Matthew's SacAnime Winter 2016 Report - Prologue

After SacAnime Summer 2015 had the highest attendance in SacAnime history, you might ask yourself "what could this convention do next?"

If you answered "start the next edition of SacAnime on New Years Day," you would be like "what?"

A photo of the lobby of the Hyatt Regancy Sacramento on New Years Eve, the day before SacAnime Winter 2016 started

Historically, conventions like SacAnime, Anime Los Angeles, and Otakon Vegas have been at least two to three days up to a week or two after the start of the new year. However, the 2015 calendar year already presented itself with its own natural three day weekend as Christmas and New Years both fell on a Friday. Both ALA and Otakon Vegas fell back to middle or late January but this convention decided to hold what would be the first ever convention that started on New Years Day.

This presented itself with a number of special challenges including their plans to throw a New Years Eve "costume ball" since no convention in recent memory has decided to run during this timeframe and therefore the event has to be created almost from scratch but was built around their Day Zero events. There's also determining what food outlets are open during Friday and the weekend - for example, in doing research in determining where to eat for the weekend, me and my roommates found out that Squeeze Inn is closed on New Years Day when we wanted to eat out there on that day. Restauants like Pieology plan to be open on that day, meaning that not all options are out the window.

Due to work commitments, I did not attend the New Years Eve celebration SacAnime held. However, I will say that this convention has already started on a high note due to a relevation that I had with someone; I won't say exactly what it is, but all I will say is that it took me 364 days to find this and finally on New Years Eve, the last day of 2015, it came to me.

My other challenge in general is dealing with the wirlwind of changes that SacAnime has grown into since hitting the high mark, from finally having the entire convention center to themselves to change over in various departments and bringing in well-known high-profile guests & reunions (and their attached paid autograph sessions). Robbie attended Sac Summer when these changes were placed in motion but now I get to experience this for myself for a weekend.

Who knows what this weekend and the first three days of 2016 will bring? There's only one way to find out...

- Prologue End -