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As we move into the morning of Day One, one again we realize that since we know our schedule and the interview cancellations, a visit to the Press Room right at 8am is not needed for any further clarification. So instead we are able to ease into the day by load up into Levi's car and setting off North to Pine State Biscuits, a place that was recommended to us by an acquaintance (which I will mention in Part 4) and had in my back pocket since the end of Kumoricon 2021.
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| A view of the kitchen |
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| The brisket club sandwich |
We were able to dig into sandwiches, cinnamon rolls, gravy fries, and of course the biscuit itself with some apple butter, marionberry jam, whipped butter, and Bee local honey. I quickly realized how hearty this biscuit sandwich was let alone the biscuit itself - then again I haven't had this "hearty" of a biscuit as we couldn't finish the half dozen biscuits we got on the side (spoiler alert: we left it in the car).
We were near the flagship Fred Meyer and some of us needed additional supplies, ranging from more drinks to allergy spray because the rain in Portland was flaring up my allergies badly, so we made the trip back to grab the rest.
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| The entrance to the Fred Meyer off of NE Broadway |
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| A physical copy of Persona 5 Royal in the wild |
With that, we head back, take care of business in the room, and head on down to explore the convention right as it opens at 11am with the KumoriMarket.
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| The FakeStar booth promoting BURNOUT SYNDROMES |
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| People getting autographs early in the convention |
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| Signage for the convention's mask policy |
After scoping out where all the good merchandise is, getting our initial bids in the Silent Auction, and deciding that maybe it's not in our best interest to attend the Live Auction given the initial offering of items that was going to said Live Auction, we head back up to prepare for our first interview with Adam McArthur. We decided that we would be in the Press Room early to set up our equipment for the first interview of the day but then when we returned for other interviews throughout the day we could show up much closer to the start time.
[Adam McArthur interview coming soon!]
After our first interview and once again getting our sea legs under us, we head back into the room to grab Cup Ramen lunch and see what panels we wanted to attend between now and Kaiji Tang, the only other interview on Day One. Around this time, we started to hear on social media about the long lines for both the health check and Registration itself - up to 6 hours in some instances. We wanted to verify these claims for ourselves, so we went back into the convention to find out for ourselves.
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| Inside the Registration Hall |
We first talked to those who we in the health check line and one attendee said that they had been in line for 20 minutes and they were near the front to get their wristbands. From there, times ranged from 40 minutes (the line forming in Pre-Function A going into Registration) to 2 1/2 hours (just inside Registration) to 4 hours (halfway to the front of the maze in front of the Registration booths) - so the claims of 4-6 hours of waiting just to get their badge was not exaggerated. And for someone who had been paying attention to the General Meetings and call after call for Registration staff, I wasn't surprised that this was occurring. We presented our findings to the Press Room, which at this point was fully aware and were working on an plan to relieve the lines and walked out knowing that we wouldn't expect anything until the following morning.
With this heaviness in hand, we needed a break from all of this and find something fun to get our minds off of this. So we all head over to the Arena (Oregon Ballroom 202) for the Anime Mystery Murder! interactive panel, hosted by first-timers who had all of their stuff together and pulled off an awesome show. The panel was one big game of Mafia styled in cult classic video game Danganronpa where the panelist would pick some dead people and a "murderer," then allowed the entire panel to "accuse" an attendee and if they picked right they won a prize from the hosts. It was hilarious to watch attendees dogpile on certain characters that were in the crowd, including Genshin on Genshin accusations and the whole Forger family from Spy x Family getting into the mix.
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| A view into the circle during the second game |
After the panel I head back to the room for a quick snack to tide me over to dinner after the BURNOUT SYDNROMES concert before venturing back out into the convention to fine comb the KumoriMarket ahead of our Kaiji Tang interview.
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| Shinji, Paper Bag Asuka, and Misato from Neon Genesis Evangelion |
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| The towers of the Oregon Convention Center lit up in red, white, and blue for Veteran's Day |
[Kaiji Tang interview coming soon!]
After re-convening in the room to start out our evening plus a stop over in the lobby bar, we head into the Main Events Hall to set up shop to record the BURNOUT SYDNROMES concert.
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Unfortunately, due to miscommunication between various parties we are unable to post the entire concert but at least we got some good photos from a decent vantage point for the time that we were there.
Dejected from what had occurred, we made the excusive decision to try out Sizzle Pie sitting down in one of their locations and I offered to get a Lyft in both directions since we needed to cross the 84 going South to the same place where last year we picked up the pizza to go.
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| A large Bomber pizza - a ton of cup pepperoni |
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| A regular Police & Thieves - mushrooms and spinach |
After this experience, I cannot have Sizzle Pie to go anymore - I need to have it fresh within the restaurant.
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| A crew selfie from Sizzle Pie |
After returning to the hotel, we continue the night and during this time I make a decision since we have nothing occurring on Day Two until our interview with Studio TRIGGER:
I'm going to volunteer at Registration.
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