Friday, June 17, 2011

Pariahcon 2011

Alright, not going to lie..I got next to NO pictures this convention, but still had a reasonably good time.  Why no pictures you may ask?  Well, truth be told..there just really were not very many cosplayers this convention.  I don't quite know why.  Aside from the 'Miss Pokemon contest' which was a contest for gijinka styles cosplay there really were NO others.

It was only a two day convention in Lakeland FL.  Staffing was decent.  Though the location was both great and terrible;  I'll explain.  It was just off of the highway, which made it easy to find, plus had several locations to eat nearby within walking distance.  The hotel itself seemed to be in shambles though.  I was told it was because the original owner said it would be under renovations the year before but then got swept under the rug and the renovations haven't happened yet.  If they will time will tell.  If it's in the same location next year without any maintenance I won't be returning.  My first hotel room (I booked a suite) was not a suit first of all, simply a room with a king size bed and that was basically the ONLY addition to it.  Plus the room's (And actually several of the rooms for the convention) air conditioner didn't work.  So it'd more or less just spit hot air around the bedroom before going to the front desk to complain.  Then once they fixed it, giving me the suite I'd booked my key didn't work meaning I had to go from the sixth floor, to the first floor.  Three times before the card key they gave me worked.  Oh, and about going to the first floor obviously it's a convention so I expect the elevators to be busy.  But these elevators were not only busy, but they were slow, and one was completely broken the entire duration of the convention. Meaning there were two elevators left for a convention that was taking up six floors of this hotel (the hotel wasn't wide so they couldn't stretch everything on 1-2 floors.  Which is perfectly fine in a normal case.  Not this one however.)

All in all, the convention was fine.  The hotel it was hosted in however was simply put...terrible and if that remains a problem for next year I don't think I'll be planned on returning.  Perhaps I'll post some pictures later once I sort everything out (I didn't take off pictures from my personal vacation or anything last month so everything is jumbled about on my camera's memory stick.)

EXPCon 2010

Alright, like I promised there's photos to be shown. Though here's my log for my entire adventure over the weekend.

It seems on the way there my GPS was perfectly fine. Getting around St. Augustine was perfectly fine too. However getting back was a god damn nightmare. It's about 2 hours getting there. and took almost 6 hours getting back.

But the convention itself was amazing. hotel staff was great, the convention security was amazing (Normally there are numerous problems over the weekends of conventions, but this one went off without a hitch. Or at least nothing that they couldn't keep quiet about)

My hotel room was on the third floor which made it nice, though all but one of the elevators were down for maintenance on Saturday night. So finding that out initially meant waiting almost 15 minutes for an elevator to get to the lobby. (The hotel only has 15 floors.)

All in all, it was better then last year. Much better in attendance too, last year I believe the entire convention had between 1,500 and 2,000 attendees. This year however they had over 4,000 attendees. which was good, and bad. The hotel convention hall simply wasn't large enough and for some panels they even had lines that stretched all the way out to the parking lot. Needless to say next year they're going to have to rent out a venue.

Now then, onto the pictures.























All in all, it was a good convention and will be traveling back next year hopefully to go again.

Just a test

Just started this new blog.  my old one I changed directions from simply gossip to something I'm more interest in and decided it'd be best if I changed URL names too.  Lol.  I'll make this pretty and get everything moved over.  I have ALOT to cover later