anyone going to BotCon

[Onslaught Six]

Granted, in the toy hobby there are quite a few show-up-and-leave conventions. Every couple months, they hold Steel City Con in Pittsburgh. It's like ten bucks to get in and there's really nothing but dealers and a few (usually lame) guests. But I've always left there with some decent toys, so.

I usually don't really factor in the cost of driving and food to a con experience--I'm going to be doing that anyway regardless, given my ~45 minute work commute.

If they would hold Botcon in Pittsburgh, Philly, or even somewhere in Ohio or Maryland (Baltimore would be great...) then I would probably go. Also, if I were to go, I'd be splitting hotel costs with at least a couple other people. (Girlfriend, probably my friend Ken and his girlfriend, and possibly anyone else who'd want to go.) Because, y'know, that makes it cheaper. (Last MAGFest, there were seven people in our room for four days--I think we spent $45 each on the room for the entire weekend.)

[Shockwave]

Yeah, I had a similar offer from one of the toy dealers around here to share a room at Botcon this year but even with that, I still wasn't able to afford it. Besides, I'm more of a solitary creature, I was annoyed enough at living with my parents this last time before I moved into my place and their house is a three bedrooms! No way I could ever imagine sharing a single hotel room with 7 people! Seriously how do you even arrange showering in that situation? Part of it might be that I'm such a large person and take up so much space that I have a hard time imagining me x7 working well in such a confined space.

[Dominic]

You would actually be spending little enough time in the room though. And, showing/sleeping would likely only be a problem if you were all doing those things at the same time. (Having shared rooms, I can tell you that most people just automatically sleep and shower in shifts.)

Dom
-needs to find out when the next convention is.

[JediTricks]

I couldn't make it today due to another event, the star tours opening at Disneyland. But I am going tomorrow and Sunday.

[JediTricks]

Here is my Saturday Botcon coverage of photos: http://photos.actionfigs.com/g6139-tran ... -2011.html

I have a write-up of the Hasbro panel that day coming, but honestly, there was very little shown and said. I'm hoping today's panel will be better.

The con is a bit different than in '09, and the lack of evening stuff was a bit of a let-down (club members had to pay $45 to see Bay and Spielberg be inducted into the Hall of Fame! That's way better than the film fest. ), but the vibe was good and it was a fun time.

[Tigermegatron]

Here is my Saturday Botcon coverage of photos: http://photos.actionfigs.com/g6139-tran ... -2011.html

I have a write-up of the Hasbro panel that day coming, but honestly, there was very little shown and said. I'm hoping today's panel will be better.

The con is a bit different than in '09, and the lack of evening stuff was a bit of a let-down (club members had to pay $45 to see Bay and Spielberg be inducted into the Hall of Fame! That's way better than the film fest. ), but the vibe was good and it was a fun time.

thanks for the pics.

You did a great job getting those pics crystal clear. I was able to make out all the details on the toys.

Sadly other people/sites took fuzzy pics.

[Onslaught Six]

Seriously how do you even arrange showering in that situation?

Simple--disguise!

...wait, no.

You would actually be spending little enough time in the room though. And, showing/sleeping would likely only be a problem if you were all doing those things at the same time. (Having shared rooms, I can tell you that most people just automatically sleep and shower in shifts.)

This. At mostly every convention I've ever been to, generally everybody will wake up at roughly the same time. The first person who's up and wants to shower basically goes, "I'm going to shower now if everybody's okay with that." And then they do so. Once they're out, everybody looks around at each other and whoever really feels like they need to shower like now goes ahead and does it next. I usually wait until almost everybody's done and then go. Altogether, you might have to wait about an hour, but if everybody else is waking up before you anyway, or you've got something else to do (unload camera, charge batteries, check convention schedule, gaze admirably at convention haul, gaze admirably at girlfriend) then it's not so bad.

As for sleeping, last MAGFest we got a two-bedroom room and brought along an air mattress. Now that I think about it there were only six, not seven of us, and two of those were couples which greatly simplified things--because obviously the couples were going to occupy the same space. I'm also rather sure that we always did it by a system of both "first come first served" and "even dibs," as we called it. If you had one of the beds one night, you weren't allowed to outright say "I get the bed the next night," but if it was like 11pm-midnight and nobody else was occupying it, you were allowed to take it anyway. (One night my girlfriend and I were out to 2 or 3am, and ended up on the floor because both of our single male friends had taken a bed and the air mattress respectively. We didn't really mind--it was our consequence for staying out until 3am.)

Then there was last Otakon, where we packed *eight* people into a one-bedroom hotel room. It was alright for that weekend but it's definitely not one I would like to experience again. (There were three couples that time, and my single male friend and single female friend, and the single male friend has been trying to bang the female for literally three or four years now, so it all kind of evened out.) I remember one night, the girlfriend and I were wedged between a dresser and a wall in a space barely big enough for one person. But hey, all we were ever really in the room for was to sleep and maybe rest for a bit. (That year, the hotel was quite a few blocks from the convention center, so.)

[Mirage]

The con is a bit different than in '09, and the lack of evening stuff was a bit of a let-down (club members had to pay $45 to see Bay and Spielberg be inducted into the Hall of Fame! That's way better than the film fest. ), but the vibe was good and it was a fun time.

My friend from here in town who went says the "dinner" was stale popcorn and candy. Is this true? Because I call "Balls" on that.

I actually enjoyed the "Party at Paramount" 2 years ago. Has anyone heard why they didn't do a repeat this year? Because I kinda thought that was half the reason they were going back to Pasadena...

[Shockwave]

And another question, did they actually show the movie or not?

[andersonh1]

Oh NOW we get the G2 Sideswipe color scheme, on TFA Rodimus. Bah.

Thanks for the great pics. One of these days they'll hold Botcon somewhere in the southeast again, so I can afford to go. Until then, I'll just have to enjoy picture galleries.