Anthrocon Report
Anthrocon was awesome this year.
On Wednesday we left for the airport early in the morning and had a nice easy flight over to Denver for our layover. While there we found out that apparently all flights to Chicago had been canceled and two friends of ours had been redirected through Denver onto our very flight. Things really couldn't have worked out better considering we were planning on meeting up with one of them in the Pittsburgh airport anyway. We arrived at the con hotel in the mid afternoon and were able to meet up with friends and go out to dinner for sushi that evening.
Thursday was a pretty relaxed day lots of just hanging out and having a good time. By a great stroke of luck zippiner managed to be in line for the elevators behind an artist by the name of Klickitat who was selling a Pinkie Pie vest so zippiner managed to get the one vest before it even got to the dealers room at the con. The artist was wearing a Rainbow Dash vest which she wasn't selling because she wanted to wear it for the con.
On Friday I spent the morning checking out the dealers room, getting a few new badges and picking up some porn for a friend. I was quite pleased to see a large amount of my little pony stuff around the con, there was a table of custom ponies, pony charms and a scattering of pony artwork all around. Apparently at some point that day, the presidential motorcade passed right by the convention, but I didn't hear about it till later. In the afternoon I actually went to one of the con events, the brony meet up panel. The panel room was very packed, but it was enjoyable, even if I couldn't always hear what everyone was saying. That evening we decided to try out the Korean BBQ section of the sushi restaurant we love. It was interesting, there was basically a buffet of raw ingredients and a cooking surface on our table to cook everything on. It was an interesting experience, but I'm not sure I'll do it next time.
Saturday was pretty relaxed in the morning and busy but very nice in the evening. Some friends of zippiner invited us out to go with them to dinner at a nice Italian place called Palazzo Ristorante. We all got a little lost getting there, but by going a block out of the way we managed to walk within view of the baseball stadium just as everyone was cheering and fireworks were going off. Near the beginning of dinner the organizer gave brief speech about how wonderful it is that everyone has come together from some many different places to be together and have a good time. I'm not sure if it was made more or less awesome when a little while later someone told me "You know he ripped most of that speech off from Fantastic Mr. Fox, right?". We spent at least two hours there talking and enjoying dinner. As we were leaving the baseball stadium was once again setting off fireworks. Timing really couldn't have been more perfect that evening. After that I headed back to the con and right to the Furoticon sealed deck tournament. The whole event actually started with a performance of a dramatic scene from a book one of the Furoticon card sets were based off of. It was interesting, I usually don't pay much attention to stories in collectable card games, but the scene was well done. I ended up going 2-1 in the tournament and winning a 2 booster packs and 2 magnets.
On Sunday I actually had a game demo to run. I had applied for it months back and they put me on the schedule to run Saboteur. There were maybe 7 people who came to try it. I had fun, it was a good way to guarantee I was able to play a game during the con. I'm not sure if I'll be doing it again next year. That evening, after the dealers room closed zippiner managed to be in line for the elevators behind Klickitat and this time she was willing to sell her Rainbow Dash vest. I got a call about it and ran down to buy it for myself. Apparently the place to get pony vests is in the elevator line. Later that night there was a brony party over in the Marriott which I went to. It was a lot of fun, we talked about ponies, watched pony videos, ate cupcakes, did some pony madlibs and even had a raffle for prizes. The madlibs weren't even official my little pony madlibs, they were from some knock off called "My First Pony". It didn't really matter, a good portion of the words we filled in were dirty words, just as I would expect from furries. During the raffle I got a G3 pony called Morning Glory, and I'm not quite sure what to do with her now.
Monday was the big day for everyone leaving. Also since it was the last chance to do so, we went over to the ToonSeum where the current exhibit was super heroes. The place isn't very big, but it was full of old Marvel and DC comic original artwork which was pretty cool to see. After that we headed back to the lobby and hung out for a while, saying goodbyes and others were passing through. Things were a little crazy there though, so we decided to get out of the way and head to the airport early. The airport was also full of furs so we had fun hanging out there for a while. Everything went smoothly with the flights home, I managed to be in good enough shape to go right back to work the next day.
