Infinitus Part 1: Wednesday, Thursday, & Friday
First off, I do want to apologize if this entry doesn't flow. It's going to take me a long time to write it so I'll be writing here and there until it's done so each will have a different level of tired over it. :P
Wednesday
This was the hurry up and wait day. We were trying to get things decorated, but the hotel didn't have the rooms set up. We did put up the plant signs all over the conference space, and I heard that several people really liked them. Thanks to archerpren, stupid_drawings, hp5freak, and dragonsinger954 for writing 5 of them for me! You can read what all of them say in this entry.
We ended up waiting around and occasionally setting up until about 6 or 7pm and at that time we headed over to the wizarding world to finally ride The Forbidden Journey! Even though I've been there several times and walked through the castle, each time the ride has been down. The ride was AMAZING. I screamed several times (spiders!!), but it was so neat. A bit tired, we went back to Heather's house (we stayed there instead of staying at the hotel, which saved hundreds of dollars for both of us).
Thursday
So many things happened on Thursday, I really hope I can remember them. The morning started out bright and early with us getting ready and driving over to the hotel. There we started to blow up the balloons. We needed 400 balloons for the welcoming feast, and it took about 3ish hours to get them all filled up and put into the right places. Once the balloons were done, we had to put the centerpieces on the tables. There were 168 tables and they each had to have house color fabric and house color beads put on them. Only half of them got the luminaries. I sewed the hufflepuff ones seen below, and someone else cut the other fabrics. Also, there were four large pieces of fabric that Michelle cut and were sewed by me (they were for the common room, but we also used them behind the head tables at the feast).
Some time during that morning I went to a presenters meeting and let them know that the room I was doing my workshop in later that day didn't have tables, it only had chairs. Darcy, the programming chair, told me that they would try to get tables put in there before that afternoon. I was worried almost all day until I saw the guys putting tables in there shortly before my presentation.
Anyway, the feast! As most of you know, I'm a ridiculously picky eater and the fact that Mexican food was being served made me super grumpy. I pretty much just ate tortilla chips and raspberries for lunch. After the feast was programming (including mine!), and the first one I wanted to go to was about Harry Potter Tattoos. I got into the room (which filled up really fast), but then remembered that I had forgotten to fix my cross stitch powerpoint, so I left to go do that (I later learned that in the presentation my hp charm was talked about as being one of the coolest HP tattoos ever!!).
Then it was time for my presentation. *gulp* I had been worried all day because I'm a worrier and when I noticed there was a line, I was even more freaked out/excited. I also met ladyoflosttimes and recorded a bit of something with her that will be in my ttmt video. Shortly before the presentation started, I got into the line (at the front, of course), and some older lady snapped that she was at the front of the line, and I'd have to go to the back. I told her that I was the presenter, and she didn't look too pleased. Oh ageism.
The presentation got off to a bit of a rocky start because the projector wasn't recognizing my laptop so I didn't start until 10 or so minutes after I was supposed to. Thank goodness for the awesome AV people!! Heather was super helpful and sold the cross stitch kits I put together (I'm so glad people brought the exact amount because I completely forgot that I might need to make change). So the reason I left the tattoo presentation was so that I could add some photos of my previous stitchy work. I completely forgot to do it before, and I'm so glad that I put them in there. The older attendees were looking at me like I was some punk kid and after I showed some of my favorite finished pieces they seemed more accepting of me teaching them.
Did I do a good job teaching them though? I don't think so. I'm a really nervous speaker, so I know I rushed through and said some weird things. Luckily ladyoflosttimes was there and she offered to walk around and help people with me (send me an email with your shirt size and address, I want to send you something!!). The last 20 minutes of the workshop went by nicely with people stitching away. Several hours later I ran into one of the ladies from my workshop and she said that she's been cross stitching for years and that I did an amazing job! Eeeee!
After that we went and watched some Quidditch (the Quidditch field was literally right outside the conference space, so this is the first time I have actually watched!
Then we went to Michelle and Tara's room to do some drinking. They had some very tasty alcohol in their room and it was fun to just hang out. Eventually Gwen showed up and she was well on her way to being completely smashed. We were planning on going out to dinner and then to The Groove for the Hogwarts Alumni party, but we never made it. We were just drinking and talking when Gwen decided she was going to call Chris. So she calls, and leaves a drunk, rambling, giggling message on Chris Rankin's voicemail. We're all laughing hysterically and being dorks for an hour or so when there's a knock on the door we assume it's another person that Michelle had invited up (we were planning on going to dinner), but instead Chris Rankin and his girlfriend, Meg, walk into the room. We were shocked. So we hang out in the room for about five more minutes before deciding that we're going to go to a restaurant at the hotel rather than one in City Walk.
