Welcome to Gaia! ::

Many of us have gone to enough Anime / Cosplay conventions to have a list of the Best and Worst experiences that you have experienced at the conventions that you have gone to. To be fair to the convention venues I prefer that you didn't list the actual Conventions themselves in your list.

Here is mine:

Best Experiences:
1. Going to my first convention where I experienced the magic and wonder of it all. It was also the convention where a dream came true and I became a Cosplay photographer. .
2. Meeting one of our fellow Guild Members at a convention. She was cosplaying Neo Queen Serenity from Sailor Moon. I did a mini photoshoot of her and what added to her day was the fact that it was her wedding day!
3. My best photoshoot of a Leafa Cosplayer from Sword Art Online. I had a lot of great locations to do the shoot at.
4. Meeting Voice Actress Cherami Leigh at a Autograph Session. I gave her a prop from the Sailor Moon series - a Sailor Venus transformation rod. She has been the voice of so many of my favorite characters.

Worst Experiences:
1. Walking in the Cold Rain from where I parked to the Convention Center where the Convention was.
2. Having a Convention schedule so messed up that everything that I planned to go to was changed time wise on the schedule but they didn't update it.
3. Having an item for sale in the dealers room that you want so badly to find out that it's 100 hundreds of dollars out of reach.
4. Going to a convention that was so large in size that I got lost and missed out on some of the things that I wanted to go to.

Please let us know what your best and worst convention experiences were.

Best experiences:
1. First time ever going and feeling the energy and enthusiasm of everyone just being there.
2. Witnessed a 'miracle' when by all statistical odds shouldn't have happened. A guy was playing a game show with three others. Based on results they were able to pick a surprise prize amongst 20 items or steal from one of their contestants. This guy being last place gets stolen from 3 times with each prize being better then the last until he eventually got himself a Wii. Holy sh*t that was amazing to see.
3. Winning giant jenga for the first time.
4. Met Monty Oum

Worse experience:
1. Wearing cosplay that had no ventilation and I ended up cooking quite a bit.
2. Someone was sick and it spread like wildfire which ended up getting everyone sick at the convention. Myself included. Crappiest week ever.
3. Summer like weather always sucks.
4. Costume malfunction when something breaks and it isn't an easy fix. Part of my keyblade broke one time.

Best/worse experience?
To this day I'm still not sure how to feel about it. It was the first time I cosplayed and this girl dressed as Haruhi Suzumiya groped my butt. On one hand, socially unacceptable. On the other, flattered as I'm a pretty mediocre guy who generally gets ignored most of the time.

Fanimecon at San Jose, California.