[#19 - Attend a Convention- Part 1]
I wasn't expecting to get this one done so fast. Last year, I had wanted to go to PAX (Penny Arcade Expo) and wasn't able to, due to many complications, and hadn't really even thought about it this year.
The day before it started this year however, I had a text conversation with Cory.
Cory: How Crazy are you?
Laura: Uh.. why?
Cory: Just answer the question.
Laura: Crazy enough.
Cory: You have 20 minutes to pack, you're going to Seattle.
Ok, the conversation didn't go QUITE like that, but its close enough. Enough crap had happened in the last couple days, that I'm not going to sit and describe everything. This is about PAX. Not about everything else. So, in 20 minutes, I had packed my bags, and made the necessary calls to figure out how to take care of everything while I was gone, and I was on my way to the airport.
I made it through security this time with no problems. (As seen in the past with the 2 bomb checks, my name being on a blacklist, and the accidental attempt to take a waterbottle through security.) As for Cory, he had scissors in his bag, and they pulled him aside, checked it out and handed them back to him. We were flying southwest, and me, never flying that before was unaware how it was done. There are no assigned seats. They line you up in a line and you file on to the plane taking a seat wherever. We got to the terminal late, and apparently Cory and I didn't have actual boarding passes. Jared got on the plane and we had to run back to Customer Service to get a boarding pass, and then go get on the plane. We were the last people on the flight, which meant finding a seat in random spots. Jared had found a spot in the middle, and Cory and I found some relatively close seats to each other. I sat between to very LARGE people and found myself scrunched up to avoid touching either of them for the majority of the flight there.
I was antsy the entire flight. Not only had I packed and left the state in 20 minutes, but it was so spontaneous, I didn't know what to do with myself. As we entered Seattle airspace, I caught a view of Mt. St. Helens. Or so I was told. Several other mountains were in the vicinity. Now, I've grown up in the shadow of mountain ranges. Timp is pretty high. But when the mountain is the only thing in the area, they look ALOT bigger. We landed, and hopped off the plane and exited. I was doing the following. This was all new to me.
Leading us to the baggage claim and the front of the airport were fishes and bugs etched into the ground, in a wavy pattern, sidewinding down the hallway, which led, kind of funnily, to Cory and Jared following them back and forth on the ground. We got to the front area and picked a taxi, and Cory told him where to go.
Our taxi driver had a weird tick thing. He kept looking to the left, and while everyone kept thinking he was a paranoid driver checking his left mirror, (We were in the far left hand lane) I watched his eyes. They never visited the mirror. Which led me to believe he was OCD in some form as he did it when lights seemed to pass by us.
We passed the convention center. and drove around the corner, and pulled up to the hotel, literally around the corner. It was a 2 minute walk to the convention center in downtown Seattle. I paid the hotel fare, telling everyone that they could figure out how to split it later, and we walked into the hotel.
This was probably the biggest, grandest, nicest hotel I've ever been in. Cory checked us in, and we went to our hotel room, 10th floor, in the back corner. It was a 1 bathroom, 1 bed hotel room, large flat screen tv, and a fridge stocked with alcohol. I desperately needed a shower, and had requested as much on the elevator up. I was granted permission, and I grabbed some clothes and wandered into the bathroom, to find an amazingly nice marble like bathroom. My only problem was the mirror in front of the toilet. Seriously! Who wants to watch themselves go to the bathroom. I showered, blowdried my hair, straightened it and dressed up and walked out to join my companions, and did it all in about 25 minutes, of which I was proud of.
We went in search of food. THERE WAS NO FOOD IN THE GENERAL AREA AROUND WHERE WE WERE. TRUST ME, WE SEARCHED ALL 3 NIGHTS! The idea was pizza. So we explored and checked iPhones for food nearby.
Afterwards, we went exploring and saw several places in the general vicinity of where we were staying. It was still light outside, though it was cold.
We wandered through what we could of the convention center on the way back to the hotel. Where we came across this sign.
The badges had been sold out months before hand, but Cory had an extra one that he was giving to me, so I felt kind of special now. We got back to the apartment and prepped for bed. Jared decided to sleep on the floor, (to the sadness of all of us, because there was PLENTY of room on the bed) and Cory and I took opposite sides of the bed. We found that the window had automatic shades and it dropped to to floor as we fell asleep.