We ended up at Jake's American Bar where they have karaoke (none for us did it) and we ate dinner and chatted. There is a normal picture of Chris and me, but that was on Michelle's camera. Heather gave me bunny ears and I gave her laser eyes. :P
Friday
Friday was the first day I was actually dressed up as Umbridge. I cannot remember for the life of me what I did in the morning. I'm going to assume that I strutted about in costume and had a lot of fun chatting with people. For lunch we went to Tchoup Chop and had a nice meal (although it took forever and I ended up being late for something I was supposed to go to, and the room was full by the time I got there). Afterwards I went through the line for autographs with Chris and Christian (There was hardly a line and Stephanie was doing it, so I figured I might as well, too). My phone died at about 2pm that day, so I don't have any tweets to tell me exactly what we did. I know there was some photobombing and some crazy horsing around (like with the Beth and Stephanie video below).
I think it was about 5pm when we decided to go over to Universal for pictures. We were stopped a million times by random tourists, but we finally got there and got lots of pictures. We met up with Mandala and Olek and talked and drank butterbeer (Mandala was dressed up as Fleur and Olek as Colin and they said they even had a line forming to take pictures of/with them, lol). We took a bazillion pictures around the castle and then went over to ride the carousel in Seuss Landing, we also went on The Cat in the Hat before we left.
Also, Stephanie asked the first conductor (his shift was over and he was replaced by an awesome "nervous conductor") if she could take a picture of his watch and he let her take a picture of the inside and me take a picture of the outside. It is GORGEOUS.
After getting back to the hotel around 10ish, we waited around for a bit and then went to Repo! The Genetic Opera. The awesome Itzel was Amber Sweet, and we had to support her. We went to Heather's house to change and went over to The Enzian where Itzel hooked us up with some awesome VIP tickets. A really awesome thing they did was a "virgin game" where each person has a die and they roll the die. Whatever the number says, they have to do the thing to another person (lick the person on the neck, hump their chest, bite their butt). The amount of time that they do this activity is based on the money raised for it. For every dollar they get, the couple has to do the task for one second. One of the guys up there was from Infinitus (he was wearing green lined robes), and he had to nibble on some girl's ear for 30 seconds while she moaned Harry Potter related things. And I wrote a note to him the next day. XD
I took a ton of photos at Repo!, so if you want to see all of them they are here, but below are just a few. I'm amazed at how well Keyboard Samurai was. They had a bazillion props and Itzel had a million costume changes. It was a smooth show though, I want to go again!
We got back to Heather's house at and into bed around 4:15. I'm working on part 2 of this post which will cover Saturday, Sunday, and some other things.
Wednesday
This was the hurry up and wait day. We were trying to get things decorated, but the hotel didn't have the rooms set up. We did put up the plant signs all over the conference space, and I heard that several people really liked them. Thanks to archerpren, stupid_drawings, hp5freak, and dragonsinger954 for writing 5 of them for me! You can read what all of them say in this entry.
We ended up waiting around and occasionally setting up until about 6 or 7pm and at that time we headed over to the wizarding world to finally ride The Forbidden Journey! Even though I've been there several times and walked through the castle, each time the ride has been down. The ride was AMAZING. I screamed several times (spiders!!), but it was so neat. A bit tired, we went back to Heather's house (we stayed there instead of staying at the hotel, which saved hundreds of dollars for both of us).
Thursday
So many things happened on Thursday, I really hope I can remember them. The morning started out bright and early with us getting ready and driving over to the hotel. There we started to blow up the balloons. We needed 400 balloons for the welcoming feast, and it took about 3ish hours to get them all filled up and put into the right places. Once the balloons were done, we had to put the centerpieces on the tables. There were 168 tables and they each had to have house color fabric and house color beads put on them. Only half of them got the luminaries. I sewed the hufflepuff ones seen below, and someone else cut the other fabrics. Also, there were four large pieces of fabric that Michelle cut and were sewed by me (they were for the common room, but we also used them behind the head tables at the feast).
Some time during that morning I went to a presenters meeting and let them know that the room I was doing my workshop in later that day didn't have tables, it only had chairs. Darcy, the programming chair, told me that they would try to get tables put in there before that afternoon. I was worried almost all day until I saw the guys putting tables in there shortly before my presentation.
Anyway, the feast! As most of you know, I'm a ridiculously picky eater and the fact that Mexican food was being served made me super grumpy. I pretty much just ate tortilla chips and raspberries for lunch. After the feast was programming (including mine!), and the first one I wanted to go to was about Harry Potter Tattoos. I got into the room (which filled up really fast), but then remembered that I had forgotten to fix my cross stitch powerpoint, so I left to go do that (I later learned that in the presentation my hp charm was talked about as being one of the coolest HP tattoos ever!!).
