I went to Anime Central this year. It was very, very crowded this year. Every year, more and more people attend.
So, after driving up there and checking into my hotel room, I stood in line to get my badge.
Not much had changed from previous years except the registration process had improved quite a bit and the lines were a lot shorter. I had pre-registered, which is something you have to do unless you want to spend much more time waiting, even with the huge improvements in the process.
The trip to Chicago this year was more difficult since there was heavy construction on the major thoroughfares. Because of this, I had to take last-minute detours and spent about an hour driving through Southern Chicago looking for a way back to the freeway and avoiding toll roads. The GPS definitely saved my bacon though all of that nonsense.
The Hyatt was renovated recently; new stairs and a media bar were added to the hotel. I spent most of my time walking around and trying to get into as many panels as possible.
The entire facility was very crowded on Saturday; it became very hard to get around after about 3 pm due to the amount of people in the halls. There were lots of opportunities to take photos of cosplayers but some people stopped in the hallways to take photos, which impeded traffic. The people in charge of the convention intervened to discourage photo-taking in the narrow hallways, which helped significantly after a while. Later in the evening, things were moving smoothly again and it became much easier to get around the convention.
I met Starfyre and Miroku this year and it was a lot of fun walking around the convention and chatting with them both. I had met Starfyre at Gencon back in 2005 and had met Miroku at Anime Central 2005, too.
The Megatokyo panel was fun but I spent most of my time watching new anime and bought some manga in the dealers' hall.
