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Animaritime OMG
So yeah, that convention report! It went SO amazingly well.
Friday morning was a lot of running around trying to get the hotel set up before the convention opened at 1. IT was really starting to hit us that the convention had gotten big when we had more people in line than attended the convention first year. Actually, it may have been more than we had second year. I was working the registration desk for the first two hours and it was basically a mad scramble to get these people through the door. We hit a snag the FIRST non-preregistered person because I realized I didn't have a price list. :p At the end of my shift, we had 200 attendees in the convention centre. Which I went around telling people to give them heart attacks. THEN someone pointed out that the high schools hadn't gotten out yet. I had a vendor room shift after that, so I wound up buying a pretty CD holder that has a dragon on it. (Hey, I needed a CD holder. And it was pretty. :p)
Only about five people came to my fandom etiquette panel, but those who were there really got into it. I sat in on some of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
neekabe's more academic type panels, which were really neat. They were really well attended and the attendees were REALLY getting into it. That made me quite happy, because those were panels we were hoping would go over well but we weren't sure would. They would take what Katie said and just RUN with it, applying it to different anime.
One of the more amusing moments was fishing a toddler out of the middle of a gunfight. We had a volunteer come down from Ontario to run a LARP event. There was this adorable little kid, maybe two years old, who was playing outside the main events room (his mom was sitting nearby). At one point he wandered into the room, so I got to pull him out of the middle of the fight. :p
Final attendance on Friday was 330 people, which was INSANE. We got to bed around midnight and then had to be back in the convention center at 8:30 Saturday morning. I wore my River costume that day and surprisingly, actually kept the Boots of Doom on all day. Mostly because I was too busy to spend the ten minutes it takes to remove the things. :p One of the attendees was dressed as a Browncoat, so obviously we had to get a picture together. (Awesome story about that attendee, actually. Her ride to the convention fell through at the last minute and the forum goers pooled their money to pay for her bus ticket so she could still come. :D)
I had a three hour registration desk MARATHON on Saturday from 10-1. This was when we were approaching the fire regulation cap, so there was a lot of crazy "Okay, how many people do we have? How many pre-regs haven't picked up yet? How many more people can we actually let in? AAAAH!" I processed the last person around 1 o'clock for a total of 500. Then I walked around looking totally shell shocked and informing the rest of the staff that we'd hit the cap. We estimate we were forced to turn away about a hundred people over the course of Saturday afternoon and evening.
While wandering the vendor room, I decided to pick up a white Mokona plushie because it was too cute to resist. VIcki picked up the matching black one, because once again, too cute to resist. I also got Andre to do a sketch of Mokonas because he draws cute REALLY well.
My anime and geek music panel was quite well attended. I was the geek portion of the panel, and got a lot of laughs with the songs I chose to play. I also got declared the queen geek. :p
I ran into one of my old McCoworkers at the convention, which was super fun. He was the maintenance guy I used to talk about Star Wars to when I was closing. He missed me at work because no one else ever appreciated the music he would play once he got control of the CD player. :p
There was also the amusing incident of me sending a walkie talkie message from info desk saying that I would love someone forever if they would get me a glass of water. This was obviously directed at the rest of the staff, but one of the attendees heard me and thought it would be funny to do it. He couldn't find a glass of water, but at that point it had become a point of honour, so he bought me a can of Sprite. He definitely got a hug. :p
Saturday night I helped out with the auction, which was RIDICULOUSLY fun. I got to dance up and down the aisle with a "I can't dance without arrows" shirt, and just generally goof around in an attempt to convince people to bid on items. THe most amusing moment was when the last of the Pretty Pink MIrrors that Harlequin sent us last year sold for $20. A standard comment to the crowd when bidding was low thus became "Come ON guys, the mirror sold for more than that!". I was also partial to "AND you can use the DVD as a mirror!" :p
We were up until about 1 AM setting up for the garage sale, so we were a pretty sleepy bunch the next morning. We'd sold enough one day passes on Saturday that we were able to let another thirty or so people in for the last day. The garage sale went really smoothly. I picked up volumes 1 and 2 of Gunslinger Girl, even though I know I'm going to get frustrated being stuck in ADV Translation Limbo with that series. I also wound up buyingnukichan's PS2, because I'd been thinking about getting one ever since the PS3 came out, and the price was good. :p Five minutes before the end of the garage sale, I was going to be stuck giving one guy an empty envelope because no one had bought any of his stuff, so I started begging people shamelessly to buy it. THis worked quite nicely, as I wound up selling all but one of his items. :p Much to my distress, the Bawls guy sold out, so I was running only on a cup of tea for caffeine.
I swung by the vendor room one last time and picked up a cute villain button for my purse. Gold Dragon had, unfortunately, had an item stolen. It was part of a set of Final Fantasy VII items, which they gave to me since the entire set was now a write off. So now I have a buster sword letter opener and a necklace.
When the convention ended, we had a crazy time getting everything ready to take back to Sackville. We'd taken two van trips on the way there, but that wasn't going to be an option for going back, so we had to add either extra stuff or extra people to every vehicle. That's when we realized that I'm travel sized for your convenience, because they managed to squeeze me AND my luggage in. Even though I was between Cherie and a bunch of boxes, it wasn't nearly as squishy as it could have been.
We were going to have staff versus attendee laser tag, but that wound up being far too complicated to arrange, so we just rode the swings at Crystal Palace instead because it was fun, cheap and EASY.
