AnimeFEST 2005 convention report....♥
So at long last, I've returned home from AnimeFEST 2005. And what a trip it was.
Friday:Left later than I wanted to, as usual. =/ I got to Huntsville around 7:30, loaded up the cars (being careful to pack our gear around Sailor Mecha), and took off. I had Melcher, Chase, and Fetus all in my car singin' along to the
Numa Numa song by Ozone...oh the laughter. We stopped for food at Subway in Centerville and they didn't have any bread, so we had to eat wraps. ;_; We got to Dallas around 11:30 or so and got lost trying to find the hotel where AnimeFEST was at. When we DID finally find it, parking sucked so we ended up parking at a meter a few blocks away. We took all the stuff inside to James' room, Rachael gave me an AWESOMELY AWESOME Cure Black Max Heart keychain (Rachael....you just spoil me. Really. You know you do. Thank you so much I LOOOOVE LOOOOVE LOOOOOVE YOU! &hearts), then yacked till it got super late, then Rache and I went to Matt's to sleep.
Saturday:Omgz what a stressful day...Rache and I woke up early, went to Party City (wearing our fake lashes and wigs and Pink Choclate Cosplay jackets) to pick up a wig for Fetus, and went to the hotel to put on our
Pretty Cure costumes. Apparently, not enough people have seen
Pretty Cure but ah well. Fetus' wig was teh cut and thus took on a much-awesomely Hatori appearance. After some debate on what do to for food the group decided to walk to McDonald's about 8 blocks away. Rache's shoes hurt her feet so she stayed behind and I brought her back lunch. ^_^ I lost three hearts on my cotume between leaving the hotel for lunch and then returning. But they were successfully glued back on so no worries. :)
I had just returned to the hotel and was sitting with Rache while she dined when we were informed that cosplay "rehearsal" was at 2:00pm (yeah...it was 2:30pm) so we dashed to Main Programming to get registered and all. Let's just say this -- our group was NOT in the least prepared for rehearsal this early. We got the CD we needed and our script from Melcher, who was awesome and brought them down to me, Rache, Tin, Chase, and Fetus while we waited through the first wave of a tsunami-level disaster that AnimeFEST calls it's masquerade. The rehearsal was complete bullshit. Period. It was scheduled to be at 2:00pm, a whole SIX HOURS before the event was
scheduled to start. They let us go about an hour later so we could go change and were told that we were required to return at 7:00pm. So, we all went to their room and changed into our costumes for the skit, went over our lines, and fixed Tin's hair into a crazy mass of gravity-defying spikes. We went downstairs around 6:30pm and rehearsed in the lobby area until it was time for lineup. The MC bullshitted for a while, then herded us into a hallway behind the ballroom that was stuffy and nasty (and we had Nicki with us, poor little thing ;_;). They finally moved us inside the ballroom to sit down around 7:15pm or so, and by this time we were starting to feel our tummies grumbling, as we hadn't had time to eat before masque like we had been counting on. Seven-thirty came and went, no sign that they were letting people in the door. Seven-forty five, still nothing. Eight o'clock....nadda. We killed time by drinking water, chatting with Pablo, I got an EXCELLENT massage from the beautiful Quyen who was in a walk-on entry with some other Naruto kids (and whose boyfriend was freaking about about them not making their 10:00pm dinner reservation in the Reunion Tower), more chatting, more complaining, sneaking down the hall and into the main area where everyone was lined up to get inside.....argh. It was RIDICULOUS. They FINALLY got the show started at NINE. FUCKING. THIRTY. (For those of you with lousy math skillz0rz, that's an hour and a half behind schedule.) Chase and I were going to try to make it to the con suite to score some snacks for everyone (we were dying, I swear) and we ran into Sara and Mickey who saved us with a breadstick. :) I still can't thank you guys enough, seriously --
we were dying!!! u_u;; Upon our return we found that the MCs were STILL talking.....and talking....and talking....to the point that some con-mommies were standing on their chairs trying to get the MC's attention so they could heckle to get him to start the show. They FINALLY got the ball rolling, starting off with an awesome DragonZord costume, the cute Naruto group, sexy Ryo-sama in her Talim costume, two cute girls in
XXX Holic costumes, Asia as InuYasha with the couple that cosplays as InuYasha's mommy and daddy (omg so cute!), and the cute Shia and Misha from Kamikazecon. Notable skits (to me) were the Mentos commercial, ours (of course), the Malice Mizer group, and the
Fruits Basket group.
