Cleveland Colossal Convention

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Cleveland Colossal Convention
Location	Holiday Inn Independence, Ohio
Years in existence	2002 to present
Official Website

The Cleveland Colossal Convention, commonly called ColossalCon, is an anime convention that takes place in Northeastern Ohio typically in Independence, OH during the early summer. It was started by the former owner of The Atomic Eye, a closed anime merchanise store in Lakewood, and another employee in 2002.

1 History

[edit] History

[edit] Cleveland Colossal Convention 02

This convention was a one day convention on August 4, 2002. The convention had a large draw due to the $3.00 entrance fee with admission discounted for anyone that came in cosplay. While billed as an anime convention to many, it had a large number of sci-fi merchandise dealers too. Much of the staff for the 03 convention was made up of attendees of this convention.

[edit] Cleveland Colossal Convention 03

This was the first 3 day Cleveland Colossal Convention that took place in the same Holiday Inn in Independce, Ohio that Ohayocon took place the year before. Along with several new staff members the convention grew in size increasing the number of video rooms and expanded the dealers room. It also added a game room, main events room, and panel room. Poor planning and technical difficulties hurt this convention though, mostly due to inexperience. Another detail which hurt the convention was the layout of the hotel which had the anime and panel rooms on one side of the hotel and the dealer's and main events room on the other side. This convention was noted for having the ability to play anime in the hotel rooms using the close circuit television system of the hotel.

[edit] Cleveland Colossal Convention 04

Following the same formula as the previous year the 2004 convention took place is the same location. The 2004 convention saw the disapperence of one of the con's founders and with his role being filled by staff from the previous year. This convention is noted for the first attempts at trivia panels and the emergence of the ramen stand that has become famous among the staff.

[edit] Cleveland Colossal Convention 05

Hoping that a new location would help attendance and provide some room since the previous year's convention was starting to grow beyond the Holiday Inn's capacity the 2005 convention moved to the Embassey Suites down the road. This convention saw a shift in the leadership away from the other founder and to veterans of the 2003 convention. However technical problems remained with the shift from VCRs and DVD players in the video rooms to computer systems and problems with the hotel plagued the convention.

A major problem for this convention was that the hotel had several power outages on the first day of the convention which hindered their ability to setup equipment.

[edit] Cleveland Colossal Convention 06

The convention moved back the Holiday Inn. Similarly this the attendence was around 650 but with less technical problems as had been the case years before. The major new attraction was a role playing group which caused issues with the hotel management.