut by Occam’s razor.

I do wonder how much it also simply has to do with the fact that the Guidebook kept the canceled panels on the schedule with a big [CANCELLED] before their title. While this prevents you from scratching your head as canceled panels no longer just vanish from the lineup but it might have a side effect of making you more aware of cancellations in the first place. I wonder if there were actually more cancellations than previous years or are we just more aware of it than we have been in previous years.

I’m pretty sure I attended more panels this year than I have the last few years of Otakon in Baltimore. Maybe that’s because I never had to wait in line longer than 10 minutes to get into a panel, if I had to wait at all. That wasn’t because panels weren’t popular all of a sudden or something, it just speaks to how much space there was at this new convention center!

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