SO.....the cosplay ended and the MCs yapped some more. I was starving (as was the rest of the group) so we leaf'd to go score pizza. Tin and I went to the room to go get teh monies and Rache waited with Nicki (who was crazy-adorable, as always, in her Sugar costume -- to pass the time she'd thrown fake snowballs at all of us while we waited for the program to get going ^_^) for the awards to be announced. Teh pizza was aquired upon its arrival to the hotel, and I took it towards Main Programming to give Rache and Nicki some. On the way there people kept stopping me to congratulate me and I was like "Wtf?". Then I ran into Emily DeJesus (one of the judges) who was like "Oh yeah, btw you won Best Comedy" then danced the Numa Numa song. So I went up stairs with Courtney (the SEXNESS in her Jo costume, btw) who carried our 2 liter of Dr.Pepper and screamed with Racheal upon entering the room. I decided I wasn't going to be disappointed if we didn't win anything and besides....I cared more about living than an award. :P Anyway, we partied and drank, then took Nicki home around 3am.
Sunday:We sleep'd in a little, then put on our Shia and Misha costumes. We went to Wal-Mart to grab some fake eyelashes and some wig caps, then to Wendy's for some food and finally to the con where we scored free metered parking. We applied our wingz0rz (omgz so cute!) and got nabbed by Sky Pirate for pick-ars. We found Chase and Tin as the Cosplay Rednecks who cracked us up beyond belief! Those guys are hilarious! We ran around, people took more pictures of us (they were SO comfortable too), then went to Iron Cosplay. Hojo, myself, and "the other James" from cosplay the night before entered with an InuYasha with a wig made of toilet paper. I loved making the poofy bangs from duct tape and little pieces of TP, it was so totally fun. And we won too, btw. ^_^
More wandering....blah blah blah. Sunday went by quick because we started late, then we ended up drinking with the kids in their room. I learned that chugging bitch beer is bad, and after like two or three I was pretty well teh drunkz0rz. We ended up drunkishly wandering the halls, heckling the art auction, and causing general mayhem. Listening to some guitar music helped me sober up a bit (or was it just time?), then we went to the room. THEN decided to go to the gathering in one of the panel rooms that had more alcohol and such. I went to wander a bit cause I was still drunk and found Courtney and the guitar boy from earlier. We all chatted then went to play Apples to Apples with everyone. THEN it wad decided that Waffle House was to be had......
Monday:I'm starting Monday here because we didn't sleep that night. At about 6am we departed for WH, ate (thanks so much for buying breakfast Rachael! ♥) then went to Matt's to shower and to catch a few winks. We left his place around 11am so they could make check out, then went to teh hotel. We didn't cosplay, there just wasn't a good cosplay vibe I guess. We scowered the dealer's room for stuff, Quyen gave me an AWESOMELY AWESOME
Pretty Cure Cure Black keychain (THANK YOU SOOO MUCH QUYEN I LOVE YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!) then packed up the cars to go to Genroku. Delicious lunch was had by all, Valiance/Cerberus was chatted up (with some really awesome plans for some cool secrety stuff that's going to be revealed for Razor and Feint), then we loaded up the cars one more time and headed back to Matt's to grab the rest of my stuff and say our goodbyes. ;_; Chase, Fetus, Melcher, and me once more packed up and headed back to Houston and now I'm home, safe and sound (with a LOT of crap to put away!)
Overall, Afest was okay. I DESPISED how cosplay was run, I am considering not even bothering to enter next year (pending my competitive spirit doesn't get the best of me, that is ^_~). I do plan on complaining to AnimeFEST.....starting cosplay and hour and a half late was BULLSHIT. Oh yeah, and the winners weren't announced until midnight. Yeah. Not good. Poor Nicki, she was SO exhausted! :( I had fun hanging out with everyone, I hope everyone got home safe and sound! Till Onicon (or Linucon for a few select 1hp members)!!!!
♥ Anne
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