Confuzzled 2014 writeup
My plan for 2014 (which so far has not been going well) was - and kind of still is - to try and change jobs this year. I've been at the same company for over 10 years, in the same role, at pretty much the same level. There really isn't any possibility for advancement because we're a small company of under 80 or so people. I'm not being challenged enough, so it's really time to change before it's too late.
As such I felt that I was more likely to be switching sometime around mid-year, which would mean that my vacation time would reset from 20 days (which somehow ended up being closer to 28) down to a minimum 10. In all liklihood, I would not make EuroFurence again as a result of that.
So instead I decided to head out to a convention that I'd never been to yet, but had heard a lot of good things about: Confuzzled.
I left on the Friday before the Canadian May long weekend (which is one week before the US & UK long weekend, because, well, Canada) and after a brief stop over at Keflavik International Airport in Iceland to empty out our 777's waste water tanks that weren't properly emptied while in Vancouver, got to London Heathrow. Then spent the better part of the week with parents, meeting up with SmackJackal in London (Monday), visiting the BlueBell Railway (hadn't been there for years) and meeting my brother and his wife for dinner in London (Tuesday), and going to see The War Horse (Wednesday).
Didn't do the "early arrival" thing so could only watch from Twitter as many people descended into the Solihull area on Thursday. Friday was my travel day, and got up to Euston without any issue... which mean I got there 90 minutes before I'd booked the ticket for Birmingham International station (and due to the nature of the ticket, couldn't use it earlier). No problems with the train up, and got plenty of bag space. The pain was just the walk from the station over to the hotel, as that was a little farther than I had thought.
This was the convention's first time at the Birmingham Metropole hotel, so like everyone else this hotel was a new experience to me. At first, it seemed a bit of a maze. But as you spend your next few days there, you get used to the layout.
And the layout there was very well suited to a fan convention. The best thing that you can have for such a convention is a central meeting spot, the 'hub' of the con. That would be the lobby bar. This was a good open space right off the lobby, lots of tables, lots of seating, good amount of light during the day, and right next to the main entrance to the lobby where it seemed like all the fursuiters would gather. Really, you could sit down there and see the convention around you... and that's what I tended to do: just sit down and socialize with people.
Even though I'd brought three costumes with me (Tatonga the now not-so-secret pronghorn, Qesnel the only-worn-once Jedi gryphon, and the new Tseatah mk.III-the-hard-to-wear-for-long-because-too-much-CO2-buildup), I didn't go out in them as often as I planned, opting to sit down and catch up with people I hadn't seen since last EuroFurence, or longer. That's where CFz was a good con for me - because the selection of people that were there had a substantial overlap with EF, but also a large number of people who live in the UK/Europe but don't get over there. I got to see Swandog and Sayh, who I hadn't seen in ages, as well as Felder and Harlequeen, who I've known since my very early days in the fandom (ie - mid 90's), as well as finding out that someone else that I knew that went by the name Aspirin (who no longer uses that name) that I also knew from my early days and who I hadn't seen in perhaps 18 years was there as well!
As seems to be usual for me at conventions these days, I didn’t go to many panels. In fact, I went to no “panels” at all. I did however go to the Pub Quiz (of which our team came something like 5th - and more importantly, beat the ‘con staff’ team), as well as the Pawpet Show.
I’ve seen the show that EF puts on, and knew that this team was very much inspired by the Europe team - certainly there is some overlap in cast and crew - but the biggest difference I noticed was that while the EF show goes for the dramatic, the CFz show absolutely has fun with itself and doesn’t take things quite as seriously. There were also plenty more cultural jokes that I got in this one thanks to having spent over half my life in the UK. The amount of work and quality that goes into such a show is still amazing and I have major kudos for all involved. I especially liked the opening animation done by DrgnAlexia and HiroHusky (https://www.furaffinity.net/view/13588190/) As someone who had never seen the previous shows at CFz, this - while also being good animation to a catchy piece of music - well served to introduce the main cast of characters to us. This wasn’t the only animation used in the show, as someone had done one of the inter-scene videos as Starfox themed - right the way down to the pixelated animated icons. Amazing work. I wish that was online somewhere to show as well, but I haven’t found it. The story itself was good, and the video cuts between scenes well timed so that there really wasn’t much (if any) dead time from when the video finished to the next scene. A few timing issues and acting fluffs, but considering that this is a show that is rehearsed in person only a few times before production, and only once with everything in place at the venue, that’d just be nitpicking to go on about that.
