Leaky Con- Day 1 and Open at the Close
As previously mentioned, I went to my first LeakyCon this year. In the first post, I talked about the awesomeness of Mark. Now, it's time to start talking about all the REST of my Leaky adventuring. But be warned- this is a giant recap that's mostly for my own benefit, one that I imagine won't be of much interest to anyone but myself. :)
After a ridiculous encounter with my boss, who had managed to forget I was going on vacation while she was at the AATE conference this year (which... wouldn't the fact that I wasn't going with her be clue enough that she might be doing something different? Maybe? No? Ok.), I was on my way to the airport by 3:15pm on Tuesday. My flight went smoothly, and once I landed in Orlando, I was already seeing fellow Leaky folks in the airport. I took a shuttle to my hotel and met up with Kellie there. Our hotel was a HOOT and a half- a giant, sprawling complex of buildings and swimming pools and winding paths, big enough that they had golf carts to take people to and from the central office. We dropped my bags off in the room and had late-night pizza and planning for how we'd approach the coming days.
I'll say now, this was the most time I'd ever spent with K, and I got a big kick out of her. Our habits matched us up nicely to room together for the next five nights. She loves to say that she's not a nice person, but she's HILARIOUSLY outgoing and friendly to staff or strangers in the elevator. Is it a Midwestern trait? I know nothing of the Midwest, but K is from Ohio, so I'll pretend it's that. ;) We spent so much time together and 95% of it was a delight.
Wednesday was the unofficial first day of the con. Kellie and I tried to sleep late, knowing it would be a big day, and then roll over to the convention center for registration, which was supposed to open at 11 that day. K had done excellent reconnaissance at the hotel and learned that our best way of traveling to the OCCC was a trolley that stopped outside our hotel. The trolley was ace Wednesday-Friday, and then ended up being a cluster on the weekend. On Wednesday, we were able to catch a trolley and reach the OCCC by 11:20. Then began our own miniature quest to find the actual convention area within the giant center- even knowing we were in the West Concourse, we were dropped off at the opposite end of that building and had to walk a good 5-10 minutes to reach the con.
We discovered that registration was still not open- and it wouldn't open until it was 1.5 hours late. That meant MASSES of people waiting in lines for a long, long time. Poor Brynne and Rich had arrived at 10:30 and were already grumpy when we arrived, but K and I decided to embrace the attitude of Fuck It! and just make friends with the people in line and enjoy watching all the joyful reunions taking place around us. Seriously- those were just the best, people spotting each other across the hall and doing the Romantic Dash into each others' arms. K and I made it through the line by 2pm and managed to get ANOTHER friendly golf cart ride to the very edge of the OCCC property, along with directions for how to reach the cluster of restaurants at the Pointe.
All of Wednesday's energy was focused on getting registered and getting ready for that night's Open at the Close event. There had been some unhappiness surrounding the event before anyone arrived, as the original plan for the event was 10pm-2am at Universal's Harry Potter parks with only 1500 Leaky goers, free food, and all the rides and shopping we wanted. Turns out, the day actually went differently- we could ride buses over to the park at 4pm, enter the park itself at 5, and would have ride access until 10:30. After that, rides would all be closed (and the new Gringotts ride was actually closing at 7pm), but we'd have run of everything else and the entertainers would keep the shows going. K and I discussed park plans over lunch, and then went to B&R's room for final preparation. We slathered on the sunscreen, left swag bags at their hotel, and then caught our OWN cab over to the park at 3:45. We managed to traverse all of the initial, pre-park space and found our way to the side entrance we'd be using to enter by 4:10. There, we found maybe 30 other folks with similar plans, waiting in the shade in careful lines. By 4:15, the first buses from the OCCC had arrived, and we began to see just how genius our plan had been when they had to wait for bags to be checked and then stand in the sun. The masses of Leaky folks grew and grew, and the park decided to adopt the Fuck It attitude as well, and started letting us in at 4:35. We dashed across the park for Diagon Alley and basically rushed into the Gringotts line as quickly as we could, knowing we could savor the INCREDIBLE park design later that evening. R decided he didn't want the three-hour wait that came with the Gringotts line, so the three of us were some of the very first Leaky folks to make it into the line.
