Rhode Island Comic Con 2026 Part 2
During the latter half of my time on Saturday of Rhode Island Comic Con 2026 I had closer to a 50-50 mix of cosplayers passing by and friends coming over for photos or to say hello than the first half of the day.
It helped that Clever and Cat got caught up in the excitement of the show room floor, snagging some cool merch, and not coming back to the mezzanine where I was set up until 40 minutes later than initially planned. I took advantage of that time to snag as many cosplay photos as I could. Of course, just as I had packed up, attackmodejoe stopped by cosplaying as convention guest CM Punk. He was less upset than I was since I’ve taken photos of him in that cosplay before, so we chatted for a bit before my group headed out.
Then as we were about to enter the walkway from the Omni Hotel to the mall, I ran into minimalcosplay headed back into the con. After some quick hugs and a chat, I turned at a voice and saw my nephew Peter and my grand-nephew Jackson. They are both nerds, but even more so wrestling fans and Peter runs a trading card and other collectibles business at cactusjackblack. Those two random encounters put a much-needed happy cap on what started out as a stressful day.
Since I was only at the con for about three hours, I don’t really have enough experience with it this year to properly discuss how it went. To me, it seemed even somehow more crowded than when I was last at RICC in 2018, but I got a mix of friends saying it was about the same as the last couple of years, and others agreeing it was even more crowded. Given where I was set up, I could see that as in past years the hallway connecting the arena to the convention center was a brutal chokepoint for traffic. I mentioned in the last article that it took us 10 minutes to go the 100 feet from the security station to the mezzanine, and you could double that time for people to get through the roughly 60 feet of that crowded hallway at the peak of the crowds.
Still, in the short time I was there I heard way fewer complaints about the way the convention was run than in previous years. And I saw fewer examples of panicked staffers rushing around than what I expected from what I saw in previous years.
Perhaps after 13 years the convention management and staff, the convention center and arena people, the Omni Hotel team and the city of Providence have all settled into a workable routine.
Among the cosplayers in this second and final gallery for RICC 2026 are revolution_cos, purplelotus.cos, sweetangelgurl33cosplay, ixneedxaxlife, criticalhitfitness, silentzeecosplay, kikou_koi_koi, mukami.cosplay, therosalieivy, cody.westg, noniethepup, itsmezhuli, cosplaylexiii, tjlancer, mambacosplay, craftycontraptions, alexwalason, and many more.
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