BronyCon (Mis)Adventures
I've been writing this on-and-off over the last few days, and it's good to have it done. Boy, I had a lot to say, and having sleep issues for a few days after the con didn't exactly help me say it...
So, I traveled to BronyCon over the weekend, and my experience was a bit of a mixed bag overall.
Thursday, August 1st - The Drive to the Con - I live in the tiny state of Rhode Island, in the New England area. Google maps estimated that driving down to the Baltimore area from here would require approximately 6 and a half hours. I had figured that, with rest stops (and an initial errand I had to run) factored in, that the drive would be no longer than eight hours. Unfortunately, traffic was absolutely horrendous; even with my route taking me around the NYC area, I still ended up taking a full eleven hours to get to Baltimore! On top of that, it was significantly raining for much of the drive, with full-blown downpours occurring multiple times. At least I found my actual destination without any problems once I got into the area.
Friday, August 2nd - Convention Day 1 - I had planned to attend the con for only two days, so this would be the first half of my con experience. I arrived at the Baltimore Convention Center a bit before 10 AM, and started looking for the registration area. I had planned to attend the 'Writing Compelling Pony Novels' panel at 10, and had figured I would end up a bit late for it. What I wasn't expecting was the registration line; despite being a pre-registrant for the con, I ended up spending three hours standing in line! Meaning that I not only missed the Writing panel, but also 'Critiquing 101', and the start of the 'Legacy of Harmony' game demonstration. I ended up deciding to simply skip that one altogether in favor of going to the Enterplay booth in the Vendor's Hall, hoping to claim a copy of the Twilight Promo Card being given to con-goers there. Unfortunately, I promptly made a big mistake...
Enterplay's vendor table (officially identified as 'Packbreakers' in the con booklet) was located on the end of the first two aisles, opposite the entrance (specifically, location 227 on the vendor hall map. When I entered the hall, I went straight to Enterplay's table, which basically meant that I came up behind them. At the time, there was a good number of people already standing at the table, as I had fully expected. So I simply joined the crowd and, after a bit of a wait, received a copy of the promo card. By this point, the group in front of the table had largely dispersed, so one of the vendors at the table called for the next group to come over. Only at this point did I realize that there was a line of people standing along the back wall of the vendor hall! The front of the line had been kept several feet back from the table (presumably to allow other people to move through the area), and was on the opposite side of the crowd at the table from where I had arrived. As such, said crowd blocked my view of the line, and evidently everyone else's view of me (as no one ever challenged my presence). Thankfully, the line was very short; no more than twenty or so people. And more importantly, the Enterplay vendors still had a large pile of promos to give away, so nobody in line actually got screwed out of a card due to my blatant mistake! Nonetheless, I decided that hanging around would not be the wisest of ideas, and promptly retreated from the area.
Next on the agenda was to find Fetchbeer's table, which proved to be a simple task. This would result in my first fully positive experiences at the con: meeting Fetchbeer in person, and getting a set of Invidlord's custom pony dice. After that, I headed out of the convention center to look for food. Unfortunately, my unfamiliarity with the Baltimore area resulted in this taking a fair bit of time, and I ultimately ended up missing the Blind Reading event at 3:00. Which makes four missed events in a row...
After wandering for a bit, I headed to the Pony Swag Trade-a-thon. But my overall discouragement from the day so far left me with little will for trading, so I decided it was time to actually attend an event. As I had nothing specifically planned for this time, I dug out the con booklet to see what events were coming up, and ultimately settled on the PonyCraft: Tainted Skies demo. I had originally passed on this due to my relative lack of interest in RTS games, but the event did prove to be interesting nonetheless. Afterwards, I spent some time wandering the convention area to see if I could find any of the people I knew. I passed through the vendor halls again, and discovered that the line at the Enterplay booth had completely disappeared with quite a few promos still at the table. Which was very good to see, as now I truly knew that I hadn't denied a card to someone else due to my earlier mistake. As I remember, this is also when I found lunarapologist and Arcum89 at Fetchbeer's table (the latter being someone I may have met earlier in the day; my memory isn't all that good...). So that makes three familiar people met.
After that, I made an attempt at finding dinner that was ultimately unsuccessful; the pizza place I had gotten lunch at was closed, and the only open places I stumbled across were full-blown (and likely very expensive) restaurants. But, after returning to the con and heading through the event room area, I finally found two of the people who I was most interested in seeing: Invidlord and KuroiTsubasaTenshi! Unfortunately, they were inside the room assigned to the Meet and Greet for the Brony Thank You Fund. And I call this 'unfortunate' because this event was invite-only, and I wasn't invited. Thus, unable to actually meet them, and hoping to catch them later, I continued my wanderings.
