).Ponycon 2016: Mel and Chaz's Unexpected Arctic Adventure ~Or~ The Little Hyundai That Could · 5:45pm Feb 17th, 2016
Heyo! So, Mel and I went to Ponycon again this year. Those of you who've been following me for a bit might remember that this is our ten-year anniversary, so we had originally decided that this would be the year we'd finally treat ourselves and go to Bronycon in July (because the gift for ten years of marriage is totally ponies, right?) Unfortunately, the dates for Bronycon this year just happen to coincide with those of ConnectiCon, a big anime/sci-fi/videogame/you name it they got it convention in Hartford that we attend every year. Since we already had plans for this year's CTcon that involved a small group of our friends, we couldn't just cancel and go to Bronycon, so we decided Ponycon was the next best thing.
Like last time, and like pretty much every con we've attended for the past several years, we decided to go in cosplay. Since this was our anniversary, we decided to portray a long-time married couple from the show: Mr. and Mrs. Cake!
Yes; that is a modified squeegee that we found and realized was perfect for Mr. Cake's hair. I can now officially say I went out in public and rubbed elbows with famous people while wearing a mop on my head.
Inb4 someone makes a snide comment about my wife being barefoot in the kitchen...
That tray of cupcakes? Fake. Made with foam, silicone caulk, and colored, baked crafting clay for the sprinkles. Awesome, right? Well guess what? We left the goddamn thing on the counter at home and didn't even realize we'd forgotten it until we were changing into our costumes at the hotel Saturday morning...
Anyway, the trip down was pretty straightforward: got up at 4:30am, piled everything into the car and booked it down to NYC. A few hours, a couple trips around the block the hotel was on to find the parking garage, and a short and easy subway ride later we arrived at this year's venue, the Grand Prospect Hall in Brooklyn.
Pretty swanky place, right?
From the Grand View room on the fourth floor you even had a nice view of Lady Liberty out in NY harbor.
Very appropriate, considering one of the con's mascots.
The event was as star-studded as most any pony convention has ever been, with guests ranging from Voice Director Terry Klassen and Director 'Big' Jim Miller to voice actors like Peter New and Ashleigh Ball to the very creators of MLP itself, Bonnie Zacherle and Lauren Faust. Broadway star Lena Hall, voice of Countess Coloratura, even made an appearance and lent her magnificent voice to a special concert.
Mel and I spent the first day making sure we met everyone we wanted to meet and took care of everything we brought to be signed. Possibly the highlight of the con for us was meeting with Bonnie and Lauren, whom we had only paid to receive autographs from, and for both of them to ask if they could take pictures with us in our cosplay.
Kids, you know you done good when the celebrities want you in their scrapbook.
We're still waiting to see if Bonnie or Lauren are going to post their selfies online, but in the meantime Mel made her own Twitter account pretty much so she could follow the two of them and the other MLP celebs we've come to know over the past couple of years.
After getting the autographs we came for and waving 'hi' to my man-crush Vincent Tong, we settled in for as many of the awesome panels as we could fit into our schedule. For the most part we managed to snag some really nice balcony seats that provided a perfect view of the main stage.
The 'Horse Power: Voices of My Little Pony' panel, featuring Andrew Francis (Shining Armor), Vincent Tong (Prince Blueblood, Donut Joe, Flash Sentry), Peter New (Big Mac, Dr. Hooves), and Kazumi Evans (singing voice for Rarity and Princess Luna, as well as the voice of Octavia and Adagio Dazzle). I believe Terry Klassen is hiding there on the left along with the panel moderator.
IDW Comic Artists' Roundtable with Andy Price, Agnes Garbowska, and Tony Fleecs.
A panel called 'The Stallion Perspective', with Andrew Francis, Peter New, Jim Miller and Vincent Tong. Terry Klassen popped in a little later as well (I swear that dude is a ninja...)
The MLP Celebrity Comic Reading, with Everyone and their Uncle from left to right, Terry Klassen, Ashleigh Ball, G. M. Berrow, Peter New, Shannon Chan-Kent, Andrew Francis, Jim Miller, and Andy Price.
