Kathleen Faulconer wrote:
[...]
> We got there in pretty good time, considering the traffic was scary on
> the long weekend-ish Friday. We were inside by noon, when the 'spend
> money' room  opened. Only it didn't open on time, I think it was about
> 12:40 by the time people were let in. That type of delay seemed the norm
> for the day, btw.

And for today. Exhibit hall was supposed to open at 10 today, but was
delayed until noon because of some large line for something else this
morning. And video rooms suffer from these delays also (it's worse in
their cases, because the delays add up throughout the day; shows can
be an hour behind by 8 or 9).

> We were overwhelmed by the sea of people in the exhibit hall. It was
> impossible to see any thing unless you stood back and waited your turn.
> This, obviously, caused a problem in crowd control, as there was no way
> to get through an aisle that was clogged with people. Of course, it
> seemed the cel tables were fullest, because you don't get a second
> chance at a cel you want! I bumped into my family members off and on,
> but basically, you never saw anyone again once you were inside!
> There was a LOT of H stuff when we were there, Alan! ;-)

Yesterday I remember seeing some. Couldn't find any today (Himeya
Games, who basically translate H-games for the PC, basically had
nothing to display today).

Incidentally, the exhibit halls tend to drop in traffic shortly before
they close (even 1.5 hours before). I think that the middle of the day,
say 12-3, is the worst (because everybody's up by then, and everybody
wants to get to the exhibit hall early to beat the rush...or some
similarly perverse logic).
 
[...]
> They had a bouncer (really a nice girl) standing outside sending
> everyone away. VERY DISAPPOINTING! Lots of disappointed people.

I saw people lined up for Masquerade seating at least as early as 1 today;
that's really the only way to guarantee getting into the very popular
events.

[...]
> It kinda went like this...if we stay for the Petshop Of Horrors showing,
> then we would have to stay for the cel meeting after, and if we stayed
> for that, then we would have to stay for Esca at midnight! With a two
> hour drive home, we had to just end the day, even though nobody wanted
> to go. :-(

I haven't been to the cel forum before, but it seemed like a pretty quiet
event. Let's see...they had two 15 minute presentations, the first about
different types of pencil sketches, the second about ways to spot fakes.
Pretty short...then people basically started showing off some of their
cels. A guy down the row from me had one of those large cel books full
of Kiki cels - except for the last slot, which had some paper with
a hand-drawn Totoro, one of those white things from Mononoke, and
somebody's signature(?). Lots of other fairly nice cels, but when it
got to be around 11, standing in a group and looking at somebody's
cels just wasn't going to keep me awake, so I left. I saw someone
named Julie Dillon (the one who does the excellent Kagato art, IIRC)
there; she was in costume.

[...]
> Delays were the main problem of the day. And the fact that the rooms
> were so spread out that there was much mingling with the 'general
> public' who seemed very confused. The fact that it was spread through
> three buildings made it impossible for one day patrons to see things
> that they would otherwise have gone to visit. We didn't visit the hotel
> that had the games set up, it would have taken too much of our time. The
> registration was in a whole different hotel, so we waited in line to be
> registered, then walked back to our car and drove to the next hotel!
> This was reallllllllly poor planning, imho. The main goings on were in
> the Disneyland Hotel, but scattered on three floors. So, if you took the
> time to walk to an event held on the top floor, and found that it wasn't
> going on (pretty much every time) it took a lot of time and effort to
> make your way to the next event...just to find that that was off
> schedule or cancelled, too!

Think how bad spread-out rooms are if you have a room in the registration
hotel (Disneyland Pacific). We end up walking back and forth between the
two hotels (we often meet back at the room to decide where to eat, or
just to take an occasional break). And we haven't had as much trouble
with off-schedule events; since video rooms all seem to be behind
schedule all the time, we usually assume that if we sit through the
next 5-10 minutes of Rayearth, Dual will come on. It's worked so far.
Also, the three floors of the convention center aren't that much
trouble to go between now that we have a sense of where things are in
relation to each other.

> If we went to see a show, chances were it was not what we came for. If
> we didn't recognize it, we had to just wait for something to make us
> know what we were watching!

That doesn't bother me much; what bothers me is that when the schedule
suddenly changes, and the show you want to see gets pushed back, any
arrangements you'd made to meet up at a certain time can get trashed
(my group likes to split up fairly often). If it was just normal event
delay, it wouldn't matter; we build wiggle room into our arrangments.
But when a show gets delayed by half an hour or more (like Gundam
Wing: Endless Waltz tonight)...
 
[...]
> Just to make sure nobody (TMP) gets the wrong impression, we had a great
> time!
> I suppose it doesn't matter how much you do at something like this, it
> is the atmosphere that makes it special. Being at Disneyland did come

Some things are definitely better experienced with a crowd. Comedic
anime often works this way (Photon, for example), and sometimes the
crowd effect is actually a bigger part of the experience than the
show itself (Endless Waltz again...it may be the best GW I've seen,
but that doesn't mean much since I don't like GW...but the crowd's
reaction tonight definitely made it worth going).

[...]
> Tenchi-wise I didn't see anything to buy that I couldn't live without
> except for a great Japanses OAV poster that was gone when I went back
> for it. I did see the Ryo-ohki backpack which was sooooo cute, but not
> for sale. I think they were taking orders. I stood in a line for an hour
> to get a free advertising Tee Shirt that had Tenchi characters on it,
> only to find that they ran out of every size except small. I took it
> anyway! ;-)

Did you see the Lain lunch box? How about the Tenchi shirts on display?
Did you notice the Tenchi Muyo RPG for sale at Guardians' booth? Nice,
full color book; picture of Ryoko with demon mask on the front cover.

BTW, what pictures did you get on the clear files?

> I will bet that this will not be held at Disneyland again, and I really
> hope it doesn't. I have a feeling that there will be a big gripe session
> this year, but I don't feel that it was the fault of the Expo people who
> seemed for the most part very stressed, apologetic, and eager to make
> things right.

I thought all good con organizers were like that. ^_^
Seriously, I think in hindsight the conclusion will be that locating
AX at a hotel that wants to serve a large amount of the "normal"
public and keep control of the sort of image the con projects
was a mistake.

Oh, well. It's been fun so far, and getting together to gripe about
the parts you don't like is part of the experience.

Alan Zabaro