SALT LAKE CITY — Though she hasn't been using her cane long, Grace Priest wasn't worried about coming to Salt Lake Comic Con.
She had heard positive reviews from her cousin, who requires a wheelchair, and saw the camaraderie in a Facebook group for fans with disabilities.
The 18-year-old Springville woman dressed up as her favorite Disney princess and agreed to attend the comic and pop culture event, delighted to find convenient ADA parking, lines that allow her to sit when she needs and wide walkways where other attendees gave her floral cane a polite berth.
It's also a place where she can briefly forget the autoimmune disease that causes her joints to ache and freeze up and her energy to fade.
"I'm going to sleep really well tonight because I'm going to be exhausted, but I'll come back tomorrow and be ready," said Priest, lighting up as she described her plans for the day. "I've only been sick for a little over a year, and before I was sick, I was really athletic. … Here I don't have to think about it."
Salt Lake Comic Con is the place to be accepted, and not just for being a geek.
During its five years, the event has become a secure place for fans of all ages, sizes, genders, abilities, orientations and alignments between Marvel and DC.
As the convention has grown, organizers have strived to hear fans' needs. Sign language interpreting and handicap accessible seating are offered for every celebrity panel. LGBT slots are included in the event's popular sci-fi speed dating sessions. Quiet rooms are available for nursing mothers. And no one questions the number of adults wandering around in costume.
When comic con was first getting off the ground, Bryan Brandenburg, one of the event's co-founders, would help select winners for free tickets awarded through the event's online contests. When he did, he recalls he would search for fans of various ethnicities, with unique needs, financial obstacles, single-parent households or individuals who identified themselves as LGBT.
"I would give them tickets, first of all, to help them feel like a winner, and second of all, because I believed that we would be successful if this became a place that encompassed everybody," Brandenburg said.
Now, that openness and civility is especially apparent in the convention's active social media communities, where emphasis is placed on engaging positively and supportively, and where political debates are avoided, Brandenburg said.
From there, it extends to the convention floor, where enthusiastic cosplayers of all shapes, sizes and genders show off their favorite costumes and take countless grinning photos with strangers.
For John and Kristen McCoy of Pleasant Grove, Salt Lake Comic Con is a chance to let their imaginations run wild and dress up in creative costumes, even though they're adults. Thursday they chose "Star Wars" themed outfits, dressing up as Princess Leia and a Jedi knight: he donned a white dress and cinnamon-buns wig, while she wore a long brown robe and carried a lightsaber.
It wasn't meant to be a shocking or political statement, they said, just a funny idea they had.
"You know you're not going to get judged, you can just be comfortable and be yourself," John McCoy said. "I know that no one here is going to give me a hard time. They're either going to laugh with me and think it's fun, or they're going to go on their way. It's not going to be an issue."
Kristen McCoy laughed as she described chatting with another couple they met at the convention who had come with the wife dressed as Leia and the husband as a Jedi.
"We were joking that they did it wrong," she said with a laugh. "It's just fun, we've made a lot of friends here."
John McCoy has attended every Salt Lake Comic Con event from the beginning, quickly getting into cosplay. When he met the woman who would be his wife, he brought her along too. In fact, the VIP passes they got for this week's convention were wedding gifts.
Comic con mobilizes an army of volunteers to help with its events. Aubri St. Clair, of Eagle Mountain, has volunteered at five events and has a knack for spotting people who look lost. As she hovered near an information booth Thursday, she spied an older couple looking out of place and a little overwhelmed, so she hurried over to help.
Turns out, she said, they weren't attending the event, but had stopped by to see their son, who was running a gaming station.
"I just enjoy taking care of people, no matter what I'm doing," St. Clair said. "I want to just make people's time more enjoyable, and if you spend all your time lost and looking for things, that's not so fun."
That passion to serve — along with her love of "Harry Potter" and "Lord of the Rings" — will keep St. Clair volunteering for years to come, she said.