A visit to FanX Salt Lake Comic & Pop Culture Convention is, at best, an overwhelming experience because of how much is going on those three days — from photo opportunities to panels and the expansive vendor floor.
It’s an explosion of fandom fun.
(Bethany Baker | Salt Lake Tribune) Fans walk through Salt Palace Convention Center during FanX in Salt Lake City in 2023.
Croix Provence, director of programming for the convention, understands that feeling. She reviews 500 panel submissions every year.
“I generally sit through with a few locals who understand the pulse of the convention,” Provence said, “and what the city is excited and looking for.”
She said they also survey people through social media to see what fans desire from the panels.
“We just build it from there, trying to create the balance of old and new things that may appeal to kids versus families, versus some spicy little late night content,” Provence said. “Just building a schedule that could make everybody happy.”
Organizers receive submissions and debate what will make the final schedule, she said, for five months.
“We always end on May 4, because May the Fourth Be with You [’Star Wars’ Day],” Provence said. “My goal is to get the schedule into the hands of participants two months before the event.”
Here are five panels Provence encourages fans to check out at this year’s convention, which runs Sept. 26-28 at the Salt Palace Convention Center:
• Twisted Toonz, Sept. 28, 2 p.m.
“It’s a surprise cast of celebrity voice actors who all show up on stage, and then they’re handed a script from a movie [and] they’re not told what the movie is in advance,” Provence said. The actors are then given direction on which characters they should try to voice.
• Mel Gibson Panel, Sept. 28, 1:15 p.m.
“This is Mel Gibson’s first convention ever,” Provence said, “and he’s going to be doing a 30-minute panel on Saturday, and I just don’t know if that will ever happen again.”
• Anime Academy Awards, Sept. 26-28, nightly.
“Each night at the convention, there’s a series of panels that are Anime Awards … and they are rowdy,” Provence said. “People are yelling about their favorite anime characters, and they’re doing a battle bracket to get the audience to vote who is the best.”
• The Year of the Girl Panel, Sept. 26, 2:30 p.m.
“It’s going to be a retrospect into the awesome amount of female-driven content … that happened over the past year,” Provence said, “like the “Barbie” movie and American Girl revival, and how that’s integrating women into nerd culture.”
• “Lord of the Rings” Trivia, Sept. 28, 5 p.m.
“Because we’ve got the ‘Lord of the Rings’ cast,” Provence said, “there is trivia called Lord of the Things … that’s going to be a really good time with a lot of people competing for their ‘Mordor’ prowess.”
Provence said the best thing she can recommend to attendees when it comes to navigating the convention as a whole is to download the FanX app, which includes the entire schedule. The app lets you pick favorite events, she said, and will keep people up to date about any “cool last-minute surprises.”
