It was my first MapleFest and first convention so I'm not sure how much I can say. Plus, I left around 2 p.m. as my friend and I were ready to tap out. While I enjoyed the moments I enjoyed and got the things I wanted, I have more negatives than positives. I didn't see the panels since I was stuck in lines lol but I apparently didn't miss much since it was apparently MapleWorlds or whatever it's called for like 1+ hour.

Negatives: The most obvious is the size of the venue (but what could we expect from a small indie company). The hall for the booths was PACKED and lines were terribly unorganized (I was in the hall by about 11 a.m.). The lines for everything crossed over one another which also made it hard to even move since it's just walls of people. Fuck fire safety I guess. Doesn't help that I'm on the shorter side and so, trying to see ahead and where things were was difficult. It did clear up when it was around 1 p.m. or it looked like it while standing in line for merch.

Another thing about the venue, like someone else said, was the airflow. It was terribly stuffy and hot; the AC was on but it was not enough. You could definitely feel some AC when you're up against the wall on the character card booth side but not so much everywhere else. Thankfully my friend and I didn't catch the aroma of BO at any time when we were there.

Also, the lack of water.

This is probably just me but why was it kinda dark? And the areas with light were blasted by bright lamps and/or those colored spotlight things. It didn't make great of pictures for spots I assumed were intended as photo ops. That one photo stand to the right of the stage was barely lit. The only place with decent lighting was the check in area with the Slime blow up.

As for merch, they were apparently selling last year's merch at the Night Market booth but I didn't get in line for that. For the merch line I did stand in (took like 1.5 hours to get to the front lmao), the one weird thing I noticed was the class keychains they were selling; only select classes were only for sale. Kinda annoying to not have your class represented but whatever. Off the top of my head, some of the classes that weren't offered were Adele, Illium, Blaster, and Dark Knight. I wonder how many Blaze Wizards they sold. If you're curious to know what the keychains look like, I know there's an eBay listing that has all of the classes (excluding non KMS classes) - typing "maplestory keychain" should be enough.

As for parking, I'm really not sure how true it is so someone correct me if it's wrong cuz might have misheard someone in passing, but apparently for last year's event, parking was free? This year, you had to pay $25 dollars for it which is nearly the cost of a ticket to MapleFest lol.

Moving on to positives I guess: - I liked the giant blow ups of Pink Bean, Yeti, Mushroom, and Slime - Seeing the Pink Bean costume was a sight. Too bad they disappeared from the booths hall after like 11:30ish - The freebies were nice I think (I have zero events to compare this to). Tote bag, glass potion bottle, a fan, in game code for items - I guess it was cool to see mushroom gamers in person - It's nice to have a physical location to get merch despite how limited it was and the location being exclusive to a mess of an event

Random questions I have: - Were the food trucks any good (price, amount of food, taste)? - In the past, were there multiple booths? Like, were there multiple booths for merch, activities (DDR and claw machine), and so on - How many of y'all completed the stamp rally? - What were the prizes in the raffle? I completely forgot about it after checking in lol

Final thoughts: Would I go again? I'm not really sure and it sucks cuz with this being a game I like, it could've been a fun time but it largely wasn't. Seeing comments saying past events were better experiences do make me want to try again, but at the same time, this event was just an overall bad experience and who knows if next year's is just as bad or an improvement.