Then it was time for my presentation. *gulp* I had been worried all day because I'm a worrier and when I noticed there was a line, I was even more freaked out/excited. I also met ladyoflosttimes and recorded a bit of something with her that will be in my ttmt video. Shortly before the presentation started, I got into the line (at the front, of course), and some older lady snapped that she was at the front of the line, and I'd have to go to the back. I told her that I was the presenter, and she didn't look too pleased. Oh ageism.
The presentation got off to a bit of a rocky start because the projector wasn't recognizing my laptop so I didn't start until 10 or so minutes after I was supposed to. Thank goodness for the awesome AV people!! Heather was super helpful and sold the cross stitch kits I put together (I'm so glad people brought the exact amount because I completely forgot that I might need to make change). So the reason I left the tattoo presentation was so that I could add some photos of my previous stitchy work. I completely forgot to do it before, and I'm so glad that I put them in there. The older attendees were looking at me like I was some punk kid and after I showed some of my favorite finished pieces they seemed more accepting of me teaching them.
Did I do a good job teaching them though? I don't think so. I'm a really nervous speaker, so I know I rushed through and said some weird things. Luckily ladyoflosttimes was there and she offered to walk around and help people with me (send me an email with your shirt size and address, I want to send you something!!). The last 20 minutes of the workshop went by nicely with people stitching away. Several hours later I ran into one of the ladies from my workshop and she said that she's been cross stitching for years and that I did an amazing job! Eeeee!
After that we went and watched some Quidditch (the Quidditch field was literally right outside the conference space, so this is the first time I have actually watched!
Then we went to Michelle and Tara's room to do some drinking. They had some very tasty alcohol in their room and it was fun to just hang out. Eventually Gwen showed up and she was well on her way to being completely smashed. We were planning on going out to dinner and then to The Groove for the Hogwarts Alumni party, but we never made it. We were just drinking and talking when Gwen decided she was going to call Chris. So she calls, and leaves a drunk, rambling, giggling message on Chris Rankin's voicemail. We're all laughing hysterically and being dorks for an hour or so when there's a knock on the door we assume it's another person that Michelle had invited up (we were planning on going to dinner), but instead Chris Rankin and his girlfriend, Meg, walk into the room. We were shocked. So we hang out in the room for about five more minutes before deciding that we're going to go to a restaurant at the hotel rather than one in City Walk.
We ended up at Jake's American Bar where they have karaoke (none for us did it) and we ate dinner and chatted. There is a normal picture of Chris and me, but that was on Michelle's camera. Heather gave me bunny ears and I gave her laser eyes. :P
Friday
Friday was the first day I was actually dressed up as Umbridge. I cannot remember for the life of me what I did in the morning. I'm going to assume that I strutted about in costume and had a lot of fun chatting with people. For lunch we went to Tchoup Chop and had a nice meal (although it took forever and I ended up being late for something I was supposed to go to, and the room was full by the time I got there). Afterwards I went through the line for autographs with Chris and Christian (There was hardly a line and Stephanie was doing it, so I figured I might as well, too). My phone died at about 2pm that day, so I don't have any tweets to tell me exactly what we did. I know there was some photobombing and some crazy horsing around (like with the Beth and Stephanie video below).
I think it was about 5pm when we decided to go over to Universal for pictures. We were stopped a million times by random tourists, but we finally got there and got lots of pictures. We met up with Mandala and Olek and talked and drank butterbeer (Mandala was dressed up as Fleur and Olek as Colin and they said they even had a line forming to take pictures of/with them, lol). We took a bazillion pictures around the castle and then went over to ride the carousel in Seuss Landing, we also went on The Cat in the Hat before we left.
Also, Stephanie asked the first conductor (his shift was over and he was replaced by an awesome "nervous conductor") if she could take a picture of his watch and he let her take a picture of the inside and me take a picture of the outside. It is GORGEOUS.
After getting back to the hotel around 10ish, we waited around for a bit and then went to Repo! The Genetic Opera. The awesome Itzel was Amber Sweet, and we had to support her. We went to Heather's house to change and went over to The Enzian where Itzel hooked us up with some awesome VIP tickets. A really awesome thing they did was a "virgin game" where each person has a die and they roll the die. Whatever the number says, they have to do the thing to another person (lick the person on the neck, hump their chest, bite their butt). The amount of time that they do this activity is based on the money raised for it. For every dollar they get, the couple has to do the task for one second. One of the guys up there was from Infinitus (he was wearing green lined robes), and he had to nibble on some girl's ear for 30 seconds while she moaned Harry Potter related things. And I wrote a note to him the next day. XD
I took a ton of photos at Repo!, so if you want to see all of them they are here, but below are just a few. I'm amazed at how well Keyboard Samurai was. They had a bazillion props and Itzel had a million costume changes. It was a smooth show though, I want to go again!
We got back to Heather's house at and into bed around 4:15. I'm working on part 2 of this post which will cover Saturday, Sunday, and some other things.