On the costuming side of things, as I mentioned I didn’t do too much. Perhaps a total of 8 hours throughout the convention. It was a very good thing that the parade wasn’t on Saturday, because it was very wet that day. Fortunately, it dried out enough on Sunday for it to still be held outside. As for the fursuit lounge… well, I thought that EuroFurence’s lounge was good with their big driers. Then I saw Confuzzled’s, and that put EF’s into 2nd place. One huge-ass blower in the middle of 3 pairs of tubes that spread outwards with hangers for bodysuits, and in the centre core, outlets to hang the heads on as well. When I say huge-ass blower, I really mean it. One of them was standalone and not part of one of these dryer units - the power it had was impressive. It literally would blow you backwards. I think someone said that the person who put them together had military connections, and that these were fans that could be found on aircraft carriers or something? Impressive stuff.
One thing that was almost a let-down was the photo-shoot. The hours were scheduled to 4pm Saturday, and I went down at before 3:30pm - and they initially told me they were done for the day and had shut down? I queried this and noted that the schedule did say 4pm, and they did at least open it back up for me and a couple of other people who had wandered down there as well. Really, that’s a bit sneaky to try and close early just because it gets quiet. Fortunately, I did get all the photo-shoot stuff done that I wanted - stuff with Tseatah mk.III as well as Qesnel (accompanied by Fangs) - the latter of which was really hard to do, because of balancing with the heel-less paw boot feet. I think those will just get worn for quick photos now, and I’ll use boots for being out otherwise. Trying to balance destroyed me too much that I went back to the room afterwards to recover, and didn’t bring Qesnel out again for the rest of the con (despite meaning to).
Food at the hotel wasn;t too bad either. With it being a hotel that doesn't have a lot else around it, we were pretty much dependant on the hotel for all meals. The BBQ, as many people pointed out beforehand, likely was not worth the money. The idea of having buffet style meals in a big event room - great idea. However, the quality of the food served there really wasn't very good, and the variety wasn't that wide either. I had stuff from that dinner buffet one day, and it was dry and fairly tasteless. I decided to pay the extra for meals in the bar area. There was 20% off for attendees, but then another 10% automatically added back on for service charge. But the food in the bar area was leaps and bounds above the buffet. I had fish and chips one day, and then a steak sandwich the next, and those were both really good. The breakfast buffet - that was great every day. A full all you can eat English breakfast with proper bacon, sausages, eggs and beans? I'm kind of glad I don't have the ability to do that every day! Made sure that I filled up well enough on that so I didn't need to do lunch. So overall, food was decent enough.
Actually running out of things to say, but will summarize with saying that it was a great convention for me and, should my vacation time permit it, I’ll try to be back.
My photos from the con are here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/25417841@N05/sets/72157645091039756/
As such I felt that I was more likely to be switching sometime around mid-year, which would mean that my vacation time would reset from 20 days (which somehow ended up being closer to 28) down to a minimum 10. In all liklihood, I would not make EuroFurence again as a result of that.
So instead I decided to head out to a convention that I'd never been to yet, but had heard a lot of good things about: Confuzzled.
I left on the Friday before the Canadian May long weekend (which is one week before the US & UK long weekend, because, well, Canada) and after a brief stop over at Keflavik International Airport in Iceland to empty out our 777's waste water tanks that weren't properly emptied while in Vancouver, got to London Heathrow. Then spent the better part of the week with parents, meeting up with SmackJackal in London (Monday), visiting the BlueBell Railway (hadn't been there for years) and meeting my brother and his wife for dinner in London (Tuesday), and going to see The War Horse (Wednesday).
Didn't do the "early arrival" thing so could only watch from Twitter as many people descended into the Solihull area on Thursday. Friday was my travel day, and got up to Euston without any issue... which mean I got there 90 minutes before I'd booked the ticket for Birmingham International station (and due to the nature of the ticket, couldn't use it earlier). No problems with the train up, and got plenty of bag space. The pain was just the walk from the station over to the hotel, as that was a little farther than I had thought.
This was the convention's first time at the Birmingham Metropole hotel, so like everyone else this hotel was a new experience to me. At first, it seemed a bit of a maze. But as you spend your next few days there, you get used to the layout.
And the layout there was very well suited to a fan convention. The best thing that you can have for such a convention is a central meeting spot, the 'hub' of the con. That would be the lobby bar. This was a good open space right off the lobby, lots of tables, lots of seating, good amount of light during the day, and right next to the main entrance to the lobby where it seemed like all the fursuiters would gather. Really, you could sit down there and see the convention around you... and that's what I tended to do: just sit down and socialize with people.