As 8 PM approached, I made my way to the Hall of Dusk to finally attend an event that was actually on my itinerary: The 'Adventure Stories' panel. This proved to be just as interesting as I had hoped it would be, and I got a fair bit of information that will be useful for whenever I may try my hand at fanfic writing. After that, I made a brief stop at Bronypalooza, and quickly decided that it was far too loud in there. The final event on my itinerary was 'So Your OC is an Alicorn', but that was more than an hour away and I was feeling quite exhausted by this point. So I retreated from the con, and brought an end to this overall somewhat disappointing day.
Saturday, August 3rd - Convention Day 2 - After getting a relatively small amount of sleep, I headed out the next day. I ended up arriving a bit late, and entered the room for the 'Psychology for Your OC' panel. On the minus side, this resulted on me needing to sit on the floor at the back of the room, as there weren't and available seats (or wall-space to lean against). On the plus side (relatively speaking), the panel had some trouble getting set up, and didn't actually start until after I had arrived. Overall, this discussion wasn't as informative as I had hoped, but I still got some information that may be of use for developing my various rp characters and character ideas.
Next on the itinerary was 'My Little Theater 3000', but I decided to pass on that in favor of searching both for people I know and cosplayers to photograph (the latter of which I had barely done the previous day). Eventually, I made my way to the second demo of the 'Legacy of Harmony' game, the first of which I had missed the day before. After that was a trip to find lunch, which resulted in me locating a Subway sandwich restaurant (One of my favorite places to eat!). This was followed by some more general con cruising, and then by a trip to the second Pony Swag Trade-a-thon. After that, I finally got around to making a full sweep through the vendor's hall, and making some actual purchases; the pony dice purchased on Friday being the only thing I had bought before this point. I ultimately didn't buy all that much, but I did get one of the Enterplay card binders, plus a quartet of PixelKitties's prints: specifically The Spa Ponies, Butt Stallion Revised (note that the print doesn't include the text), the final panel of the Fallout Lonesome Road Comic (my personal favorite), and a Zecora and Chrysalis picture that unfortunately doesn't seem to be on her dA account.
I then returned to Subway for dinner, and then returned to my overall wanderings; collecting photos of a few cosplayers and of some of the con signs. And then it finally happened: I found a familiar pair of cosplayers again, Invid and Kuroi! And this time, they were out in the hallway instead of within a private event room! I promptly went over to greet them, and promptly got hugged by Kuroi when he found out who I was. I went with them as they returned to their hotel room to get out of costume, and then dinner plans began to take form as Invid conversed with various people via text messages. As we waited in the hotel lobby, we were joined first by Fetchbeer and Arcum89, and then by Lunar and Atlur. Without any precise idea on where exactly we were going to eat, the seven of us headed out of the hotel and rather quickly came across PixelKitties and her sister. As Fetch is a good friend of hers, we stopped for a bit of a conversation and learned of the bad luck she and her husband had suffered that day (which she talks about here). As this conversation occurred right in front of a restaurant (called the Luna Del Sea no less), we ended up staying here for dinner. And it's a good thing that I had already gotten dinner elsewhere, as this place was expensive. I ended up only getting a couple of appetizers and even that was $15 with the tip. I must say, though, that the quality was high; clearly you get what you pay for here! During this time, we were joined by NightOfAccordionSax and Calpain from Equestria Daily. After a good bit of conversing, I parted ways with the others, and returned briefly to the Convention Center before calling it a night.
Sunday, August 4th - Return Trip - Although the con was still going this day, I had planned to pass on it in favor of heading home, as the only event occurring this day that had caught my interest didn't occur until near the end of the con. Thankfully, the return trip went much more smoothly than the trip up had, both in terms of traffic and in terms of weather, and I did in fact return home around eight hours after I started.
Overall, the trip was a mixed bag, as mentioned above. But it was enjoyable nonetheless, particularly on Saturday, and I was really happy to get to meet so many of the people I've conversed with online. So chances are I will be looking to return next year, and may very well stay for a longer duration. That way I'll have more time to do events, visit with people, and perhaps to check out the general Baltimore area (or whichever city it may get held in next time). I'll also have a better idea of what I'm doing, which should help avoid some of the problems I ran into this time. For example, I found out after the con that I could have picked up my con badge on Thursday evening, thus avoiding the massive line on Friday...
