I thought the exhibit hall was good because I noticed a fair amount more exhibitor exclusives this year. Aside from Funko…Cryptozoic, Vltd, Plastic Empire and Tokidoki also had legitimate ECCC exclusives.
I haven’t enjoyed very many of ECCC’s smaller panels (other than the guest panels that are in smaller rooms) in the past so I just couldn’t find too many to get excited over this year. Fan panels and meetups are not on my radar at all.
I’ve seen some other posts about LA Comic Con being the same weekend. Perhaps more guests wanted to do a convention closer to home/studios, but I’ve never known LA Comic Con to have that much pull. Though I have to say their lineup this year looked pretty good. I may have to keep on eye on that one in the future.
Here is a recent example of how ReedPop treats ECCC as an afterthought: C2E2, their Chicago convention (which is a bit smaller than ECCC but homegrown rather than acquired) usually has a lot of overlap with ECCC in programming. Their biggest guest with a panel was Ming-Na Wen. She unfortunately cancelled about a week before the show, but ReedPop almost immediately replaced her with Giancarlo Esposito. There is no reason they couldn’t have done something similar for ECCC when LeVar Burton canceled.