Fan Expo 2013: A Proud Dad’s Convention Cosplay Tale!

2013 is the 8th Toronto FanExpo under my belt. This year, I finally got to experience being a proud dad at the geek festival as I lived vicariously through my son, as he experienced his first cosplay outing. My son and one of his friends from school came with me to experience the geek-fest, and we had a blast.

Held at the Toronto Convention Centre in downtown Toronto, FanExpo 2013 is the meeting of all things geek. For many years it has been the largest such show in Canada, and this festival juggernaut continues to roll on with great success, increasing in size in booths, symposiums, talks, tournaments, and attendance.

I bought a $35 ticket a month ago, and the great part is that kids under 13 are free if they are with an adult with a pass. When I asked my son if he wanted to go, he was pretty excited, and then when I said that my wife and I would help make him a costume of his choice he was pretty much over the moon. We asked that he keep it within reason, and get back to us in the next couple of days with what he was thinking. He came out with Yellow Jacket, not someone I expected as a first choice amongst costumes.

My wife and I set about coming up with a design that we thought we could achieve based on what the Marvel costume had been designed to be. There were a couple of areas we had concern with on how to achieve a workable solution, but we either redesigned, or simply left certain elements out. It was a labor of love, and it was great seeing the little guys face every time we made a further part to the costume. The final outcome was met with wild squees of joy, and we knew we’d done the right thing overall.

The morning of the Expo, my wife said to me “now you’re sure other people are going to be in costume, we don’t want him feeling awkward.” And of course that would be a concern, but I’d taken the little guy last year and he seemed pretty comfortable knowing not *everyone* was going to have a costume, but that enough people would be wearing them that they’d still have fun. We had some parts to some other Halloween costumes kicking around and so my son’s friend borrowed a couple of things so he wouldn’t feel left out.

We got down to the Toronto Convention Center, parked the car and walked a few hundred feet to the entry. My son made some cracks about people not looking at him ‘funny’. It was like he was a little let down that people weren’t dropping their ice creams to stare at him. Still, he was pretty proud when he heard someone say “Hey, it’s Yellow Jacket”!

Hobbystar has you print, and then redeem an online coupon to get your child in for free. You go to the south building in the Public Relations office, and it’s a pretty painless experience. The people working there are very helpful with advice on any child related questions. I was also impressed that regardless of how exhausted they must have been interacting with different kids with different special needs the staff there remained pretty upbeat and engaged with the children… it also might have helped that my kid is the most awesome kid ever! OK, maybe he’s as awesome as all other kids, but you know, I’m a dad, and I’m supposed to think that.

Lines ups were limited, we pretty much walked in once we had picked up our children’s wrist bands. Both North and South buildings were used this year, which was a huge bonus because once again Hobbystar has improved upon it’s entry model keeping line-ups much shorter and dealt with much faster than in previous years. Still, Saturday always has the biggest turn out, but I’m confident that entry is about as efficient as the convention center will allow.

Using the North building also allowed the newly added sports area to be parsed off from the rest of the expo. Being new, it appeared to be doing ok considering sports and general geek culture have, for years, been somewhat in opposition to each other. This has been changing over the past three years, with cross-over happening from one area to the other. There weren’t great numbers of people in the sports area, but being the first year I think it’s doing fairly well.

We pretty much skipped over the sports area, and just beyond it was a sort of Doctor Who area with some wonderful Daleks of various build levels. It was pretty great to see what people had put together in various states of amateur to semi-professional finishes. My little guy seemed to be somewhat interested until he saw the Minecraft swords and swag. I do get the draw of Minecraft, but honestly, I can’t figure out how Minecraft is a bigger thing than Doctor Who… I mean one thing has bowties, and Fez’s, and the other doesn’t…

We moved on to the Lego area, and wow, did they go all out. Lots of great free stuff, and lines that, again, were managed very well, with no pushing, no shoving, everyone being respectful, and the Lego staff keeping everyone happy as they handed out their loot. The little guy was totally hooked on that booth and I had to take both the kids back there 3 times because it was just their favorite thing ever.

Also a favorite booth was the Max Steel booth. Channeling the latest iteration of Tron, Max Steel has toys and a TV show, perfect hooks for kids. Again, the little guys were over the moon to go to this booth. Two visits later we had a DVD with 2 television episodes, and a couple of kids who really wanted to pick up the Beyblade like toys for Christmas.

All the while my typically shy son was getting comments about his costume, and at some point he took the mask off because I think he *wanted* people to know who was wearing this outfit. We ended up at the DK Canada booth and one of the people running the booth just latched on to Miles and said: “Yellow Jacket!” and promptly took a picture of him, tweated it on their website, and then gave my son a $20 book on Marvel super heroes with a picture of Yellow Jacket in it.

Overall we had ourselves an amazing day, and by that point we were all pretty exhausted so the day had to end. We left on an up note and with big smiles on our faces we shuffled back to the car. I can’t recall a time that my son has been more proud, and it made for a great experience for all of us.