At 7:00 the next morning, Cory's alarm went off and he woke up to take a shower, followed by Jared after he was done. The plan was to get in line, and then rush to the Lucas Arts booth to get VIP passes for the Lucas Arts Panel the next day. We exited the building around 8:30, and I found that I had forgotten my phone back at the hotel, plugged in, and charging, much to my sadness, as I found out, there's not alot to do in line for an hour and a half. They did however, give us a bag with cool stuff in it, and on the screen in front of us, there was a 'computer' using a dos prompt like UI to talk to us, and cater to the geeky ness in all of us. There were games that people could play, but you needed your PHONE to text answers in, but I was out of luck with that one too.
This was the line. There's probably 5 or 6 columns like what is in front of me, plus a couple more behind me which you can's see.
Now, when I was thinking of 'Convention' I was thinking of like... a job fair at UVU or something. A couple of booths in the area.
This, was not what I was expecting:
As I said in the video, the place was HUGE! SO MANY TV's, and ELECTRONICS AND CONSOLES AND GAMES! It literally blew my mind. I wandered through the rows of colors, and sounds and geeks and people who are just like me in wonder. I stopped to look at half a dozen things, and was bombarded by 50 people going the other direction.
We made it to the Lucas Arts booth. I made it late, cause, well, as in the video, I lost my shoe, and fell behind and had to find it myself. Cory followed the people at Lucas Arts, and knew that he could get the VIP passes. Only the first 75 people would get it. As I arrived, the Lucas Arts guy handed out a t-shirt, saying "we want the people there to look really formal." These were the shirts: (The picture was taken the next day while prepping for the Panel.
After finishing at the Lucas Arts booth, we wandered around a bit, coming across the Disney Interactive booth. In front of us, REAL DISNEY SKETCH ARTISTS were there sketching things for people.... OF COURSE we got in line. There wasn't really anyone there yet.
The majority of the time at Pax was spent in line, or walking from booth to booth. I grew weary pretty fast but held my head up, determined to see everything. We went everywhere! We got t-shirts and lanyards and more t-shirts. We got badges, prizes, beta test cards, Posters.
Aaaaaaand. I'm not even going to finish day one in this part of the post. That will be done in Part 2.
P.S. Check out my 101 in 1001 and see how I'm doing!
The day before it started this year however, I had a text conversation with Cory.
Cory: How Crazy are you?
Laura: Uh.. why?
Cory: Just answer the question.
Laura: Crazy enough.
Cory: You have 20 minutes to pack, you're going to Seattle.
Ok, the conversation didn't go QUITE like that, but its close enough. Enough crap had happened in the last couple days, that I'm not going to sit and describe everything. This is about PAX. Not about everything else. So, in 20 minutes, I had packed my bags, and made the necessary calls to figure out how to take care of everything while I was gone, and I was on my way to the airport.
I made it through security this time with no problems. (As seen in the past with the 2 bomb checks, my name being on a blacklist, and the accidental attempt to take a waterbottle through security.) As for Cory, he had scissors in his bag, and they pulled him aside, checked it out and handed them back to him. We were flying southwest, and me, never flying that before was unaware how it was done. There are no assigned seats. They line you up in a line and you file on to the plane taking a seat wherever. We got to the terminal late, and apparently Cory and I didn't have actual boarding passes. Jared got on the plane and we had to run back to Customer Service to get a boarding pass, and then go get on the plane. We were the last people on the flight, which meant finding a seat in random spots. Jared had found a spot in the middle, and Cory and I found some relatively close seats to each other. I sat between to very LARGE people and found myself scrunched up to avoid touching either of them for the majority of the flight there.
I was antsy the entire flight. Not only had I packed and left the state in 20 minutes, but it was so spontaneous, I didn't know what to do with myself. As we entered Seattle airspace, I caught a view of Mt. St. Helens. Or so I was told. Several other mountains were in the vicinity. Now, I've grown up in the shadow of mountain ranges. Timp is pretty high. But when the mountain is the only thing in the area, they look ALOT bigger. We landed, and hopped off the plane and exited. I was doing the following. This was all new to me.
Leading us to the baggage claim and the front of the airport were fishes and bugs etched into the ground, in a wavy pattern, sidewinding down the hallway, which led, kind of funnily, to Cory and Jared following them back and forth on the ground. We got to the front area and picked a taxi, and Cory told him where to go.
Our taxi driver had a weird tick thing. He kept looking to the left, and while everyone kept thinking he was a paranoid driver checking his left mirror, (We were in the far left hand lane) I watched his eyes. They never visited the mirror. Which led me to believe he was OCD in some form as he did it when lights seemed to pass by us.