The Comic Reading panel was our hooves-down favorite part of the event. Each participant took copies of issues #9 and #10 of the IDW main series and read through them one speech bubble at a time, each person reading in whatever wacky, random voice they felt like using, and it was glorious. Poor Peter New; these issues are focused on Big Mac, and yet you know how many times he was the one who actually got to say 'Eeyup' or 'Nope'? None. Zero. Nada. It kept falling on Shannon or G. M. Berrow, to the point where they asked Peter if he wanted to switch seats. The crowd went nuts when Ashleigh actually got to read one of AJ's lines with AJ's voice, just like they did for Shannon when she got to read one of Silver Spoon's lines. In the end, they all celebrated by bursting out into a totally random, totally awesome beatbox session that brought down the house. Big Jim made Vinyl Scratch proud, drumming out a bass rhythm on his own head with his microphone, while Peter and Andrew did their best Rarity impressions. The clincher came when Shannon started singing the MLP theme song right in time with the rest of them. My God, I have not laughed so hard in months.
There were a ton of other great panels as well; two in particular that stand out are Vincent Tong's Prancing with the Stars, in which Vincent conducts a super-fast but amazingly fun dance class for everyone who wants to try. This year he chose Michael Jackson's Thriller as the song and had everyone doing the zombie all over the dance floor. Mel and I unfortunately had to leave partway through in order to make it to the Cosplay competition, but not before Vincent himself gave us a quick hug for luck (seriously, people loved these freaking costumes...).
Also an event that can't not be mentioned, the Singing Voices of MLP Concert was a spectacular show. No one in the audience was allowed to record or even photograph during the event, but the show staff was doing some recording and they claimed that parts of it would be up online for viewing later (still haven't seen any pop up yet). There was a great mix of different songs (some MLP and some not) and talents, from Kazumi Evans singing Becoming Popular to unique and powerful performances from Vincent Tong, Shannon Chan-Kent and Ingrid Nilson. Peter New sang a version of Katy Perry's California Girls that will not soon be forgotten, and of course, Lena Hall closed out the event by singing The Magic Inside and was met with a standing ovation.
Outside of panels, we met up with quite a few fandom celebrities amid the vendor halls, game rooms, and cosplay greenroom. Mel likes to have her art and prints signed by the artist, so we found ourselves talking to the likes of JadedJynx, DennyButt, Tsitra360, and more. We also got to very briefly meet Sethisto of EQD fame via our mutual friend Cups, and Mel had a conversation about pony fabric with a person wearing a very stylish vest, whom we later learned was The Illustrious Q (also from EQD).
It'd be impossible to talk about Ponycon without talking about this year's cosplay lineup! Mel and I entered the competition under the 'Duo or Group' category, and we managed to impress the judges and take home first place (
)! There was some mixup with the prizes apparently, so they're supposed to be mailing them to us sometime in the next couple of weeks. There were a ton of great outfits this year, only a portion of which we managed to get decent pictures of.
Princess Cadence and Princess Twilight
Grand Galloping Gala Pinkie Pie! Complete with LEDs built into her dress!
Zecora!
Hip-Hop Pinkie Pie
Three cosplay competition champions! A Fantastic Friendship Through the Ages Rarity who claimed the top prize in the 'FiM Inspired' category (boy am I glad there were separate categories 'cause I think she was definitely Best In Show), Mel as Mrs. Cake, and Big Mac (w/ Smarty Pants) who was voted the best in the fursuit category.
Princess Celestia (who I don't think was present or at least in costume until the last day. She missed the actual competition on Sunday, but she probably could've given Rarity a run for her money.
That same Rarity was back on Monday with her Shadow Spade costume! (picture came out a lil' fuzzy...)
It's always great to see so many people cosplaying; it's a great conversation starter, you immediately have something in common with at least a third of the people in attendance, and with a little planning everyone will recognize you on sight, sometimes even from previous years if you like to hit up the same cons.
Now, onto all that wonderful #swag we picked up!
We picked up some Nightmare Moon promos and 'Celestia and Luna' (it's totally them; can't you tell?) foil cards courtesy of the ever-awesome folks at Enterplay. We also got some sweet DJ Pon-3 and Derpy Mailmare pins from them, but for some reason I can't find the picture. The Mr. and Mrs. Cake stickers were freebies from Dennybutt (I think it was Dennybutt? Mel would remember).
We brought mostly CCG cards for signatures from the stars to add to our collection. We got Octavia signed by Kazumi Evans, Dr. Whooves by Peter New, and a total of four cards--three Applejacks and one Lyra--signed by Ashleigh Ball. Originally we couldn't decide which one we wanted her to sign, so we figured we'd bring our top favorites and let her choose. She chose the 'Lasso Champion' card, but before we headed off she said 'gimmie those other ones', and proceeded to throw ink at all of them just for the hell of it. Now we're right back where we started trying to decide which of these gets framed and put up on the wall (this is a problem I am more than happy to have, mind you).