Even though I'd brought three costumes with me (Tatonga the now not-so-secret pronghorn, Qesnel the only-worn-once Jedi gryphon, and the new Tseatah mk.III-the-hard-to-wear-for-long-because-too-much-CO2-buildup), I didn't go out in them as often as I planned, opting to sit down and catch up with people I hadn't seen since last EuroFurence, or longer. That's where CFz was a good con for me - because the selection of people that were there had a substantial overlap with EF, but also a large number of people who live in the UK/Europe but don't get over there. I got to see Swandog and Sayh, who I hadn't seen in ages, as well as Felder and Harlequeen, who I've known since my very early days in the fandom (ie - mid 90's), as well as finding out that someone else that I knew that went by the name Aspirin (who no longer uses that name) that I also knew from my early days and who I hadn't seen in perhaps 18 years was there as well!
As seems to be usual for me at conventions these days, I didn’t go to many panels. In fact, I went to no “panels” at all. I did however go to the Pub Quiz (of which our team came something like 5th - and more importantly, beat the ‘con staff’ team), as well as the Pawpet Show.
I’ve seen the show that EF puts on, and knew that this team was very much inspired by the Europe team - certainly there is some overlap in cast and crew - but the biggest difference I noticed was that while the EF show goes for the dramatic, the CFz show absolutely has fun with itself and doesn’t take things quite as seriously. There were also plenty more cultural jokes that I got in this one thanks to having spent over half my life in the UK. The amount of work and quality that goes into such a show is still amazing and I have major kudos for all involved. I especially liked the opening animation done by DrgnAlexia and HiroHusky (https://www.furaffinity.net/view/13588190/) As someone who had never seen the previous shows at CFz, this - while also being good animation to a catchy piece of music - well served to introduce the main cast of characters to us. This wasn’t the only animation used in the show, as someone had done one of the inter-scene videos as Starfox themed - right the way down to the pixelated animated icons. Amazing work. I wish that was online somewhere to show as well, but I haven’t found it. The story itself was good, and the video cuts between scenes well timed so that there really wasn’t much (if any) dead time from when the video finished to the next scene. A few timing issues and acting fluffs, but considering that this is a show that is rehearsed in person only a few times before production, and only once with everything in place at the venue, that’d just be nitpicking to go on about that.
On the costuming side of things, as I mentioned I didn’t do too much. Perhaps a total of 8 hours throughout the convention. It was a very good thing that the parade wasn’t on Saturday, because it was very wet that day. Fortunately, it dried out enough on Sunday for it to still be held outside. As for the fursuit lounge… well, I thought that EuroFurence’s lounge was good with their big driers. Then I saw Confuzzled’s, and that put EF’s into 2nd place. One huge-ass blower in the middle of 3 pairs of tubes that spread outwards with hangers for bodysuits, and in the centre core, outlets to hang the heads on as well. When I say huge-ass blower, I really mean it. One of them was standalone and not part of one of these dryer units - the power it had was impressive. It literally would blow you backwards. I think someone said that the person who put them together had military connections, and that these were fans that could be found on aircraft carriers or something? Impressive stuff.
One thing that was almost a let-down was the photo-shoot. The hours were scheduled to 4pm Saturday, and I went down at before 3:30pm - and they initially told me they were done for the day and had shut down? I queried this and noted that the schedule did say 4pm, and they did at least open it back up for me and a couple of other people who had wandered down there as well. Really, that’s a bit sneaky to try and close early just because it gets quiet. Fortunately, I did get all the photo-shoot stuff done that I wanted - stuff with Tseatah mk.III as well as Qesnel (accompanied by Fangs) - the latter of which was really hard to do, because of balancing with the heel-less paw boot feet. I think those will just get worn for quick photos now, and I’ll use boots for being out otherwise. Trying to balance destroyed me too much that I went back to the room afterwards to recover, and didn’t bring Qesnel out again for the rest of the con (despite meaning to).
Food at the hotel wasn;t too bad either. With it being a hotel that doesn't have a lot else around it, we were pretty much dependant on the hotel for all meals. The BBQ, as many people pointed out beforehand, likely was not worth the money. The idea of having buffet style meals in a big event room - great idea. However, the quality of the food served there really wasn't very good, and the variety wasn't that wide either. I had stuff from that dinner buffet one day, and it was dry and fairly tasteless. I decided to pay the extra for meals in the bar area. There was 20% off for attendees, but then another 10% automatically added back on for service charge. But the food in the bar area was leaps and bounds above the buffet. I had fish and chips one day, and then a steak sandwich the next, and those were both really good. The breakfast buffet - that was great every day. A full all you can eat English breakfast with proper bacon, sausages, eggs and beans? I'm kind of glad I don't have the ability to do that every day! Made sure that I filled up well enough on that so I didn't need to do lunch. So overall, food was decent enough.
Actually running out of things to say, but will summarize with saying that it was a great convention for me and, should my vacation time permit it, I’ll try to be back.
My photos from the con are here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/25417841@N05/sets/72157645091039756/