A Report

Holy shit it's taken me so long to write... anything really, especially about the convention.

Because I am a lazy, lazy bastard.

Anyway...

THE CONVENTION WAS FUCKING AWESOME!!  /screaming

A couple of friends and I went to Fredericton for Animaritime at the end of June. This was our first big convention and we were insanely excited. The only con we'd ever been to before was Animinitime, which only lasted a day. This time around was the full three-day experience.

Bloody brilliant.

We went up on the Thursday before, since we live nearly 6/7 hours away, and spent the night settling into the hotel room. We just nearly made it in time for early sign-up with minutes to spare. The convention started on Friday afternoon and we kicked things off by waiting in line to get into the vendor's room. Saturday was the only full day we had and we spent most of that day in panels and asking cosplayers if we could get their picture. Things were winding down for us on Sunday since it was the last day of the convention and we were leaving that day. We waited in (a long-ass) line to get into the garage sale (which really was worth the wait), and then left for home around noon or so.

And we had a really great time and really it was SO MUCH AWESOME AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! Good times.

And now, the highlights:

• The hotel room: The hotel room was brilliant. I always complained (a bit) that the hotel we stayed in for the last con was too small and crowded, especially with five people in it. Although my mother thinks that the room we got this time was no bigger, I definitely think it was. It definitely wasn't nearly as crowded. We only had three people staying with us (me and my two friends), but my mother, aunt, and cousin came up Saturday evening for pizza and the room still didn't feel as small as it did the last time. We had enough space to move around freely and lounge around without bothering each other. It was great, also good for winding down after convention excitement.
• Being in the hotel: Staying in the hotel by ourselves was one of the best parts of the trip for me. My mother drove us up, but she didn't stay at the hotel with us. It was a bit like living on our own for a bit, much fun. We got up when we wanted, we went to bed when we wanted, we were in charge of our own activities. It was awesome.
• Vendor's room/garage sale: In things concerning merchandise for things I like I pretty much live in the middle of nowhere. So I was pretty excited to get into the vendor's room and garage sale and see all the awesome things they had for sale there. Prints, manga, DVDs, stuffies, hats, wigs, buttons, ALL THE FANDOM THINGS! Man, I spent way too much money there but OH WELL! (seriously I came home with, like, 30-something books) Gamezilla was there and they were selling talking Dalek plushies! Got right on that one. Another great thing about the vendor's room was that it had a lot of cosplayers wandering around in one place. Great photo oppertunities there.
• The cosplayers: Most of the people at the con were there in costume (including me, although my costume was lazy and crap) and most of the costumes I saw were AMAZING! I got quite a lot of pictures of brilliant cosplayers (when I could bring up the courage to ask for pictures because I suck).
• Ten: One of the most brilliant cosplayers I came across there was a man named Miguel Roy (I think) who was cosplaying the tenth Doctor. He was amazing! He had the suit, the shoes, the hair! He was also hilarious and charasmatic and everything! I think I heard that he won something there, the masquerade or the improv or something. Anyway, I'm pretty sure everyone who saw him there just loved him, he was great.
• Brad Swaile: Brad Swaile was there! He was awesome! We went to two of his panels and his autograph signing. He's a great guy, and very funny and talented. He's also really just a normal guy. We all enjoyed his panels. We were actually just going to go to one of them, but we liked it so much that we ended up going to his other one as well. We also managed to be first in line to get into his autograph signing, and me and my friends didn't have anything for him to sign so we ended up buying Death Notes for him to sign. So he joked a bit about that and that was fun. We also ended up running into him on the street at one point and talked with him and that was just epic.
• Saturday evening: We didn't have much going on Saturday night so the initial plan was to have an early night and just stay in the room. My mother, aunt, and cousin showed up in the early evening and stayed for pizza. They left around 7:30 or 8:00 or something and we just hung around the room for a bit before deciding to go over to the convention centre across the street to take more pictures of cosplayers. Hey, no point in just staying in the room when there were still things going on right next door, right? Anyway we headed on over, got some pictures, blew some more money in the vendor's room. We actually stayed in the vendor's room until it closed for the night (around 9 or so) and everyone was kicked out. We were waiting at the light to cross the street when we started talking to some of the people standing there with us. That was a lot of fun. And then tits happened. There was a car stopped at a red light in the street and a half-naked (we're assuming drunk) woman popped out of the sunroof. No top on or bra or anything. We laughed like maniacs. There was also a group of men (unrelated to the convention, they just happened to be there) there laughing as well. Then everyone still there, both convention-goers and the men, kinda entered one huge group conversation about that. Also one of the men kinda looked like Dara O'Briain, it was pretty amusing. We eventually made it back across the street when we ran into a few friends that Meaghan had made earlier, along with Brad Swaile. He stopped and talked with us for a while and we all got our pictures taken with him and it was brilliant. We had a great time.
• The people: There was a lot of people at the convention that weekend. Around 1700 or so, I heard. We talked with a lot of people that were there. The vendors were all very nice and spoke with a lot of the people there. There was Brad Swaile, of course, and the tenth Doctor. Meaghan ran into a group of Doctor Who cosplayers and fans and went around with them for a bit (apparently they went on a search for Rose Tyler, and found one). There was a Jack Frost we saw a few times and we spoke to her whenever we ran into her. And then there was a woman cosplaying as Severus Snape and a Doctor Who character I didn't know, and we spoke quite a bit with her a few times. There was also a Gas Mask Zombie we ran into who was great. Then we talked for a bit with a pair of Kira and Athrun cosplayers while waiting in line for Brad Swaile's autograph signing. Then there was the Dragonball guy who was wandering around with seven Dragonball pins on his shirt who noticed my t-shirt (a t-shirt that looked like the top half of Goku's gi) and said I should get some pins as well.