Chaos & Confetti

You know life is jam packed full of goodness when you can barely find the time to take it all in and reflect on what’s been going on (you should check out our TikTok and Instagram for the occasional quick update).  So, the next several blog posts here at Chaos y Confetti will be a catch up of some of our bigger events from the last two months.  

Let’s get started with what is quickly becoming a tradition for us.  Once again, we partook of one of our favorite yearly Richmond City happenings: GalaxyCon Richmond!

For the fourth time, we headed to the Greater Richmond Convention Center to indulge in some of our favorite fandoms.  One of the neat things about GalaxyCon is that even though we’ve been several times already, it’s an always evolving experience.  Each year comes with the expected: panels, merch, cosplay, and celebrities, but you also never know what other fun might be present: wrestling, board games, tattoos, dance parties, comedians, and more.  

Join us as we recap some of our favorite parts of GalaxyCon Richmond 2024.

EXHIBITION HALL

It’s easy to spend a lot of time and money on the exhibition hall.  Merch and art for every fandom line row after row of vendors.  Books, toys, comics, art, clothes, etc. can all be found in the exhibition hall.  It’s perfect if you’re looking for a gift for yourself or someone else.

The main hall also has a large area devoted to meet and greets.  While some of the larger stars may require VIP tickets purchased in advance, most of the weekend’s guests have booths where convention attendees can access them pretty easily.  For a price, attendees can have a quick chat, take pictures, and/or get autographs.  The guests at booths include actors, voice actors, artists, wrestlers, and comedians.

Personally, one of the reasons I love exploring the exhibition hall is seeing all the cosplay.  Sometimes I do laps just to see more costumes.  Some people put in so much time, effort, and care into their outfits.  It’s incredible.  This year, I only dressed up on the last day.  My son and I dressed as Wreck-It-Ralph and Fix-It Felix.

COMPETITIVE GAMING:

In the past, GalaxyCon has itched our love of gaming through board game libraries and sellers.  However, this year, they also brought along competitive gaming as well.  Whether you’re a fan of video games or TCG (trading card games), there was a chance to show off your skills.  Personally, we were excited to see that there would be several Lorcana tournaments.  As people who have dived deep in that world, we wanted to see how we fared against some of the area’s best.

Sadly, we only did alright.  Thousands of dollars worth of prizes were up for grabs, but we fell just short of the mark.  It was actually my brother-in-law who knocked me out of the top four, those eligible for prizes.  For those more into Lorcana, I ran an emerald/ruby deck that specialized in quick Lore gain and punishing those who challenged my characters.  I was happy to do so well while running an off-meta deck of my own creation.

One of the hardest parts of any GalaxyCon is deciding how to spend your time.  There are so many good options.  As much as we would have loved to play games all weekend, which some of our friends did, we only competed on Friday, so we’d have time to check out some of the other things going on over the weekend.    

PANELS:

GalaxyCon always offers a wide range of panels for different tastes and interests.  The big headliners and highlights tend to be the stars from big movies and television shows, but I also enjoy some of the oddball offerings too.  This year I watched an entire panel on the history of talking dogs in media.  It was strange but fun.  A friend of mine sat-in on a panel about Roller Coaster Tycoon.  I wanted to see more of the spooky presentations (ghost stories, urban legends), but Confetti said they were too scary and that I didn’t need nightmares.

Amongst my friends, we have plenty of overlap between our panels, but also a bunch of unique must-sees as well.  It’s always nice to catch up between presentations or over dinner and talk about what we’ve experienced and saw.  

Here’s a list of who we were lucky enough to see this year:

• Charles Martinet (voice actor, most famous for Mario)
• Christopher Sabat (voice actor)
• Dolph Lundgren (actor)
• Guy Hutchinson (comedian)
• Johnny Yong Bosch (actor)
• Nic Nemth (professional wrestler f.k.a. Dolph Ziggler)
• Trish and Lita (professional wrestlers)
• The Cast of the Mandalorian (Giancarlo Esposito, Emilly Swallow, and Paul Sun-Hyung Lee)
• The Cast of Psych (Maggie Lawson, Timothy Osmundson, Corbin Bernsen)
• The Cast of Son of Anarchy

It’s great seeing and hearing from people who helped create things that we love so much.    

FAMILY ZONE

Sunday tends to be a lighter day at the convention, in terms of visitors.  That’s why we’ve made a habit of bringing our son, now aged two, on Sunday.  Being so young, he can’t fully appreciate all of GalaxyCon’s offerings, but he loves the sights and sounds.  He still gets to see characters he likes due to all the cosplay.  However, he did have an odd habit of calling all the Wolverines Pikachu.

This was our first time taking advantage of the Family Zone.  For the average convention goer, the Family Zone is probably pretty skippable, but as parents, we liked having a place that we knew had things for our son to do.  There were toys and coloring.  Our son even got to do a Galaxy Craft (put together a space cat magnet).  

The Family Zone has its own list of events, including meet and greets, crafts, and games.  We did find some of the kids events to be canceled without warning, so that was a bummer, but overall the kids zone is still nice to have around.

WRAP UP

As we already stated, GalaxyCon always feels like a convention that is evolving.  From year to year, the space it takes up in the Greater Richmond Convention Center may change a bit, varying celebrity guests will attend, the line up of panels and activities will look different, but the heart of GalaxyCon stays the same.  This is a celebration of fandom and community.  It’s an excuse to get in touch with the pop culture that thrills you and enjoy the company of others who are just as excited.

Don’t be surprised if we come back talking about our 5th year of GalaxyCon.