Current Location: The lower levels of Hengsha.
Current song stuck in my head: Hydra Pulse by Not A Clever Pony
So, I traveled to BronyCon over the weekend, and my experience was a bit of a mixed bag overall.
Thursday, August 1st - The Drive to the Con - I live in the tiny state of Rhode Island, in the New England area. Google maps estimated that driving down to the Baltimore area from here would require approximately 6 and a half hours. I had figured that, with rest stops (and an initial errand I had to run) factored in, that the drive would be no longer than eight hours. Unfortunately, traffic was absolutely horrendous; even with my route taking me around the NYC area, I still ended up taking a full eleven hours to get to Baltimore! On top of that, it was significantly raining for much of the drive, with full-blown downpours occurring multiple times. At least I found my actual destination without any problems once I got into the area.
Friday, August 2nd - Convention Day 1 - I had planned to attend the con for only two days, so this would be the first half of my con experience. I arrived at the Baltimore Convention Center a bit before 10 AM, and started looking for the registration area. I had planned to attend the 'Writing Compelling Pony Novels' panel at 10, and had figured I would end up a bit late for it. What I wasn't expecting was the registration line; despite being a pre-registrant for the con, I ended up spending three hours standing in line! Meaning that I not only missed the Writing panel, but also 'Critiquing 101', and the start of the 'Legacy of Harmony' game demonstration. I ended up deciding to simply skip that one altogether in favor of going to the Enterplay booth in the Vendor's Hall, hoping to claim a copy of the Twilight Promo Card being given to con-goers there. Unfortunately, I promptly made a big mistake...
Enterplay's vendor table (officially identified as 'Packbreakers' in the con booklet) was located on the end of the first two aisles, opposite the entrance (specifically, location 227 on the vendor hall map. When I entered the hall, I went straight to Enterplay's table, which basically meant that I came up behind them. At the time, there was a good number of people already standing at the table, as I had fully expected. So I simply joined the crowd and, after a bit of a wait, received a copy of the promo card. By this point, the group in front of the table had largely dispersed, so one of the vendors at the table called for the next group to come over. Only at this point did I realize that there was a line of people standing along the back wall of the vendor hall! The front of the line had been kept several feet back from the table (presumably to allow other people to move through the area), and was on the opposite side of the crowd at the table from where I had arrived. As such, said crowd blocked my view of the line, and evidently everyone else's view of me (as no one ever challenged my presence). Thankfully, the line was very short; no more than twenty or so people. And more importantly, the Enterplay vendors still had a large pile of promos to give away, so nobody in line actually got screwed out of a card due to my blatant mistake! Nonetheless, I decided that hanging around would not be the wisest of ideas, and promptly retreated from the area.
Next on the agenda was to find Fetchbeer's table, which proved to be a simple task. This would result in my first fully positive experiences at the con: meeting Fetchbeer in person, and getting a set of Invidlord's custom pony dice. After that, I headed out of the convention center to look for food. Unfortunately, my unfamiliarity with the Baltimore area resulted in this taking a fair bit of time, and I ultimately ended up missing the Blind Reading event at 3:00. Which makes four missed events in a row...
After wandering for a bit, I headed to the Pony Swag Trade-a-thon. But my overall discouragement from the day so far left me with little will for trading, so I decided it was time to actually attend an event. As I had nothing specifically planned for this time, I dug out the con booklet to see what events were coming up, and ultimately settled on the PonyCraft: Tainted Skies demo. I had originally passed on this due to my relative lack of interest in RTS games, but the event did prove to be interesting nonetheless. Afterwards, I spent some time wandering the convention area to see if I could find any of the people I knew. I passed through the vendor halls again, and discovered that the line at the Enterplay booth had completely disappeared with quite a few promos still at the table. Which was very good to see, as now I truly knew that I hadn't denied a card to someone else due to my earlier mistake. As I remember, this is also when I found lunarapologist and Arcum89 at Fetchbeer's table (the latter being someone I may have met earlier in the day; my memory isn't all that good...). So that makes three familiar people met.
After that, I made an attempt at finding dinner that was ultimately unsuccessful; the pizza place I had gotten lunch at was closed, and the only open places I stumbled across were full-blown (and likely very expensive) restaurants. But, after returning to the con and heading through the event room area, I finally found two of the people who I was most interested in seeing: Invidlord and KuroiTsubasaTenshi! Unfortunately, they were inside the room assigned to the Meet and Greet for the Brony Thank You Fund. And I call this 'unfortunate' because this event was invite-only, and I wasn't invited. Thus, unable to actually meet them, and hoping to catch them later, I continued my wanderings.
