#convention tips

The hotel staff start the weekend off on a great note. They assist me with my luggage and security is kind enough to wheel me to my room with it. Before he leaves the room, I ask if we can have a shower chair, my recent tactic of “genuinely asking for accommodations instead of needlessly suffering” pay off and he gladly agrees. One is sent to the room within a half hour. This is a much more impressive time frame than it sounds given we're on the fifth floor and security is also handling the thousands of Connecticon attendees in the building. I am not treated like a burden, the hotel staff do not give me a single side eye, they have not given me any reason to feel uncomfortable, and they have set the tone of my experience this year as hopeful.

Maybe that's just because I had my tonberry king magic the gathering deck box for a cosplay prop and they recognized his majesty.

This was a year of firsts for me at Connecticon: the first year I've held press, the first year my hotel mate didn't bring surprise guests to crash with us (looking at you, John), the first year I didn't bring a Grell cosplay, the first year advocating for myself as someone with disabilities at Connecticon in a way unprovoked by hostility, and the first year I brought my wheelchair. The last two are the most relevant to my story in 2025. I start my weekend with another first, getting into the only cosplay I brought rather than picking between six from my suitcase due to my usual Cosplay Choice Paralysis. Once officially a final fantasy protagonist, I grab tonberry king and wheel myself to the industry badge room.

This is my first struggle. The elevators. The dreaded convention hotel elevators. This is, of course, not the fault of the convention or the hotel, this is a universal convention experience. Elevators servicing a ton of cosplayers going every which way is cause for a lot of waiting and a lot of prayer the ding of arrival means “going to the right floor.” This is even more of a struggle in a wheelchair, a situation less than sweetened by the new prayer “please let there be enough room for me for this time.” Two other guests stayed with me through four different elevator arrivals to make sure I do get onto an elevator and I'm not stuck alone in the process. I will never praise an elevator situation at a convention this way again. At least, not the waiting for one part. The camaraderie of fellow cosplayers is another good note. I'm judging this convention on all aspects of navigating with a disability.

Getting from the elevator through the halls to the industry room is fairly easy. The industry badge room is in the hotel. This makes sense. Well played. I wheel myself in, give my credentials, and receive my badge. This is where things begin to earn the baffling aspect of my early sentiment. I ask if they have a flag of some kind for people with disabilities, most conventions use a fun little badge flag in my experience so I'm working on an assumption - the massive display of colorful badge flags on the table next to the one where I'm sitting leaves this a fair assumption. The industry room staff inform me they have stickers this year - fun! I love stickers! Okay! They then inform me they do not have a single sticker in the room.

For dramatic effect, allow me to repeat myself. The room for industry badges does not have a single disability sticker. Maybe they thought industry people were untouchable and can't possibly be one us meager disabled folk, maybe it was an oversight. I'll never have a real answer for it, I was too anxious to ask.

Before I can fully panic about my new need to find disability services, a staff member tells me they'll run over and get me one. Okay, baffling but good! Someone else hands me a water while I wait and we have a lovely chat. The staff member returns victorious, the day is saved, and now I'm ready to enjoy the con after leaving the room and flagging down another staff member because it's been a few years and I can't remember where the bathroom is from here. This staff member is equally kind and leads me the whole way there. Also good!

Now I want to find where disability services is actually located to see how out of their way the people of the industry room were willing to go for me. One building over and one floor down, I find it. It's not too far from the registration room, but it's also not in the registration room. I didn't go into the normal reg room myself, but given all of the stickers on this 6’ table, it was pretty clear anyone with a disability was not getting their sticker at reg/pre reg. This is also somewhat baffling, every other con I've attended offered a flag in the reg room for convenience, having a special table for disabled cosplayers who ask a staff member where to get one while in line.