Our vantage point was amazing as the MASSES AND MASSES of Leaky folks trickled in behind us. There were a few scattered Leakies in front of us amid the Normals, who got increasingly confused by Leaky behavior. Leakies would cheer as more Leakies ran into the line, or would start at random a chant of I SAY LEAKY, YOU SAY CON. Poor Normals.
We actually made it through the Line in about 2 hours, which was great! Most of that was spent outside under a big canopy, with the final stages inside the replica of Gringotts, complete with animatronic goblins and creepy stone corridors. There was some interesting stuff in the lead up to the ride- lots of newspapers with moving images, silhouettes of characters seen moving past doorways... It's definitely not as immersive an experience as the Forbidden Journey ride would be, but that came later.
The ride itself was brief, but fun- a rollercoaster/simulator in 3D, because, of course. I wish we could have had better access to it, and there was an introductory film that I couldn't hear because of how many people were crowded and excited in a small space. I enjoyed it, though! I discovered later that Mark had been on the ride maybe half an hour behind us and.... broke... the ride. While he was on it. One of the features of the ride is that you're in two carts joined together, which can rotate so that who's "in front" can change at any given time. Apparently when Mark finally got on the ride, his carriage went through about 20 seconds of the ride before the sound cut out, and then they started to hear the control booth. Then, the carriages started rotating. And rotating... and they just kept going. For about five minutes, apparently, before they finally were stopped and the ride ground to a halt for everyone. DAMMIT, MARK. YOU BROKE GRINGOTTS.
In any case, it was after seven and we had a MISSION, so we hightailed it back out of Diagon Alley and over to theme park version of King's Cross Station, which looked HILARIOUSLY accurate in many, many ways (and hilariously INaccurate in others). The board listing departing trains had all the correct lines and destinations (I got this from Johnny from Waterstones Oxford later, I didn't know the details were that correct at the time). My favorite was the little shop in the corner selling snacks, which was GLORIOUSLY normal. We noticed soon after getting in line that the folks from Pemberley Digital were in line behind us- not directly, but with the winding lines in the space, it met we kept crossing next to each other again and again. The group had Bernie Su and Mary Kate Wiles and Maxwell Glick and the actors who played Emma, Harriet, Martin, and the new Victoria Frankenstein. We kept making Awkward Eye Contact for the next hours, wondering if there was a way to say HI WE LOVE YOU and run away, but when you're stuck in a line... not so much.
The Hogwarts Express is cute- it's different both ways, putting you in an 8 person carriage and having fun showing you things outside the window or as silhouettes in the hallway. That lets out to the Hogsmeade park, which is GLORIOUS. Again, we dashed through to make it over to the Forbidden Journey ride, which takes you through a FANTASTIC recreation of Hogwarts. That line only took an hour and was a delight from start to finish- my favorite part was a room filled with portraits, including an argument between portraits of the four Founders. We exited at about 9:30 and K and I decided we needed to ride ALL THE RIDES. We ran back across Hogsmeade to the dragon roller coasters which had ZERO line (but let you walk through a lot of Triwizard Tournament paraphernalia), so K and I rode each of its two coasters. We then ran back to Hogwarts and rode the Flight of the Hippogriff kiddie ride- K and I sat in the front row and gave the most magnificent bows to Buckbeak you ever did see, since we'd noticed that not all the riders were bowing and we wanted to be SAFE FROM BODILY HARM.
This was also the point of the night where K and I were the punchiest, it should be noticed.
At that point, it was 10 o'clock, and anyone who didn't have Open at the Close passes were getting ushered away. The girls and I went back over to Hogwarts and double checked with the staff that the ride was open, and then PROCEEDED TO RUN THROUGH AN EMPTY LINE. OH MY GOD. IT WAS AMAZING. THERE WAS NO ONE. A few Leakies eventually caught up to us but it didn't MATTER because we got to savor it all- all the bits you needed to rush past or couldn't hear properly because of a crowd. I loved every minute.
