As I’ve been going to the NY Comic Con for nine years now, I’m often asked by friends who are braving the teeming masses for the first time about some suggestions and necessary items to bring along to make their day a whole lot easier. Instead of repeating myself ad nauseum, I decided to throw some thoughts down on the web in this little post. It’s my hope that these tips add to your enjoyment of this sensory overloading event. Here is a quick laundry list of things I’d recommend that you have along with you.

The In General Stuff:
1. Decent Sized Bag: Bring a knapsack or schoolbag or a sizable messenger bag. You never know what you might purchase or be given depending on your discussions along the way. A schoolbag might be a little clunkier but I tend to prefer to have more room than less myself.
2. Empty Clear Sandwich Bags: Lots of the big booths do giveaways of buttons or stickets and assorted thingies. I’ve secured them for ease of finding once its all over by tossing them all into one of the clear baggies.
3. Sustenance Part 1: It doesn’t hurt to bring along a couple of energy bars or perhaps a peanut butter sandwich if you can eat peanuts. The Javits Center gets expensive and you might prefer your money go to vendors instead of concessions. I also have taken small baggies of honey nut cheerios, unsalted Saltines or peanuts along with me. Just to give a quick energy boost. Sure a candy bar might be fine but we don’t always need the empty sugar in our systems.
4. Sustenance Part 2: A single bottle of water will suffice because you can fill it up at assorted points during the convention. Maybe just bring one of the empty water bottles that you might use in the gym or on excursions during your normal day.
5. Hand Cleanser: Purell or something similar. It never hurts to be clean. Sometimes I’ve seen friends carrying a small packet of wipes. Those work too.
6. Aspirin: Just in case you get headaches easily or that the convention becomes too much for you.
7. Body Spray: Sometimes the heat of a place like Javits can find people feeling a little ripe. I mean no insult to say if this is you on a regular basis that you should bring along a spray of some kind to use just in case.
8. Technology Part 1: A fully charged mobile device. It doesn’t hurt to update it before you head into the convention either in terms of the apps you use all day. This same logic applies to your tablet or if you are bringing along a laptop.
9. Technology Part 2: The cords to charge said mobile device at one of the numerous spaces around the convention you can use should the juice run low. I also bring along an external battery which is wonderful since it let’s me also charge up my camera on the fly.
10. Camera: You don’t have to bring a big ole rig out with you but sometimes a small point and shoot will do the trick during the convention should you want to get more images and not have everything on your mobile device. Be sure to have this charged and with a clean SD card. Double check that you have the SD card in the device since the closest Best Buy is not too close at all in comparison.
11. Money. Need I say more? Most vendors accept credit cards so if you are points crazy like me just use that.
12. Umbrella: Hey if you have a schoolbag with you this is a non-issue and I always tend to carry one nowadays.
13. Comfortable shoes: Last convention it was tallied that I walked a sum total of 20 miles across the four days. It actually might have been slightly higher but I cannot locate my reference to this at the time of this posting. So with that said you are going to want to be good to your feet.
14. Reading Material: A comic book, a magazine or a novel will all suffice. You might want to take a break from the madness and sit down somewhere.
Continue reading Guidelines For A Seamless New York Comic Con →