Our experience at the SDCC in Málaga 2025 | The 'Cola Con'

We’ll be brief on this topic, as all the media are already piling on about it.

Non-nominative accreditations

This was a blunder from the start, because in theory, to pick up your accreditation you had to show your QR/Ticket and ID, and if someone else did it for you, they needed an authorization and a copy of your ID, since the accreditations were supposedly nominative.

But this was a lie, because in the end they didn’t ask for any IDs, and the accreditations weren’t in your name.

And we ask… what was all the fuss for, then?

The 'Cola Con'

We arrived at the event around 11 a.m., couldn’t get there earlier, and at that time we didn’t have to wait in line to enter the venue. However, once inside, we found zero information. We saw two huge lines and asked around to get the bags. After that, we joined one of the lines to enter the vendor hall, and it took us 3 hours to get in — though some people waited much longer. In the end, we didn’t get inside until 2 p.m., and luckily we didn’t have any reservations, otherwise we would have lost them.

During those 3 hours of waiting: lots of heat, lots of impatience, and desperate people.

Poorly utilized space

This was the cause of all the problems, since they had almost everything concentrated in a single hall — precisely the one everyone wanted to be in. That hall contained exhibitions, games, shops, etc. What it didn’t have were the food stalls and the other hall (an auditorium where the big shows of the event were held).

Meanwhile, outside the pavilion there was three times more space, unused, which they could have taken advantage of with covered structures to move half of the stands out of Hall M (the main one), thus avoiding having everyone crammed into a single place.

Too many tickets were sold for everything to be packed together as it was; the hall’s doors were even closed because it was full, with barely a meter and a half (at most, being generous) between one shop and the next.

I won’t criticize the organization further, since you already have thousands of videos and articles dedicated to that.

Saturday was precisely the day of the Cosplay contest — all of them really good, but the most remarkable moment was a marriage proposal before the final verdict was announced.

In addition to the contestants, we saw plenty of people in costume: Angewomon, some Saiyans, 4 Mutant Ninja Turtle Mandalorians, and 'La Dora' who appeared on IlloJuan’s livestream (we actually saw that guy in line to get in).

Inside Hall M, we got to see a life-sized recreation of Andy’s room from Toy Story, as if we were toys ourselves. They had the Fantastic Four’s car on display and even an area dedicated to Jurassic Park, Tron, and Predator.

Bandai Namco was there, and we got to enjoy DB Sparking Zero.

And lots of comic, manga, t-shirt, and figure shops, plus artists, with exhibitions of figures, statues, and busts.

We’ll leave you with a photo gallery of the event at the end of the article.

First of all, better space organization.

Second, bring more exclusives in figures, manga, and comics. Let me explain: there were lots of comic, manga, and figure shops, but everything they had could be found elsewhere for cheaper. If I go to an event like SDCC, I expect exclusives like in the original SDCC, and this time the only brand that did something was Funko, which sold exclusive Funkos (that even caused fights).

We all missed having Tamashii with its display of upcoming releases and prototypes, along with its exclusives. And where I say Tamashii, I also mean Mafex, Marvel Legends, Bandai, etc., because everything on display belonged to private shops, not brands bringing us a unique and exclusive showcase.

Third, more space for anime. This year should have been the year to have some internal event related to Dragon Ball, especially since it’s celebrating its 40th anniversary.

In conclusion, we were there on Saturday, we stood in line, ate there, bought some things, and took photos. But even though we had a good time, there were many things that could have been much better.