At that point, we all four started wandering through Hogsmeade at our leisure. We poked into the stores, K took pictures, I BOUGHT A REMUS LUPIN WAND, and we started to get intel on how we'd get our food and drinks. They wouldn't be put out until 11 or so, so we decided that, judging from the patterns we'd noticed all day (where we'd been ahead of giant line expansions, again and again), most people were settled in Hogsmeade. We decided to take the train back to Diagon and spend the rest of the evening there. The nearly-deserted Hogsmeade platform seemed to indicate this was a good idea. :) When we reached Diagon Alley, we did have some waits ahead of us, but all for free food and drink, so it could be worse! We got in line at the Leaky Cauldron for food (and kept running into Starkids), and eventually followed someone's lead by ordering one of ALL THE DRINKS. As B pointed out, that was a huge bonus of the event- normally, you might order a drink or two if you're spending an afternoon at the park, but cost and good sense would set a limit on how many you would sample per trip. This way, we got to HAVE THEM ALL, and they were DELICIOUS. Frozen butterbeer in particular is fantastic, and I loved the Otter's Fizzy Orange Juice as well. Midnight hit while we were there, and everyone sang Happy Birthday to Harry, as it was now officially July 31.
After that, it was mostly exploring- I got to leap around like a fool in Knockturn Alley and shout things like WANDS AT THE READY! DARK WIZARDS AHEAD!!! a lot (because I am a DELIGHT). We watched the Celestina Warbeck show and the Tale of the Three Brothers show, both of which were BRIMMING with theme park panache and cheesiness. R had bought an interactive wand, so we tried a few special moves. The Gringotts lobby was open, so we got to wander through there with less people and K took oodles of photos. I managed to stand RIGHT under a special sprinkler outside Fortescue's, that kept drizzling on my head as I wondered if that was just Orlando weather or a special crowd-cooling device before I realized, NOPE, JUST THE ONE TINY SPOT I DECIDED TO STAND IN.
Two a.m. came so much sooner than I thought was possible, even though I started to crash around 1:30 (damn that butterbeer high!). We wandered back out of the park in the dark, through deserted theme park streets. We got on the buses to go back to the conference hotels, and from there, K and I had a wait before we could get a cab back to our hotel. While we waited, Melissa Annelli came by, asking if people had had a good time. We got to tell her that it was amazing, and meant it- what an incredible opportunity the whole day had been.
It ended up taking a while to get back to our hotel, and we probably didn't manage to turn off the light until 4am. We knew we'd need all the sleep we could cram in- more meetups and events would be taking place the next day, including the big Opening Ceremony. At this point, though- that's another entry. :)
After a ridiculous encounter with my boss, who had managed to forget I was going on vacation while she was at the AATE conference this year (which... wouldn't the fact that I wasn't going with her be clue enough that she might be doing something different? Maybe? No? Ok.), I was on my way to the airport by 3:15pm on Tuesday. My flight went smoothly, and once I landed in Orlando, I was already seeing fellow Leaky folks in the airport. I took a shuttle to my hotel and met up with Kellie there. Our hotel was a HOOT and a half- a giant, sprawling complex of buildings and swimming pools and winding paths, big enough that they had golf carts to take people to and from the central office. We dropped my bags off in the room and had late-night pizza and planning for how we'd approach the coming days.
I'll say now, this was the most time I'd ever spent with K, and I got a big kick out of her. Our habits matched us up nicely to room together for the next five nights. She loves to say that she's not a nice person, but she's HILARIOUSLY outgoing and friendly to staff or strangers in the elevator. Is it a Midwestern trait? I know nothing of the Midwest, but K is from Ohio, so I'll pretend it's that. ;) We spent so much time together and 95% of it was a delight.
Wednesday was the unofficial first day of the con. Kellie and I tried to sleep late, knowing it would be a big day, and then roll over to the convention center for registration, which was supposed to open at 11 that day. K had done excellent reconnaissance at the hotel and learned that our best way of traveling to the OCCC was a trolley that stopped outside our hotel. The trolley was ace Wednesday-Friday, and then ended up being a cluster on the weekend. On Wednesday, we were able to catch a trolley and reach the OCCC by 11:20. Then began our own miniature quest to find the actual convention area within the giant center- even knowing we were in the West Concourse, we were dropped off at the opposite end of that building and had to walk a good 5-10 minutes to reach the con.
