The first day I arrived at the convention was filled with emotions. I saw many of my friends I had not seen since I left for college
three months ago, so I had a very nice reunion. Day Zero was definitely a
reunion day, and probably the best day to pick up a pre-registration badge if
you had one. There was pretty much no line and I got my badge almost instantly
despite arriving late because of traffic. We all went down to the ice cream social
where the hotel serves ice cream buffet style. All of it was great, especially
since they had actual hot fudge. While sitting we ran into a lot of
cosplayers and normal convention-goers that we usually see, so that was fun.
Besides picking up badges, ice cream social and chatting with friends, there
wasn't much to do on the first day. Staff was frantically setting up, but
everything seemed to be done on time so no complaints there.
Day 1 was fantastic, to say the least. I was cosplaying as
Rita from Tales of Vesperia because I
thought the Tales gathering was on
the first day, but later I found out it was on the third day. Anyways, the
first thing we did while getting up in the morning was make a bee-line for the
dealer's hall. It was supposed to open at 12, so we arrived at around 11:45.
The line was getting long and actually made it to the end of the hall, where
people were waiting in line for registration. Staff wasn't there to regulate
it, so both the lines wound up fusing in the end, but we didn't have to wait
long for the dealer's hall to open, so people who were picking up their badges
quickly left the line. Of course, at the dealer's hall everyone split up to
find what each one of us would buy, and then buy it on the last day where we
would hopefully get deals.
At one booth, my boyfriend was checking out a pocket knife,
which was seven dollars. There were about twenty-four of them, so he wasn't
worried about them being sold out. The problem was when we went to go buy it on
the last day, it now nine dollars even though they were definitely not running
low; they had sold three that whole weekend. So just a warning to fellow
convention goers, check out prices as well as what you want to buy and be
careful about dealer markups or the “lack of markdowns.”
Most of Day One was spent catching up on friends and
visiting the e-gaming room. The game room was pretty fun although there was a
severe lack of chairs. More than once, someone was hogging one of the three big
screens in the room by playing a single player game, and many people sitting in
the room weren't even watching the matches going on. Super Smash Brothers Brawl of course was on the largest TV in the
center of the room, and had the most spectators. The other TVs were mostly
filled with fighting games, the most common ones being Persona 4 Arena and surprisingly a lot of BlazBlue.
Later that night was the Rum Party, run by Pirates! Yarhar! There were a bunch of tables with various gambling games, from the standards such as
Blackjack and Poker, to the odd dice game seen in Pirates of the Caribbean 2. Sadly I did not play that game, since I
was losing horribly at 3-card poker for most of the night. I won once at 3-card
poker, and won a meager 3 coins back; I lost about 15. Before my losing streak
could go further, the Captain's Challenge had begun. Captain's Challenge is
where 15 people sign up and pay 30 coins. They then compete in a series of
challenges provided by the captain. If they win the challenge, they get a
payout of 480 coins. The first round involved wooing a pirate wench with “yer”
best pirate talk, then the second round was to make sure the challenger could
hold their grog, so they drank 16oz of frothing, foaming root beer. The top four
then had to sword fight to the mock-death. Near the end I joined a Texas Hold
'em table and actually won two rounds, where I got a significant amount of
money, somewhere in the hundreds this time. Everyone at the table was having a
good time, and when the final round was played we all put our coins in, and
agreed to buy and share all the wenches we could afford. We wound up buying
most of them if I recall correctly, we bought three wenches and three cabin
boys. I think three or four escaped, but we wound up with two free cabin boys
that joined us.
Day Two was mostly video games again (Sorry I'm a gamer!).
We wound up playing Skullgirls at
some point, and the voice actress for Peacock showed up and asked to join in so
she could practice for the panel the next day!
As for cosplays, I would say about half of them were from Homestuck. The Homestuck Gathering was put on Day Two, 12 noon, in the middle of
the pool deck. That is possibly one of the worst places and times for such a
large gathering. I think huge gatherings like Homestuck and Hetalia
should be put on the last day, in front of the hotel where there is less foot
traffic and less likely for someone to fall into a pool. But in the end, it's up to other people to
make the decision. My issue with Homestuck
cosplay is most of the cosplay is literally a t-shirt and face paint; one of my
pet peeves is cosplay that someone has not put effort into. Once I literally
saw someone walking around with the horns made out of index cards rolled up
into a cone that was too big to be the proper size horns. Some of them can be
really interesting and elaborate, like the Imperial ones. I saw one God-tier
Vriska cosplayer whose cosplay was amazing. But for every one good Homestuck cosplayer, there were dozens
of bad ones.
Overall, a lot of the cosplays that I saw at the convention
were lower quality; again, one of my pet peeves is the lack of effort in
cosplay. Personally, I like the challenges of the complicated cosplays, as well
as the fun in making it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying everyone's cosplay
was horrible and mine was good, but a lot of people had some things that were
just straight out wrong for the character. It could be lack of money, lack of
time, I understand. I didn't completely finish my Dragon Age 2 Hawke cosplay, but instead of trying to find some kind
of substitute for the part I didn't finish, I just left it off.
Day Three was kind of chaotic, being checkout day for most of
the convention-goers. I went to the AMV contest, which was full of epic AMVs
which I fully recommend watching, especially the Comedy and Pro categories. The
only issue I had was someone with a really spiky wig sat in front of me and
basically texted the entire time and blocked my view of the screen. I wound up
moving, but it was still a bother. There were actually little intros between
the categories for AMVs, which I think confused me as well as most of the
people around me since all the videos run right after the other. Maybe next
year they should put the category title in the beginning instead of the end.
The AMV contest actually ran for two hours, which ended right at checkout time,
so there was a rush back to the room to finish packing. For those who wanted to
stay at the convention even after checkout, there was a floor where the
convention would hold the bags of attendees, but the hotel lobby was still
holding bags as well, so if you've never been to ALA and you're worried about
checkout and what to do with your bags, do not fret!
So overall I saw no large problems with the convention,
things generally ran on schedule, and the staff was super polite. Be wary of
the dealer's hall though, since they apparently markup prices on the last day
instead of lowering them.
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