The Anaheim Convention Center is huge. When I went to see the Anaheim Convention Center, located in Anaheim California, it was a largest building that I had ever seen. I went to visit Anaheim during my freshman year of high school for a school conference. Honestly, I really just wanted to go to Anaheim just to visit Disneyland, but in the process of going to see the theme park, I had to go to the convention center and all of its events that were hosted. When I first saw it, I was in awe. It was humongous. There are thousands of people in the building and yet we only occupied a small portion of it. To put in perspective how big it is, it’s currently the tenth-largest convention center in America, YouTube holds many of its conferences there, and it’s over a million square feet.

The outside of the Anaheim Convention Center looks really cool. It’s a glass building with a lot of cool monuments and artwork on the outside. The inside, to be completely honest, is pretty lackluster. Part of the convention center just looks like a big warehouse that has no end. There is really nothing special about it. Other parts of the convention center were a little prettier. You could tell they were modernized to make the building look more appealing, but it still didn’t have that “wow” factor that some other buildings do. I don’t really hold it against the convention center because its function isn’t entirely to look grand. It’s to hold huge gatherings and it does that quite well.

Coming from Oklahoma and having been to previous conferences, I knew that convention centers could be huge, but I didn’t know they could be THAT huge. I remember while walking through the building, it seemed like every time when I thought I had mastered the layout, there was a different section for me to explore. It was so huge that I didn’t even see the entire building. Despite not knowing where I was, I had a lot of fun. I met a lot of different people from different parts of the world and learned a lot of new things. My favorite memory was probably the opening ceremony which had different artists and bands. I was with all my friends and that was a great experience. 

I think what was the cherry on top of the convention center was how it was located around a lot of other cool activities. As I previously said, I only traveled to Anaheim so that I could go to Disneyland and the convention center was within walking distance from it. It also had a lot of cool shops and restaurants that really showcased the beauty of California. I was able to walk around the area with my friends and we were able to see many things that you just can’t find here in Oklahoma. I think all of this made the building extremely memorable to me. Since then, I’ve been to larger convention centers, but I still remember Anaheim simply because it was the first very large convention center I had been to and because, frankly, it was the best. It wasn’t just a convention center that made it so cool, it was the environment and its purpose which ultimately allowed me to create a ton of memories.