We discovered that registration was still not open- and it wouldn't open until it was 1.5 hours late. That meant MASSES of people waiting in lines for a long, long time. Poor Brynne and Rich had arrived at 10:30 and were already grumpy when we arrived, but K and I decided to embrace the attitude of Fuck It! and just make friends with the people in line and enjoy watching all the joyful reunions taking place around us. Seriously- those were just the best, people spotting each other across the hall and doing the Romantic Dash into each others' arms. K and I made it through the line by 2pm and managed to get ANOTHER friendly golf cart ride to the very edge of the OCCC property, along with directions for how to reach the cluster of restaurants at the Pointe.
All of Wednesday's energy was focused on getting registered and getting ready for that night's Open at the Close event. There had been some unhappiness surrounding the event before anyone arrived, as the original plan for the event was 10pm-2am at Universal's Harry Potter parks with only 1500 Leaky goers, free food, and all the rides and shopping we wanted. Turns out, the day actually went differently- we could ride buses over to the park at 4pm, enter the park itself at 5, and would have ride access until 10:30. After that, rides would all be closed (and the new Gringotts ride was actually closing at 7pm), but we'd have run of everything else and the entertainers would keep the shows going. K and I discussed park plans over lunch, and then went to B&R's room for final preparation. We slathered on the sunscreen, left swag bags at their hotel, and then caught our OWN cab over to the park at 3:45. We managed to traverse all of the initial, pre-park space and found our way to the side entrance we'd be using to enter by 4:10. There, we found maybe 30 other folks with similar plans, waiting in the shade in careful lines. By 4:15, the first buses from the OCCC had arrived, and we began to see just how genius our plan had been when they had to wait for bags to be checked and then stand in the sun. The masses of Leaky folks grew and grew, and the park decided to adopt the Fuck It attitude as well, and started letting us in at 4:35. We dashed across the park for Diagon Alley and basically rushed into the Gringotts line as quickly as we could, knowing we could savor the INCREDIBLE park design later that evening. R decided he didn't want the three-hour wait that came with the Gringotts line, so the three of us were some of the very first Leaky folks to make it into the line.
Our vantage point was amazing as the MASSES AND MASSES of Leaky folks trickled in behind us. There were a few scattered Leakies in front of us amid the Normals, who got increasingly confused by Leaky behavior. Leakies would cheer as more Leakies ran into the line, or would start at random a chant of I SAY LEAKY, YOU SAY CON. Poor Normals.
We actually made it through the Line in about 2 hours, which was great! Most of that was spent outside under a big canopy, with the final stages inside the replica of Gringotts, complete with animatronic goblins and creepy stone corridors. There was some interesting stuff in the lead up to the ride- lots of newspapers with moving images, silhouettes of characters seen moving past doorways... It's definitely not as immersive an experience as the Forbidden Journey ride would be, but that came later.
The ride itself was brief, but fun- a rollercoaster/simulator in 3D, because, of course. I wish we could have had better access to it, and there was an introductory film that I couldn't hear because of how many people were crowded and excited in a small space. I enjoyed it, though! I discovered later that Mark had been on the ride maybe half an hour behind us and.... broke... the ride. While he was on it. One of the features of the ride is that you're in two carts joined together, which can rotate so that who's "in front" can change at any given time. Apparently when Mark finally got on the ride, his carriage went through about 20 seconds of the ride before the sound cut out, and then they started to hear the control booth. Then, the carriages started rotating. And rotating... and they just kept going. For about five minutes, apparently, before they finally were stopped and the ride ground to a halt for everyone. DAMMIT, MARK. YOU BROKE GRINGOTTS.
In any case, it was after seven and we had a MISSION, so we hightailed it back out of Diagon Alley and over to theme park version of King's Cross Station, which looked HILARIOUSLY accurate in many, many ways (and hilariously INaccurate in others). The board listing departing trains had all the correct lines and destinations (I got this from Johnny from Waterstones Oxford later, I didn't know the details were that correct at the time). My favorite was the little shop in the corner selling snacks, which was GLORIOUSLY normal. We noticed soon after getting in line that the folks from Pemberley Digital were in line behind us- not directly, but with the winding lines in the space, it met we kept crossing next to each other again and again. The group had Bernie Su and Mary Kate Wiles and Maxwell Glick and the actors who played Emma, Harriet, Martin, and the new Victoria Frankenstein. We kept making Awkward Eye Contact for the next hours, wondering if there was a way to say HI WE LOVE YOU and run away, but when you're stuck in a line... not so much.
