Last weekend was Twin Cities Con at the Minneapolis Convention Center. I look forward to Twin Cities Con every year as it always feels like a last hurrah to end convention season. I like how Twin Cities Con is in November and right before the holidays. I volunteered at the Twin Cities Geek booth like I usually do which I always enjoy. It’s great to talk to local geeks and many of the people I talked to said Twin Cities Con was their first con. I wanted to summarize my thoughts about this year’s convention as a whole. This will be broken up into two parts: the first will be my experience at the con and the second part will discuss the logistics of the event.

I had a blast at Twin Cities Con. I was there both Friday and Saturday. On Friday, I was there for two hours and Saturday I was there for 4 1/2 hours. Saturday was the busier day by far. I was shocked at the amount of people waiting in line! I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it’s clear Twin Cities Con has grown in the years since they have been putting on the convention. After volunteering at the Twin Cities Geek booth, I wandered the vendor hall. The crowds were there! It felt like I was at C2E2 or Planet Comic Con. As far as the vendors, I saw quite a few artists and a lot of vendors selling TTRPG stuff. There were a few dice vendors and I had to refrain from spending too much money. There seemed to be a good mix of vendors selling a variety of different products.

One of the highlights of my day on Saturday was attending a panel. I went to the “Women in Cosplay” panel on Saturday at 3 PM. The panelists did a phenomenal job at making the panel light hearted. It was equal parts talking and engaging the audience. They took questions on social media, so if anyone felt shy to ask a question directly, they could submit it instead. I liked this a lot. It made the panel more personal than other panels I have been to in the past. I would love to tell you who was on the panel, but on Twin Cities Con’s website, it doesn’t list who the panelists are which is a bummer. I believe the cosplayers were from South Carolina, but that’s about all I can tell you.

I can’t recap Twin Cities Con without talking about the logistics of the event. I have been following several social media posts made on both the Twin Cities Con Fans and the Twin Cities Geek Facebook groups. There were several people who expressed frustration with how Twin Cities Con was organized and I feel it’s necessary to summarize some of this if I’m going to talk about Twin Cities Con effectively. One of the major complaints was with the security line. This year, Twin Cities Con had a security line with metal detectors outside of the Exhibit Hall. Once you pass through the line, you can find the photo ops area, celebrities doing autographs and the vendors tabling there. However, once you leave the Exhibit Hall (let’s say to go to a panel or to play a TTRPG game with Badwolf Adventure Studios), you would have to wait in the security line again.

Why does waiting in a line matter? Depending on what time of day and who you ask, I have heard of people waiting in line for 45 minutes or over an hour. This matters if you were someone who bought an autograph or a photo op with a designated time slot. For a security line, I would expect to wait 20 – 30 minutes, I feel that would be reasonable. It seems that lines for Twin Cities Con were much longer than that. As a side note, since I was an exhibitor / volunteer, I could go through a separate line versus the longer security line, so I didn’t have to wait long. I think this is important to mention because this probably plays into why I had a good time at Twin Cities Con since I didn’t have to wait as long as others.

I do want to take a step back and compare Twin Cities Con with C2E2. C2E2 does have security, but the way C2E2 does it, you go through a separate area that’s right across the aisle from the exhibit hall. Once you’re through security, you have access to everything. The exhibit hall, the food area, alcohol, and the panel rooms. The only reason you would have to leave is if you were done for the day or you wanted to go out to eat at a sit down restaurant. When I have gone to C2E2, I have never had to wait longer than 10 minutes to get through the security line. Seeing how other conventions handle this, I think Twin Cities Con has room for improvement in creating a seamless experience for anyone attending the con.

What’s the solution for something like this? I am not an event planner, so I can’t say how much of this is on Twin Cities Con or how much of this is on the Minneapolis Convention Center. I saw someone suggest moving the entrance to the security line to the front door of the Convention Center. While this isn’t a bad suggestion, this would also have people waiting outside to get in. The weather this year was mild, but November in Minnesota can be a hit or a miss. For cosplayers, it sucks to have to bring cold weather clothing and then carry it around for the entire convention. Another suggestion I saw was putting stickers on badges for those who already went through security, so they could come and go as they please. There is a safety risk for this. Let’s say someone goes through security, then decides to bring in something they shouldn’t. With big guests like Hayden Christensen, there does need to be some way to make sure guests feel safe attending a larger event like this. I am not sure what the solution is for this. I hope Twin Cities Con listens to some of the fans and offers an alternative for next year.

With all that said, I have a few minor critiques for Twin Cities Con. The first is to list who the panelists are on the panels. I’d love to shout out the panelists for the “Women in Cosplay” panel. Another critique is when you go to Twin Cities Con’s website, it lists vertically all the panels and events for each of the days. It’s difficult to read because when you scroll down, it’s not clear which day you’re reading from. I think it would be cool to see a virtual convention book online or even printing a few convention books to have on hand. It would make it a lot easier to plan out my days and what I want to do on what day. These are all pretty minor tweaks versus the security line being called out by many people.

I was not expecting to go into this level of detail over Twin Cities Con, but here we are. As mentioned, I like Twin Cities Con and I will be back next year. I didn’t experience as many of the pain points that other people experienced. I think it’s important to mention that everyone’s opinions and thoughts are valid even if you disagree with them. I think Twin Cities Con could improve on a lot of things, however, I’m glad Twin Cities Con is here. It’s nice to not always have to travel several states away when I want to attend a bigger convention.