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Katsucon Author's Notes 2005 In 2005, Katsucon changed locations from 2004 and got a big improvement in their two major rooms. The 2004 dealers' room at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City was in a converted garage, cramped, with odd angles and a back section that went ignored by many fans because they didn't know any dealers were there. The 2005 dealers' room at the Gateway Marriott was in a conventional ballroom that was easier to navigate and left no one lost. The new Katsucon location also offered a larger ballroom for the main events hall. The ballroom allowed a larger stage than the previous year's location, gave Psycho le Cemu plenty of room to play and allowed large groups extra space during the costume contest. Unfortunately, the Marriott was undersized in general meeting rooms and hallway space. Outside of the big ballrooms, there was little space for anything else. That forced Katsucon officials to move all of the video rooms, one panel discussion room, the art show and half of the artists' alley to a second hotel, a Sheraton located across the street to the south. And the Marriott's hallways were far short of the space to put the thousands of people who went to the convention and didn't stay all day in the dealers' room or the main events hall. Anime conventions aren't like business conventions or trade shows. Much of the fun of the event comes from just hanging out at the convention, taking pictures of the costumers and milling through the artists' alley. The Marriott's main concourse was no more than 20 feet wide at most points, and those 20 feet had to hold artists' tables, intermingling lines for the dealers' room and special shows, and the crowds of people that went back and forth. The result was crowded, cramped and uncomfortable. Convention security guys kept trying, sometimes reasonably, sometimes overbearing, to keep the crowds moving, but it was a hopeless task because there wasn't enough room. Sometimes, the convention's best efforts made things worse. Katsucon staff has emphasized that fans should stay hydrated, so they got a water cart from the hotel and served ice water to fans in line for the Sunday Psycho le Cemu concert. It was a great gesture...except that the cart took up most of the space in the center of the hall and blocked traffic that already was clotted to the edge of immobility. The Marriott had some other shortcomings. A ground level sports bar that would have made a great hangout place was closed and under construction, the space blocked off by high blockades of drywall. And the hotel's only operating restaurant was undersized, sending fans to a food court a block away. Too bad that food court's restaurants closed early. The Sheraton was in worse shape than the Marriott, with the main entrance under construction to the point that hotel had to set up its guest registration desk on tables in an area bordered by drywall. Some of the voice actors' panels were put in the Sheraton, in a room that barely had 50 seats. That room was overfilled every time an actor had a panel. The largest voice actors' gathering was on Sunday afternoon in a larger Marriott room. The author missed that event because he was in a Sheraton bistro, eating a hamburger and watching the start of the Daytona 500 on TV. We did bump into actor Richard Cox at the bistro, along with dub producer Toshifumi Yoshida and his new son - both were getting acquainted with another fan's baby. Later, we spotted actor Michael Sinterniklaas in an autograph line with a fan and a drawing of his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles character. Even before the convention got into full swing, Katsucon officials announced they were going to move in 2006 to a larger Omni Shoreham hotel in the District of Columbia. After  the convention, the Katsucon staff said they had considered an attendance cap for the 2005 convention. Katsucon went out of their way to dispel the notion that anime conventions compete against each other. Several other East Coast conventions had hallway tables where they sold memberships, including Otakon, which is going to have a hard attendance cap this year. Anyone who wanted to make sure they have an Otakon membership and also attended Katsucon has only themselves to blame if they're left out of the Baltimore summer convention. A few tables down from the convention tables was a contrast in purposes. One table at the beginning of the line had several flyers warning of the dangers of video piracy. We were told that the slightly unhappy-looking men at the table had been busted for video piracy and were staffing that table as a condition of their probation. Just to their left was a table used by the Dreamworks SKG movie studio to promote their forthcoming Madagascar animated feature. A pile of VHS tapes of the Madagascar trailer was left on the table, free for the taking; it took a few hours for that pile to disappear. This light-obsessed writer (taking too many pictures will do that to you) continues to be overwhelmed by the stage lighting setup in Katsucon's main events hall. The tech crew said the convention put extra effort into that lighting, with a consultant brought in to make sure it was done right. In a form of fandom where we've seen hardware store work lights used to illuminate a stage, Katsucon's work is special. The convention tech crew said they got an extra boost when Audix provided them with several dozen microphones for the weekend. The mics were used for everything from panel discussions to the Psycho le Cemu concert. Apologies for those who tried to reach this site's Katsucon material on the Monday morning following the convention and couldn't reach the pages. The author was trying to upload material at the Reagan National airport when his flight home started boarding, and he scrambled the upload in his rush to get on the plane. It wasn't until we got home, a couple of hours later, that the error was corrected. Katsucon Main Page