Mel continues her quest to Pinkie-fy her craft room, with a slew of new Partyhorse artwork. The top-middle and top-right pieces are commissions from Agnes Garbowska and Andy Price, respectively, and the other three are prints picked up from various vendors.
The centerpiece of our trip souvenirs, a print by JadedJynx signed by both Bonnie Zacherle and Lauren Faust, as well as the artist herself. We also snagged some of the other prints available by Dennybutt and PixelKitties (OMG, look at Adagio's face!!! 
)
As part of a charity drive, we snagged a couple of copies of this neat calendar that features extremely famous works of art throughout history, re-envisioned and ponified by some of the fandom's greatest artistic minds.
Last, but absolutely not least, my swag-purchase for the trip was a nicely-made Sunset Shimmer jersey from a vendor that offered practically limitless options for customization. You could get your name (or any character's name) printed on a shirt, or your own OC's cutie mark, or pretty much anything that you could provide them with a digital template for. I decided that since I was getting a shirt with Sunset's cutie mark on it, I should get something on the back that had to do with her as well:
Whether that refers to 'offense' or 'bullshit' is up for debate...
Anyway, once all was said and done, we had a fantastic time at Ponycon. The sad part came when we had to leave, having spotted it start to snow around 3:30 on Monday. We said our goodbyes to folks on the way out, and headed back to the hotel where we'd parked our car... only to find that over the weekend, the battery had gone dead.
... Sunovabeech.
We tried getting a jump from the hotel staff; didn't work. Called up AAA and got them to send us a servicevan that arrived sometime around 5:30 to test and end up replacing the battery. Finally set to leave for home. It was now ~6pm, dark, and the weather had turned from fluffy snow to icy, freezing rain, which of course lasted the entire way home, out of Brooklyn, up FDR drive, across the GW bridge and into New Jersey, and all the way up the Thruway back to Albany.
A trip that should have been a nice, easy ~3 hour drive turned into a 6+ hour ordeal on roads slick with slushy snow and ice, surrounded by the ever-insane drivers of New York and New Jersey, in a tiny Hyundai Elantra that we were forced to pull over at just about every service area we passed to chip away ice that constantly built up on our windshield and wiper blades. Oh yeah, the heat in the car was going full-blast to slow down the inevitable buildup of ice, but that meant that we were absolutely roasting the whole time we were on the road. Getting out to chip off the ice didn't even faze us; it was like jumping out of sauna and into the snow.
The top speed I think we hit the entire time was maybe 45 mph on roads that one might normally traverse at ~65-70 (legally), and we passed by more cars on the side of the road than I've seen for the past year running. We didn't get home until just after midnight (technically Tuesday morning) and Mel just hit the bed and passed out. I was up a little longer putting things away and trying to decompress from the stress and tension of having been at 100% attention and focus for so long, and to be honest even more than a full day later I'm still all out of whack.
Anyway, ordeal of ice and snow aside, the weekend was still a massive success, and I'm glad we went. We heard that at Ponycon's closing ceremonies one of the founders said something about this being the last Ponycon, but there haven't been many details confirmed about this statement as far as I know. It's possible that he had just meant that this would be the last one he would be helping to run, or that next year it might have a new name.
We'll just have to wait and see what happens, but I sure hope it doesn't mean it'll really be going away. Ponycon is a much-preferred alternative to Bronycon for many of us in the Northeast US who just don't have funds/means to make it down to Baltimore, and from what I've heard from some folks who regularly attend both, Ponycon has a distinctly different, more personal feel than Bronycon that would be sorely missed.
Great costumes... fancy hotel... room full of famous people... more great cosplays... I really need to organize with my cousins to make the next Comic-Con. Sounds like a fun weekend.
Great Sunset shirt BTW.
I can hardly express my delight at reading all of this. Thank you for writing such a great recap, and thanks for sharing all the pictures! Your costumes were awesome, and the whole thing looks like it was a ton of fun.
Reading this made me so happy... except for, you know, the brief wave of fury when you said you forgot the cupcakes at home. That would have been perfect.
You both looked so amazing!
Unfortunately, I had to hustle through a project that was a few days overdue or else I would've braved the elements to check out the con myself. But your post is a welcome substitute. Here's to hoping this is not, in fact, the last Ponycon.