Fantasy Con in Salt Lake City starts tonight. I won’t be able to attend the entire event due to work sucking, but despite my misgivings, I’ve warmed up to this event. I was initially worried that Salt Lake may be reaching its “too much of a good thing” quota. With this event and two Salt Lake Comic Con events a year, are people going to get oversaturated with geek-stuff? I don’t know the answer, but I hope not.
Visiting the Fantasy Con website, I’m impressed by they are making this convention look and feel different than the two Comic Con ones. By focusing (kind of) exclusively on the fantasy corner of the geek universe they seem to have made something special. I could be wrong, but I get the feeling that being in the Salt Palace is going to be a unique experience this weekend. And if you’re a cosplayer, there will be $10,000 worth of prizes to win. You’re not going to beat that.
But honestly the thing that seems the coolest to me is they got a bona fide movie star to come. Apparently this will be the first convention to have Simon Pegg as a guest. You don’t get much cooler than Simon Pegg. That guy has geek cred up the wazoo. So hopefully he can have an excellent time and decide to attend future events.
What’s also cool they’re also going to have a giant fireworks display in downtown SLC. They claim it’s going to be the biggest in the city. And it’s free and open to everyone.. Starting at 7pm at the Gateway Mall they are going to have a street fest and fireworks. They’ll have live Music, DJs, street performers, cosplayers, creature encounters, food, and fireworks. So that in and of itself sets it apart. So let’s hope that this will just be one more event we can get excited about every year. See you there.
– CRoW