Then the staff went to Jungle Jim's for dinner (and copious amounts of liquor in many cases). And, well, we all know what happened THEN. :p
Friday morning was a lot of running around trying to get the hotel set up before the convention opened at 1. IT was really starting to hit us that the convention had gotten big when we had more people in line than attended the convention first year. Actually, it may have been more than we had second year. I was working the registration desk for the first two hours and it was basically a mad scramble to get these people through the door. We hit a snag the FIRST non-preregistered person because I realized I didn't have a price list. :p At the end of my shift, we had 200 attendees in the convention centre. Which I went around telling people to give them heart attacks. THEN someone pointed out that the high schools hadn't gotten out yet. I had a vendor room shift after that, so I wound up buying a pretty CD holder that has a dragon on it. (Hey, I needed a CD holder. And it was pretty. :p)
Only about five people came to my fandom etiquette panel, but those who were there really got into it. I sat in on some of
neekabe's more academic type panels, which were really neat. They were really well attended and the attendees were REALLY getting into it. That made me quite happy, because those were panels we were hoping would go over well but we weren't sure would. They would take what Katie said and just RUN with it, applying it to different anime.One of the more amusing moments was fishing a toddler out of the middle of a gunfight. We had a volunteer come down from Ontario to run a LARP event. There was this adorable little kid, maybe two years old, who was playing outside the main events room (his mom was sitting nearby). At one point he wandered into the room, so I got to pull him out of the middle of the fight. :p
Final attendance on Friday was 330 people, which was INSANE. We got to bed around midnight and then had to be back in the convention center at 8:30 Saturday morning. I wore my River costume that day and surprisingly, actually kept the Boots of Doom on all day. Mostly because I was too busy to spend the ten minutes it takes to remove the things. :p One of the attendees was dressed as a Browncoat, so obviously we had to get a picture together. (Awesome story about that attendee, actually. Her ride to the convention fell through at the last minute and the forum goers pooled their money to pay for her bus ticket so she could still come. :D)
I had a three hour registration desk MARATHON on Saturday from 10-1. This was when we were approaching the fire regulation cap, so there was a lot of crazy "Okay, how many people do we have? How many pre-regs haven't picked up yet? How many more people can we actually let in? AAAAH!" I processed the last person around 1 o'clock for a total of 500. Then I walked around looking totally shell shocked and informing the rest of the staff that we'd hit the cap. We estimate we were forced to turn away about a hundred people over the course of Saturday afternoon and evening.
While wandering the vendor room, I decided to pick up a white Mokona plushie because it was too cute to resist. VIcki picked up the matching black one, because once again, too cute to resist. I also got Andre to do a sketch of Mokonas because he draws cute REALLY well.
My anime and geek music panel was quite well attended. I was the geek portion of the panel, and got a lot of laughs with the songs I chose to play. I also got declared the queen geek. :p
I ran into one of my old McCoworkers at the convention, which was super fun. He was the maintenance guy I used to talk about Star Wars to when I was closing. He missed me at work because no one else ever appreciated the music he would play once he got control of the CD player. :p
There was also the amusing incident of me sending a walkie talkie message from info desk saying that I would love someone forever if they would get me a glass of water. This was obviously directed at the rest of the staff, but one of the attendees heard me and thought it would be funny to do it. He couldn't find a glass of water, but at that point it had become a point of honour, so he bought me a can of Sprite. He definitely got a hug. :p
Saturday night I helped out with the auction, which was RIDICULOUSLY fun. I got to dance up and down the aisle with a "I can't dance without arrows" shirt, and just generally goof around in an attempt to convince people to bid on items. THe most amusing moment was when the last of the Pretty Pink MIrrors that Harlequin sent us last year sold for $20. A standard comment to the crowd when bidding was low thus became "Come ON guys, the mirror sold for more than that!". I was also partial to "AND you can use the DVD as a mirror!" :p
We were up until about 1 AM setting up for the garage sale, so we were a pretty sleepy bunch the next morning. We'd sold enough one day passes on Saturday that we were able to let another thirty or so people in for the last day. The garage sale went really smoothly. I picked up volumes 1 and 2 of Gunslinger Girl, even though I know I'm going to get frustrated being stuck in ADV Translation Limbo with that series. I also wound up buying
nukichan's PS2, because I'd been thinking about getting one ever since the PS3 came out, and the price was good. :p Five minutes before the end of the garage sale, I was going to be stuck giving one guy an empty envelope because no one had bought any of his stuff, so I started begging people shamelessly to buy it. THis worked quite nicely, as I wound up selling all but one of his items. :p Much to my distress, the Bawls guy sold out, so I was running only on a cup of tea for caffeine.I swung by the vendor room one last time and picked up a cute villain button for my purse. Gold Dragon had, unfortunately, had an item stolen. It was part of a set of Final Fantasy VII items, which they gave to me since the entire set was now a write off. So now I have a buster sword letter opener and a necklace.
When the convention ended, we had a crazy time getting everything ready to take back to Sackville. We'd taken two van trips on the way there, but that wasn't going to be an option for going back, so we had to add either extra stuff or extra people to every vehicle. That's when we realized that I'm travel sized for your convenience, because they managed to squeeze me AND my luggage in. Even though I was between Cherie and a bunch of boxes, it wasn't nearly as squishy as it could have been.
We were going to have staff versus attendee laser tag, but that wound up being far too complicated to arrange, so we just rode the swings at Crystal Palace instead because it was fun, cheap and EASY.
Then the staff went to Jungle Jim's for dinner (and copious amounts of liquor in many cases). And, well, we all know what happened THEN. :p