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Youmacon was held in Detroit, Michigan in October 30-November 2, in 2014, held at Cobo Center and the Marriott Hotel at the Renaissance Center. This year having a crowd of 15,000 covering its Cobo and Renaissance halls, Youmacon remains the largest anime convention held in Michigan.

2014 marks its tenth year of being an anime convention in Detroit. Unfortunately this year was not up to par as previous years and held a large sum of issues this time around.

This year Youmacon came out with their schedule at the convention itself not being prepared enough, congoers running around looking confused on what is where and what is what.

In the afternoon of Friday at the convention they finally handed out physical copies of the con schedule.

Youmacon did have the usual anime convention settings, video game rooms, all types of panels, and guest such as Johnny Yong Bosch, Tia Ballard, Lauren Landa and plenty of more guest show up to the convention.

Youmacon has been around since 2005 (Detroit, Michigan, US).

There were Raves on Friday and Saturday and a dealer’s room and artist alley. The dealer’s room/ artist alley held at the COBO center specifically had a nice variety of different sellers and for a reasonable cost.

Con attendees had mixed reviews on the gaming rooms some saying not enough variety and smelled very body odor in the rooms and others loving the game rooms and saying it’s the best part of the convention.

This year specifically Youmacon was lacking a very important concept for any convention. Organization! Whenever a person at the convention had a question for a staff member about the con itself, the common response would be “I don’t know.”

No questions can be answered if no one knows anything.

Theft was a common problem at this con as well, a lot of items and money were constantly being reported stolen from innocent con attendees, myself being included in this category having my wallet being stolen at the convention.

Another huge problem at this con as well was a major incident that occurred Saturday night. The escalators broke and were shut down con staff were telling convention members to go down the stairwells to travel, me and other con members did as told and every stairway door was locked.

People were outraged going down 30-50 flights of steps only to find every door locked and the only way to get down was taking elevators or climbing down nonmoving escalators.

The staff once again not being aware and leading us into hot corridors of stairs and doors that were locked, even debating with con goers saying that the doors WERE unlocked when that clearly was not the case.

The hotel Marriott held at the Renaissance building had its fair share of problems as well.

My hotel room as well-being unlucky, finding the toilet un-flushed and used towels all over the floor almost wondering the hotel was cleaned before I came.

I also asked for room services a couple of times to fix problems and staff members repeatedly saying they will come and never show up.

Complaints of the same problem were talked about on Youmacons forums and Facebook group pages.

Overall, Youmacon being the largest in Michigan had large fair share of problems this year, and being a 10 year con these are issues that should be easily not occurring for such a long running anime convention.

I personally may not be attending next year because of these issues that occurred. Youmacon is doing a survey on their website of this year to see what can be improved.

Hopefully this will give them insight on how to make the convention more welcoming to the disappointed attendees.

Find the survey and more info of this convention at https://www.youmacon.com