The Hogwarts Express is cute- it's different both ways, putting you in an 8 person carriage and having fun showing you things outside the window or as silhouettes in the hallway. That lets out to the Hogsmeade park, which is GLORIOUS. Again, we dashed through to make it over to the Forbidden Journey ride, which takes you through a FANTASTIC recreation of Hogwarts. That line only took an hour and was a delight from start to finish- my favorite part was a room filled with portraits, including an argument between portraits of the four Founders. We exited at about 9:30 and K and I decided we needed to ride ALL THE RIDES. We ran back across Hogsmeade to the dragon roller coasters which had ZERO line (but let you walk through a lot of Triwizard Tournament paraphernalia), so K and I rode each of its two coasters. We then ran back to Hogwarts and rode the Flight of the Hippogriff kiddie ride- K and I sat in the front row and gave the most magnificent bows to Buckbeak you ever did see, since we'd noticed that not all the riders were bowing and we wanted to be SAFE FROM BODILY HARM.
This was also the point of the night where K and I were the punchiest, it should be noticed.
At that point, it was 10 o'clock, and anyone who didn't have Open at the Close passes were getting ushered away. The girls and I went back over to Hogwarts and double checked with the staff that the ride was open, and then PROCEEDED TO RUN THROUGH AN EMPTY LINE. OH MY GOD. IT WAS AMAZING. THERE WAS NO ONE. A few Leakies eventually caught up to us but it didn't MATTER because we got to savor it all- all the bits you needed to rush past or couldn't hear properly because of a crowd. I loved every minute.
At that point, we all four started wandering through Hogsmeade at our leisure. We poked into the stores, K took pictures, I BOUGHT A REMUS LUPIN WAND, and we started to get intel on how we'd get our food and drinks. They wouldn't be put out until 11 or so, so we decided that, judging from the patterns we'd noticed all day (where we'd been ahead of giant line expansions, again and again), most people were settled in Hogsmeade. We decided to take the train back to Diagon and spend the rest of the evening there. The nearly-deserted Hogsmeade platform seemed to indicate this was a good idea. :) When we reached Diagon Alley, we did have some waits ahead of us, but all for free food and drink, so it could be worse! We got in line at the Leaky Cauldron for food (and kept running into Starkids), and eventually followed someone's lead by ordering one of ALL THE DRINKS. As B pointed out, that was a huge bonus of the event- normally, you might order a drink or two if you're spending an afternoon at the park, but cost and good sense would set a limit on how many you would sample per trip. This way, we got to HAVE THEM ALL, and they were DELICIOUS. Frozen butterbeer in particular is fantastic, and I loved the Otter's Fizzy Orange Juice as well. Midnight hit while we were there, and everyone sang Happy Birthday to Harry, as it was now officially July 31.
After that, it was mostly exploring- I got to leap around like a fool in Knockturn Alley and shout things like WANDS AT THE READY! DARK WIZARDS AHEAD!!! a lot (because I am a DELIGHT). We watched the Celestina Warbeck show and the Tale of the Three Brothers show, both of which were BRIMMING with theme park panache and cheesiness. R had bought an interactive wand, so we tried a few special moves. The Gringotts lobby was open, so we got to wander through there with less people and K took oodles of photos. I managed to stand RIGHT under a special sprinkler outside Fortescue's, that kept drizzling on my head as I wondered if that was just Orlando weather or a special crowd-cooling device before I realized, NOPE, JUST THE ONE TINY SPOT I DECIDED TO STAND IN.
Two a.m. came so much sooner than I thought was possible, even though I started to crash around 1:30 (damn that butterbeer high!). We wandered back out of the park in the dark, through deserted theme park streets. We got on the buses to go back to the conference hotels, and from there, K and I had a wait before we could get a cab back to our hotel. While we waited, Melissa Annelli came by, asking if people had had a good time. We got to tell her that it was amazing, and meant it- what an incredible opportunity the whole day had been.
It ended up taking a while to get back to our hotel, and we probably didn't manage to turn off the light until 4am. We knew we'd need all the sleep we could cram in- more meetups and events would be taking place the next day, including the big Opening Ceremony. At this point, though- that's another entry. :)