Ponycon NYC 2016: Was it Actually February Spaghetti?

If you squint hard enough, you can see the pasta already developing in the clouds a day before the con started.

Folks, are a lot of claims about Ponycon NYC. Some of them are true, and some of them are just plain ol' bullshit. Join me as we sort through many of them to find out just how spaghetti Ponycon NYC 2016 was, and whether or not it qualifies to fulfill the brony fandom drama curse of February.

Just an FYI, I was there for all 3 days of the con and then some as a vendor, so expect the vendor section to be long. My waifu/ #1 boy toy Calpain was there as a community guest and can fill in the blanks that I wasn't present for, such as the VIP dinner. (Which, sadly enough, did not serve actual spaghetti. Missed opportunity, staff! :^)

Oh what, this 'ol vendor booth? ...I-I'm not a whore, you're a whore!

 

The Con Location Smelled / was Filthy

 

Personally I thought the location was pretty neat, but holy shit did it lead to most of the con's problems.

Ok, so right off the bat I can tell you that the con smelled fine. If anything, it smelled better then your average Summer con because it was too cold for people to start sweating. As for it being dirty, well... the vast majority of the public areas were perfectly fine. The theater had plenty of staff cleaning, cooking, and preparing drinking water all over the building. The main area I heard complaints about was the staff/VIP room upstairs where certain people could get snacks (such as soup). According to Calpain, the place wasn't dirty so much as really old and out of shape. The dust wasn't cleaned in unused areas of the room and the walls were peeling heavily. Unfortunately when Cal tried to take pictures, even when he said they were just of the walls, staff told him to stop.

The Location was Too Cold

 

TLDR; The theater is historically old and that weekend hit record lows in NYC.

First of all, that weekend in general was FUCKING FREEZING. According to this article the city wasn't just chilly, it was 100 year record breaking ball breaking cold. And if that wasn't bad enough, Sunday ( which thanks to their Sat/Sun/Mon schedule ended up being a very panel packed day), was incredibly windy. Going outdoors to your hotel or to get some food was miserable, and it only started to warm up decently near the end of Tuesday when the con was long over. To top it off, the con this year was located in a historically old theater, meaning that their heating system could only do so much, especially for big open spaces like the main hall and some of the vendor areas.

This snow was from Monday, and quite frankly as a Floridian I'm super butt hurt about waiting too long to go play in it.

So yes, the place was colder then what most people find comfortable and a lot of people kept an extra layer of clothing on. But I mean... fuck, do you really expect the con to plan for a 100 year record breaking chill? That's just bad luck. Even if they had gone for a normal Fri/Sat/Sun schedule they still would have hit Sunday, which was easily the worst day that weekend. It certainly would have made traveling back home more difficult.

The Vendor Room Setup was Really Weird...

 

Aaaaand this is the part where the article gets really photo heavy. Observe the sun room part of the vendor area.

 Just a little FYI, while I like using photo filters I tried not to add them to most of the photos I took of this particular con. Especially not the vendor areas. Why? Because lighting was easily the worst part of the setup, and yes, that includes the 3 way vendor area split which also sucked. So the sun room was the vendor's room I was in, and lighting was fine... as long as the sun was out. Luckily that was the vast majority of the time for us, and apparently it even lead to that room being the warmest room in the entire con.

While Andy Price did have just enough light to vend at night, it wasn't enough to draw with.

Yay, right? Well at night (for about the last two hours every day) it was dark as fuck, which lead to comic artists that were doing commissions leaving early to go finish up their work in their much better lit hotel rooms. But the rest of us didn't really seem to give much of a fuck considering that business died right at 5:00pm and didn't come back until an hour or two into the next morning. At least that's how it was for us and the poor folks in the room connected to us.

Those poor vendors... Remember, no photo filters here.

This is the second part of the vendor area. Sure, it would be cute to call it the moon room since the other room was the sun room, but I'm going to be honest and call it the get fucked room. While there was originally a big glass ceiling area in the middle of that room that could have at least given light to some of the rooms, it was out of commission and had blue tarp covering all of it up. For some weird reason, the theater staff did not turn on the additional lighting during the day even though that area desperately needed it. On the bright (heh) side, they did turn them on at night, and it lead to their area being brighter then ours for those two oh so precious (aka deserted) hours at night.