As 8 PM approached, I made my way to the Hall of Dusk to finally attend an event that was actually on my itinerary: The 'Adventure Stories' panel. This proved to be just as interesting as I had hoped it would be, and I got a fair bit of information that will be useful for whenever I may try my hand at fanfic writing. After that, I made a brief stop at Bronypalooza, and quickly decided that it was far too loud in there. The final event on my itinerary was 'So Your OC is an Alicorn', but that was more than an hour away and I was feeling quite exhausted by this point. So I retreated from the con, and brought an end to this overall somewhat disappointing day.
Saturday, August 3rd - Convention Day 2 - After getting a relatively small amount of sleep, I headed out the next day. I ended up arriving a bit late, and entered the room for the 'Psychology for Your OC' panel. On the minus side, this resulted on me needing to sit on the floor at the back of the room, as there weren't and available seats (or wall-space to lean against). On the plus side (relatively speaking), the panel had some trouble getting set up, and didn't actually start until after I had arrived. Overall, this discussion wasn't as informative as I had hoped, but I still got some information that may be of use for developing my various rp characters and character ideas.
Next on the itinerary was 'My Little Theater 3000', but I decided to pass on that in favor of searching both for people I know and cosplayers to photograph (the latter of which I had barely done the previous day). Eventually, I made my way to the second demo of the 'Legacy of Harmony' game, the first of which I had missed the day before. After that was a trip to find lunch, which resulted in me locating a Subway sandwich restaurant (One of my favorite places to eat!). This was followed by some more general con cruising, and then by a trip to the second Pony Swag Trade-a-thon. After that, I finally got around to making a full sweep through the vendor's hall, and making some actual purchases; the pony dice purchased on Friday being the only thing I had bought before this point. I ultimately didn't buy all that much, but I did get one of the Enterplay card binders, plus a quartet of PixelKitties's prints: specifically The Spa Ponies, Butt Stallion Revised (note that the print doesn't include the text), the final panel of the Fallout Lonesome Road Comic (my personal favorite), and a Zecora and Chrysalis picture that unfortunately doesn't seem to be on her dA account.
I then returned to Subway for dinner, and then returned to my overall wanderings; collecting photos of a few cosplayers and of some of the con signs. And then it finally happened: I found a familiar pair of cosplayers again, Invid and Kuroi! And this time, they were out in the hallway instead of within a private event room! I promptly went over to greet them, and promptly got hugged by Kuroi when he found out who I was. I went with them as they returned to their hotel room to get out of costume, and then dinner plans began to take form as Invid conversed with various people via text messages. As we waited in the hotel lobby, we were joined first by Fetchbeer and Arcum89, and then by Lunar and Atlur. Without any precise idea on where exactly we were going to eat, the seven of us headed out of the hotel and rather quickly came across PixelKitties and her sister. As Fetch is a good friend of hers, we stopped for a bit of a conversation and learned of the bad luck she and her husband had suffered that day (which she talks about here). As this conversation occurred right in front of a restaurant (called the Luna Del Sea no less), we ended up staying here for dinner. And it's a good thing that I had already gotten dinner elsewhere, as this place was expensive. I ended up only getting a couple of appetizers and even that was $15 with the tip. I must say, though, that the quality was high; clearly you get what you pay for here! During this time, we were joined by NightOfAccordionSax and Calpain from Equestria Daily. After a good bit of conversing, I parted ways with the others, and returned briefly to the Convention Center before calling it a night.
Sunday, August 4th - Return Trip - Although the con was still going this day, I had planned to pass on it in favor of heading home, as the only event occurring this day that had caught my interest didn't occur until near the end of the con. Thankfully, the return trip went much more smoothly than the trip up had, both in terms of traffic and in terms of weather, and I did in fact return home around eight hours after I started.
Overall, the trip was a mixed bag, as mentioned above. But it was enjoyable nonetheless, particularly on Saturday, and I was really happy to get to meet so many of the people I've conversed with online. So chances are I will be looking to return next year, and may very well stay for a longer duration. That way I'll have more time to do events, visit with people, and perhaps to check out the general Baltimore area (or whichever city it may get held in next time). I'll also have a better idea of what I'm doing, which should help avoid some of the problems I ran into this time. For example, I found out after the con that I could have picked up my con badge on Thursday evening, thus avoiding the massive line on Friday...
Current Location: The lower levels of Hengsha.
Current song stuck in my head: Hydra Pulse by Not A Clever Pony