Megacon Live Manchester – July 2024
2024-07-30By: Darren Poulson
I’m just about recovered from the weekend at Megacon Live, and thought I’d get my thoughts down.
Whilst I’ve personally done a couple of events at Manchester Central (a converted railway station in the center of Manchester, hence the name) this was the first time I’ve had to worry about unloading a lot of equipment. Normally we just park up underneath and drive the droids in. However this time we actually had a stand and decided to go all in.
Arrived late Friday afternoon for setup, I located the entrance to the backlot of the venue. Thankfully I had done some investigation the night before on where to go, and the event organiser then sent some details through anyway. Venue staff were all friendly and super helpful which made it a whole lot easier. A quick unload of the gear and droids and a trek to the other side of the venue to find out area, and we put the stand together.
Saturday morning and off to the event. 8am start for us, to be ready to entertain the early bird ticket holders at 9am. And then the fun started. A steady stream of people coming in the doors got to say Hi to R2 and other droids. It wasn’t the busiest event we’ve ever done, as there was another comic con on at the other side of Manchester which split the crowd. Tho a lot of people ended up doing both and splitting their days.

Doug and Jim got volunteered to join a panel with the Steampunk Emporium and UKG/RL on how to build and work with cosplay/builder communities, how to make them work, and the types of issues that can come up and how to get over them. Well done guys, it was a really good talk to watch and hopefully people got some good information out of it.
Most of the day was spent wandering around the venue, entertaining people, droids dancing, and generally trying to make people smile.





Our stand was a bit out of the way, in a different room with the kids fun area (inflatables, bumper cars, things like that) so a lot of people didn’t know we were there, but we did get to have a little fun on some of the kids stuff before and after the event.
After the event closed on Saturday, we all had a nice walk into town to go for the traditional Droidbuilder curry. And as usual, nothing was booked so we had to ask very nicely for a table.
Sunday was thankfully a shorter day, starting at 10am. Much the same as the day before, tho I did spend more time outside in front of the event which has a nice area where all the cosplayers gather. The weather was very strange, there was a great big ball of fire in the sky that I don’t think anyone in Manchester had ever seen before!
Finally the event wound down and we packed up the stand, loaded our cars, and all headed home for some much needed rest.
The next day, we received an email to our events inbox with the following message (redacted):
Hi!
My son (<redacted>, 5) and I attended MegaCon Manchester at the weekend and he’s been buzzing about your droids ever since – they were absolutely the highlight of the show for him. I just wanted to say thank you, especially for engaging him by playing droid chase or having R2-D2 wave at him! Attached are some pictures he was very keen to learn how to draw when he got home!
Thanks again, keep up the awesome work.
This is why we do what we do. We entertain, we inspire, and we even teach.
The Megacon team have already asked us back for future events, so guess we’d start planning those now!