Area 3: The "There's ANOTHER vendor's room!?" Room

Last part of the vendor's room, I swear. This area was completely inside in the building and had ok lighting the entire time regardless of what time it was. The thing about this venue is that all the lighting was soft mood lighting, whereas most hotels/convention centers will have harsh, bright lighting. This is because this theater is more for hosting shows and weddings, not conventions. And... SIGH, yes I'll fucking admit it: This is not an appropriate venue for a brony convention, even if it was kind of a cool idea.

A lot of the multi-table vendors got put down here.

 Depending on who you ask, this could have been the easiest room to find or "Whoa, there was another area downstairs?" Correct me if I'm wrong on this but it seemed like you had to go through the game room to get to this room. This lead to many gamers heading to this room before the other one. Some didn't even realize that there were two more vendor areas upstairs before they ran out of spending money. (Dear several underage boys: please stop telling me that you want an amiibo but you already spent all your money downstairs. GODDAMN LITTLE SHITS, GO ASK UR MUM FOR MORE!)

Chrysalis is second best waifu~ Sunset Shimmer is obviously first place!

While you think this terrible setup would lead to most of the vendors going for broke, sales were actually pretty OK according to the vendors I talked to. While hardly anyone sold out (I think 2 vendors total did, including an expensive plushie maker) Most people that had to either fly in and/or get a hotel room hit 4 digits in sales. I personally had to fly in, but Calpain and I were staying with friends that drove us everywhere, so we personally ended up saving a ton of money. Otherwise I probably would have just barely broken even. Taxis are expensive in NYC!

The Concerts were Too Loud

 

Is that a rave stick in your pocket or is your dick just radioactive?

A few special guests, such as Peter New, publicly complained that the concerts in the main hall were so loud that they had to shout over them to talk to people right next to them. Unfortunately this isn't much of an exaggeration. Even from the vendor's room (you know, the one with two walls and a room in between to help block the sound) we could all hear the singing perfectly fine. The autograph room only had one wall as a barrier, so I imagine their situation was even worse then ours. On the bright side, the con did get some pretty great singers for the main concerts, so at least they were a nice distraction as all the potential customers in the rooms vanished to go listen. Quite frankly I'm surprised the autograph room had a line at one point during the concerts. Lucky!

Why was the Last Day of the Con Monday? LOL FAILED CON!1!

 

His mom made his cosplay. You can tell he's 100% consensual about all this.

Long story short, if you were one of these people I want you to go look at a 2016 calendar. Go look at Feb 15th. WHOA, what's that? Feb 15th is President's Day, an American national holiday that many people get the day off for? Gee, look where 2 seconds of googling got you! And yes, I know some of you are international. I don't care, you can still google American holidays.

Why not get a V-Day mystery bag for your waifu? Oh, what's that, you two are actually out in NYC having lives? OK...

From what I know, the con organizers made this a Sat/Sun/Mon con instead of a normal Fri/Sat/Sun con because it meant both cheaper booking and they were counting on extra people showing up for both Valentine's Day and President's Day. But surprise, surprise, the vast majority of visitors were locals that had other things to do with their lives on those days off besides going outside in the freezing cold and enjoying ponies. Saturday was easily the busiest (and warmest) day, followed by Sunday. Sunday had hardly any couples walking around. Instead it was filled with small children (thank the spaghetti monster in the sky I packed a shit ton of necklaces and rings to sell). Monday was easily the emptiest day, but there were still enough one day families coming in to make sure most of the vendors didn't leave broke. This and the horrible weather is why the con barely hit the 2,000 mark, and even then I'm lead to believe their total 2,083 number includes staff, vendors, ect.

The VIP Dinner was a Disaster

 

Part of the room where the dinner was hosted, but with more tables set up.