The pictures I took are up here:
http://pics.livejournal.com/skitzycat/gallery/0003gzfr
On Wednesday we left for the airport early in the morning and had a nice easy flight over to Denver for our layover. While there we found out that apparently all flights to Chicago had been canceled and two friends of ours had been redirected through Denver onto our very flight. Things really couldn't have worked out better considering we were planning on meeting up with one of them in the Pittsburgh airport anyway. We arrived at the con hotel in the mid afternoon and were able to meet up with friends and go out to dinner for sushi that evening.
Thursday was a pretty relaxed day lots of just hanging out and having a good time. By a great stroke of luck zippiner managed to be in line for the elevators behind an artist by the name of Klickitat who was selling a Pinkie Pie vest so zippiner managed to get the one vest before it even got to the dealers room at the con. The artist was wearing a Rainbow Dash vest which she wasn't selling because she wanted to wear it for the con.
On Friday I spent the morning checking out the dealers room, getting a few new badges and picking up some porn for a friend. I was quite pleased to see a large amount of my little pony stuff around the con, there was a table of custom ponies, pony charms and a scattering of pony artwork all around. Apparently at some point that day, the presidential motorcade passed right by the convention, but I didn't hear about it till later. In the afternoon I actually went to one of the con events, the brony meet up panel. The panel room was very packed, but it was enjoyable, even if I couldn't always hear what everyone was saying. That evening we decided to try out the Korean BBQ section of the sushi restaurant we love. It was interesting, there was basically a buffet of raw ingredients and a cooking surface on our table to cook everything on. It was an interesting experience, but I'm not sure I'll do it next time.
Saturday was pretty relaxed in the morning and busy but very nice in the evening. Some friends of zippiner invited us out to go with them to dinner at a nice Italian place called Palazzo Ristorante. We all got a little lost getting there, but by going a block out of the way we managed to walk within view of the baseball stadium just as everyone was cheering and fireworks were going off. Near the beginning of dinner the organizer gave brief speech about how wonderful it is that everyone has come together from some many different places to be together and have a good time. I'm not sure if it was made more or less awesome when a little while later someone told me "You know he ripped most of that speech off from Fantastic Mr. Fox, right?". We spent at least two hours there talking and enjoying dinner. As we were leaving the baseball stadium was once again setting off fireworks. Timing really couldn't have been more perfect that evening. After that I headed back to the con and right to the Furoticon sealed deck tournament. The whole event actually started with a performance of a dramatic scene from a book one of the Furoticon card sets were based off of. It was interesting, I usually don't pay much attention to stories in collectable card games, but the scene was well done. I ended up going 2-1 in the tournament and winning a 2 booster packs and 2 magnets.
On Sunday I actually had a game demo to run. I had applied for it months back and they put me on the schedule to run Saboteur. There were maybe 7 people who came to try it. I had fun, it was a good way to guarantee I was able to play a game during the con. I'm not sure if I'll be doing it again next year. That evening, after the dealers room closed zippiner managed to be in line for the elevators behind Klickitat and this time she was willing to sell her Rainbow Dash vest. I got a call about it and ran down to buy it for myself. Apparently the place to get pony vests is in the elevator line. Later that night there was a brony party over in the Marriott which I went to. It was a lot of fun, we talked about ponies, watched pony videos, ate cupcakes, did some pony madlibs and even had a raffle for prizes. The madlibs weren't even official my little pony madlibs, they were from some knock off called "My First Pony". It didn't really matter, a good portion of the words we filled in were dirty words, just as I would expect from furries. During the raffle I got a G3 pony called Morning Glory, and I'm not quite sure what to do with her now.
Monday was the big day for everyone leaving. Also since it was the last chance to do so, we went over to the ToonSeum where the current exhibit was super heroes. The place isn't very big, but it was full of old Marvel and DC comic original artwork which was pretty cool to see. After that we headed back to the lobby and hung out for a while, saying goodbyes and others were passing through. Things were a little crazy there though, so we decided to get out of the way and head to the airport early. The airport was also full of furs so we had fun hanging out there for a while. Everything went smoothly with the flights home, I managed to be in good enough shape to go right back to work the next day.
The pictures I took are up here:
http://pics.livejournal.com/skitzycat/gallery/0003gzfr