We passed the convention center. and drove around the corner, and pulled up to the hotel, literally around the corner. It was a 2 minute walk to the convention center in downtown Seattle. I paid the hotel fare, telling everyone that they could figure out how to split it later, and we walked into the hotel.
This was probably the biggest, grandest, nicest hotel I've ever been in. Cory checked us in, and we went to our hotel room, 10th floor, in the back corner. It was a 1 bathroom, 1 bed hotel room, large flat screen tv, and a fridge stocked with alcohol. I desperately needed a shower, and had requested as much on the elevator up. I was granted permission, and I grabbed some clothes and wandered into the bathroom, to find an amazingly nice marble like bathroom. My only problem was the mirror in front of the toilet. Seriously! Who wants to watch themselves go to the bathroom. I showered, blowdried my hair, straightened it and dressed up and walked out to join my companions, and did it all in about 25 minutes, of which I was proud of.
We went in search of food. THERE WAS NO FOOD IN THE GENERAL AREA AROUND WHERE WE WERE. TRUST ME, WE SEARCHED ALL 3 NIGHTS! The idea was pizza. So we explored and checked iPhones for food nearby.As we walked, Cory and Jared discussed PAX from last year, and PAX Tokyo potential, all of which were hyping me up for this convention. We stopped to eat a mexican taco like place, and I ordered a taco salad thing. The lady at the counter asked if I wanted spicy sauce, and still in my spontaneous mood, I agreed, which was a mistake. Cory ordered Calamari, and Jared ordered a shrimp like taco, that I don't remember the name of, but its fresh water shrimp. I tried both, still feeling spontaneous. Shortly after eating a couple bites of my salad, I was having severe difficulties for how hot my food was. The counter lady took pity on me and gave me several extra cups of sour cream to try and help combat the hotness.
Afterwards, we went exploring and saw several places in the general vicinity of where we were staying. It was still light outside, though it was cold.
We wandered through what we could of the convention center on the way back to the hotel. Where we came across this sign.
At 7:00 the next morning, Cory's alarm went off and he woke up to take a shower, followed by Jared after he was done. The plan was to get in line, and then rush to the Lucas Arts booth to get VIP passes for the Lucas Arts Panel the next day. We exited the building around 8:30, and I found that I had forgotten my phone back at the hotel, plugged in, and charging, much to my sadness, as I found out, there's not alot to do in line for an hour and a half. They did however, give us a bag with cool stuff in it, and on the screen in front of us, there was a 'computer' using a dos prompt like UI to talk to us, and cater to the geeky ness in all of us. There were games that people could play, but you needed your PHONE to text answers in, but I was out of luck with that one too.
This was the line. There's probably 5 or 6 columns like what is in front of me, plus a couple more behind me which you can's see.
Now, when I was thinking of 'Convention' I was thinking of like... a job fair at UVU or something. A couple of booths in the area.
This, was not what I was expecting:
As I said in the video, the place was HUGE! SO MANY TV's, and ELECTRONICS AND CONSOLES AND GAMES! It literally blew my mind. I wandered through the rows of colors, and sounds and geeks and people who are just like me in wonder. I stopped to look at half a dozen things, and was bombarded by 50 people going the other direction.
We made it to the Lucas Arts booth. I made it late, cause, well, as in the video, I lost my shoe, and fell behind and had to find it myself. Cory followed the people at Lucas Arts, and knew that he could get the VIP passes. Only the first 75 people would get it. As I arrived, the Lucas Arts guy handed out a t-shirt, saying "we want the people there to look really formal." These were the shirts: (The picture was taken the next day while prepping for the Panel.
After finishing at the Lucas Arts booth, we wandered around a bit, coming across the Disney Interactive booth. In front of us, REAL DISNEY SKETCH ARTISTS were there sketching things for people.... OF COURSE we got in line. There wasn't really anyone there yet.
The majority of the time at Pax was spent in line, or walking from booth to booth. I grew weary pretty fast but held my head up, determined to see everything. We went everywhere! We got t-shirts and lanyards and more t-shirts. We got badges, prizes, beta test cards, Posters.
And finding a guitar, I found myself having fun with the camera....
Aaaaaaand. I'm not even going to finish day one in this part of the post. That will be done in Part 2.
P.S. Check out my 101 in 1001 and see how I'm doing!
2 thoughts :
*two (you have a 'to' somewhere in there)
and my 2 favorite parts were seeing the Disney sketch looking like a pro and all the cosplayers.
When are you going to write articles for TheEscapistMagazine or something? I guess you have higher (different?) shtuff to do !>_<!
I'm pretty damn jealous right now...
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