The one question I can count on each year from my kids is, “Can we go to Comic-Con?” Followed by “What is Comic-Con like?” So this year I took to the show to help you determine if you should take your kids to the show and if you do what to expect. If you have younger kids like I do, I would suggest either going on Friday or Sunday, because Friday is less crowded with people at work and school, and Sunday is actually the day dedicated to the kids so there are more friendly kids events as well as a lot more kids! Now, as a reminder my two boys are 6 and 8 so that is where my perspective is coming from for this year.
When you go into the show, the thing that you will notice is that there are kids of all different ages at the show. We were able to spot babies in carriages, toddlers, and children 5th grade and under at every turn. Bringing your kid to the show is just something that is expected and you will be in good company. Plus you will be a super cool parent that week as what child does not want to attend a HUGE show with comics, video games, artwork and other super cool things to do.
So just a taste of all the super cool things that your younger kids will get to experience at New York Comic Con include being able to see TONS of people dressed up in costume. It is real cool especially since it is getting to be Halloween season that you child can dress up themselves and try out a Halloween costume. There will also be a lot of kids so this will be fun for them. You will get to see costumes that are done so well your kids will be talking about them for weeks, just remember a lot of these people spend months and months on their costumes, that is why they look so awesome. You will get to see some television cartoon characters, this year the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were all over the floor for photo opportunities. Most of the people in costume will also let you take their picture with your child. This really is a show where everyone is fun and friendly. They will get to try out new video games and even new video game systems that are not out yet. We were able to play the Wii U and a bunch of new games for the Playstation 3. How cool will that be to tell all of their friends in school? They will get a lot of swag, cool posters that you can’t find anywhere else, maybe some sketches, and they can even go to Artist Alley for some more artwork should they desire. They will get to meet the people who actually draw the comics. They will also get to see a ton of kids books from publishing companies and they will probably get to meet some authors.
Things to watch out for, but are avoidable include some mature video games and mature comics. They are very easy to spot from far away or if you take a look at the map you can figure out what to avoid usually. Most of the things are in the actual booth, so you just need to make sure that your kids don’t wander to those booths.
Things to watch out for that you can’t avoid include some recess language, but again with so much going on around them they will probably not even notice. There will also be some costumes that you might consider mature, from the amount of skin and a few from the scary end, but because of the environment it is easy for the children to recognize them for what they are, costumes.
Some other tips for the parent taking their kid: Make sure if you get separated you find an easy meet up spot. For the younger kids I would suggest something that they can find pretty easy if they look up, like the LEGO booth in front of a specific character. Make sure you feed the kids! Even though there is so much to do you need to make sure your kids eat and drink enough. Plan out what panels or things you want to do prior to arriving at the show as they are up on the website . When you have younger children, things will go much slower and you may not get to see everything.
What we did so that you could get the experience of New York Comic Con 2012 is to video every single aisle of the show, from start to finish. I had to do this on Friday so it would not be as crowded so I could actually accomplish this. There is a video that is normal speed that takes over an hour to view and a video where I upped the speed to three hundred percent so you could get it all in quicker. You can find both of those videos below. If you brought your kids to New York Comic Con let us know what you think and if you have any tips!
If you don’t have the hour to watch that you can see the New York Comic Con 2012 in a speeded up version below
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