Let me start by saying I was not personally at this dinner. However, my boyfriend Calpain from Equestria Daily was as a community guest, and saw some shit go down. Then he told me about, and from there I procrastinated on making this article. So I'll give you guys the summarized version: This convention had a ton of special guests for attendees to interact with. Especially if they got a VIP ticket and even got the $150 VIP meal "deal". At the dinner, there were enough special guests to the point where one could be seated at each of the 14 tables. However, the two convention founders sat at one table together and decided to have both Lauren Faust and Bonnie Zacherle at their table since one of them is an older gen fan.

While this story really only effects a table full of people, it's still kind of sad, so have a couch full of ponies!

This, of course, led to one table having zero guests. I genuinely don't know why the con founders couldn't have just separated and each able to talk with the maker of their favorite pony generation at different tables. After all, they spent so much time together making the con happen. I guess at that point they had looked at their population numbers so far for the con and went "Ah fuck it! We're not going to hit our 3,000 goal, so let's just do what we want!" Mind you that's just my personal guess. Cal said that he heard their motivation for doing that was that they thought Bonnie wouldn't be a strong enough presence by herself, and WOW I hope she's not reading this right now because that's a bit insulting to say the least.

 

Poor Bonnie! Here, have a table full of OCs this time, including a dark edgy one with a tortured past.

So one table goes without a guest, and one of the people at the table starts crying because she paid a pricey $450 total for her and two family members to be at the dinner. Peter New walks over to her table, gets two other special guests to visit the table, and overall proved that he is a real human bean. Just try not to get too full of yourself if you're reading this, New. P-Please? By the way, at the end of the dinner (the entire venue being alcohol free that weekend didn't help the already incredibly average meal of meat and veggies) they made space in the middle for people to congregate and everyone got to talk to people around the room and get things signed. So if you're not super anti-social, yes you could talk to any of the guests you wanted to and even skip signature lines and fees. Cal even told me that if you wanted to you could probably get over $150 worth of signatures at that moment, making the meal an actual deal. I suppose whether it actually is or not is up to the individual... but it's still a better deal then having a skype call with Black Gryphon.

Overall, the Con was Full of Tasty Spaghetti! Curse Fulfilled for the Month!

Pfft, a Lauren Faust panel? T-That doesn't make this con cool or anything, b-baka...

 Oh jeez, I feel like I'm about to tell you shits that ponies aren't real and you'll never get to hug your fictional waifu. I'm so sorry, but I need you to sit down so that we can talk about this one on one: Ponycon NYC, while it had some faults, was an overall OK con. Sure, it was overly ambitious, but according to the con founders they were going all or nothing this year. They hired a lot of special guests and ultimately the vast majority of attendees had a good time at what most people there would consider a yearly local convention.

Just a side note here: DJ and Derpy sold TERRIBLY for many vendors at the con. Try not to overstock them this year.

"BUT WAIT!" I can hear Purple Tinker shriek in the distance, "Even most people that went to LPU had a good time!" Yeah PT, that's true, but what made LPU such a disaster is that they couldn't pay for shit, leading to everyone getting kicked out and some people even having to pay bills that the con should have paid. This con seems like it was able to pay everyone just fine. Every event, including closing ceremonies, was able to run, and as far as I know none of the guests have complained about not being paid. So please keep your hate hard on to yourself Tinker. This is not the spaghetti you are looking for.

It's ok to walk into the light this time.

So yeah, this con wasn't really that spaghetti. Certainly not spaghetti enough to fulfill the February fandom curse. And since nothing else major really happened last month, and today is the first of March, HOLY SHIT THE CURSE IS BROKEN! We did it you guys, as a fandom drama site we did absolutely jack shit and it all paid off! Well... not literally, none of us actually get paid in anything but used Klondike Bars (courtesy of Chelis). But hey, isn't it nice to know that the fandom is basically dead during the winter season? I mean, it's not like breaking the curse will bring an end to the fandom this year or anything, that's just stupid! ...Right?

(I-If you want to go follow me on Twitter just so you can call me a faggot and then unfollow me I'm @ThePerlerPony. One last thing: I want to devote this article to Rari"friend", who made fun of me at a panel for not writing enough even though my PonyconNYC article came out before his. All this despite me getting seriously sick and binge playing the new Fire Emblem games. SUCK IT~)