Honestly, I'm of two minds on whether or not I like this. At other conventions I've waited longer than I'd like in line hoping for a staff member noticed me waving or getting close enough to one to ask, so having to turn around in line sitting in a wheelchair to get back around everyone to the right table would have been a nightmare for everyone involved. At the same time, if I was using my cane and had to sit down between standing in a long line and walking as far away as the disability services table was from those long lines after being told I had to go that far, I'd be incredibly frustrated. There is no real fix for this, I'd say it's closer to a good thing but I'm still not quite sure. I can say the people at disability services were wonderful people, very kind and helpful, offering directions to the best elevator to take and where to find bathrooms.

One thing I can say was frustrating for certain is how high all the directory signs are. They're fun colors, they're an interesting font - one that seemed good for people with dyslexia though I cannot speak for them - they have cute arrows pointing every which way, they're a delight! Mostly. They're also up very high and weren't easy to see from my vantage point. I'm a short person, shorter in my chair. Craning my neck to see them (and squinting because I didn't have contacts - that's more of a Me problem) was not fun. My neck is a fickle mistress, turning my head in one direction for too long can cause days of extra pain and if I'd worn a heavier wig, it would have been Goodbye Wig. (Yes, I know about velvet headbands, that is not my point but you should get one and so should I.) Of course, this is mitigated by the classic Complementary Convention Info Art Book and the map on the website. The signs do have to be high enough to see them from a fair distance so people don't crowd around them. I skipped out on getting the Complementary Art Book as I only had so much room on my chair for things and tonberry king takes priority but I do have a phone. I could wheel to the side of a hallway to check it or I could ask a staff member who didn't look particularly busy. This is more of a Me problem that isn't necessarily a problem. The signs also did a great job leading people around the oddly twisty halls of the convention center from what I could tell. So, still good if you aren't in a chair and you're wearing gloves that inhibit phone access.

The elevators in the convention center are rarely used from my experience and popped up for me pretty quickly. They were spaced far apart and one lead to nowhere, by that I mean a roped off area causing me to go back down and across the convention. That was less than ideal, but I've worked at convention centers before and frankly that's exactly what I should have expected.

The artist alley and dealers room were fantastic, people helping me grab stuff I couldn't stand to reach or see. An excellent haul of tarot cards, pretty gemstone dice for the inner dice goblin, mochi snacks, and two rare limited edition millennium items imported from Japan snagged off my hotel mate - okay, the last one was not from the DR or AA. I'm bragging. Let me brag, they're very cool.

I skipped panels this year, favoring old friends; capitalism; hotel parties; and the food trucks. All cons make a point to let in disability flags/stickers before other people and have dedicated areas inside for visibility. Another point to you, Connecticon. Well done. The hotel staff kindly brought up all my doordash orders with a quick phone call. More points to the hotel.

This was the first year props check did not attempt to take or hassle me about my mobility equipment. The constant bane of my existence at Connecticon (and Anime Boston - a genuinely cursed con we're not writing about today), I cannot tell if this was because my mobility equipment this year was a permanent seat or because they've magically improved. I did have my cane Sunday but mostly stayed outside and Sundays are usually the one day props check has never tried to take my cane. I was also not hassled about my mobility equipment by con security, something that has legitimately happened in the past to a friend and I returning from the food trucks and trying to get back to our hotel - the friend using a knee scooter, something that could not and was not assumed to be a prop, literally had con security put their hands on her to stop her and be awful about us trying to take an elevator used by disabled and nondisabled people. Our badges weren't visible because we were holding food and trying to get some rest, but con security decided we weren't allowed to go back to our hotel if she couldn't see our badges right away. When we tried explaining we weren't even in cosplay and just wanted to go to our hotel, my friend was physically accosted and I had to step in and yell at the security person to leave my friend alone so we could go to our room. I had my cane with me. What if we weren't con goers? We could have been there for the festival that runs in tandem with Connecticon. That was a real thing that happened three or four years ago. No such thing happened in 2025, con security instead being very nice in directing me around to bathrooms and giving polite waves. Big points to you this year, Connecticon. These points should not be necessary, yet here we are.