OK. Pictures are up, you can find the pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hayama-s
Let's get this started.
Left home on Friday around 10am. I had been wanting to get some of the money changed to Canadian before I headed up there, but I would have to go downtown to get that done, so I said the hell with it & just headed north. Nothing exciting happened on the drive. Took about 10-15min to get thru the border. The drive thru Canada was even more boring than the drive up I-75. They have NOTHING off their exits, so their "rest areas" are "service centers" that have a gas station & some fast food. At least with everything in kilometers, things seemed to go quicker. When I hit Toronto, I was doing well, until I got off the wrong exit & had to take a local road over to the street I needed. Once I got there & a few other screw ups, since I didn't know the area & missing my hotel the first time, I finally found the parking garage for the hotel. Got my hotel room & the stuff out of the car. This was around 7:30pm. Since the con was going until 9pm on Fri. I decided to find my way over there to at least get registration out of the way. I had bought my ticket online beforehand, so had my paperwork for that. There was a foreign money exchange place in the convention center, so got $100 changed to Canadian (which got me $102 plus change) then made my way to the Expo. The Fan Expo was in the South building, so to get there thru the North building, you had to go up 2 sets of escalators to get to the skywalk to go over the mess of railroad tracks that separated the 2 buildings. then go down 2 sets of escalators to get to the lobby area of the South building. Then you took another escalator down to the level where registration was being done. There was no one inline at the Advance Ticket booth, so got my Pass easily. Then, you had to go down another set of elevators to get to the floor with then video/panel rooms HOWEVER, you couldn't get to them this way, you had to go down to the bottom level where the dealers room was & then take an elevator back up to get to the video/panel rooms. Well, if you could get past the barrier & the people stopping people from going around the barrier, you could get there, but that wasn't the way they wanted people to go. So down to the dealers room. I had about 45min to look around. BIG room. Wandered around a bit to get the feel for the room. Ended up in the Artist Alley part of the room & said Hi to Ghastly of Ghastly's Ghastly Comic. Bought the 2 books/pamphlets the was selling. Was going to buy the CD for the band he was in, but the bandmate that had them hadn't gotten there with them for Friday, so that was something to pickup on Saturday. Since the room was closing, I figured it was time to leave & make the trek back to the hotel for the night. Got the high-speed internet working in the hotel room (cost $15 for 24hrs use) & got caught up on things, then went to bed.
Got up around 10:30am. The room I had was across from the service elevator, so got woken up around 8am, lucky I can fall back asleep easily in the mornings, so could sleep in. Checked the internet & turned on the TV. There was a Yugi-Oh marathon that seemed to be the end of the show arc, so I ended up watching that while I messed around that morning. What was left of the hurricane Ernesto hit the town overnight, so it was raining outside all day. Once I got things together that morning, I went back down to the car to get the big umbrella out of the trunk & headed out to the con. Took my camera this time. After walking the whole way there, the line was still kinda long to get into the dealers room. I kinda cut in line & got in without waiting. Looked around to see if anyone had the comics that Greg wanted, but no one did, since the comic dealers only really had DC, Marvel, & image comics. Saw Carrie Fisher, but between the line & the handlers, there wasn't a way to get there to take a picture. I did try to take a picture of Linda Blair, but got stopped by a handler & was told I had to pay $10 just to take a picture. Screw that. Did get pictures of a few other guests. Bought the CD from Ghastly, which got me a free pass to a concert they were doing at a club about 6-7 blocks away from the convention center. Even gave me a map on how to get there. Since the concert was going to happen from 10pm-2am & it was still raining & my feet hurt after the day at the con, I passed on going. I took lots of pictures & didn't really by anything. Got tired at one point & walked back to the hotel. After resting for a hour, I went back to the con to see about the masquerade. When I got back there, the line was already long, so I said the hell with it. Wandered back into the dealers room until it closed, then checked the line again, which had gotten really long, then wandered back to the hotel. I found out later that you needed to get separate tickets to the masquerade & since I didn't have one, I wouldn't have gotten in anyways. I kinda vegged at the hotel & browsed the internet until I went to bed.
Since I had the stuff to carry back down to car & had to check out by noon, I got up around 8am with the housekeeping noises in the hall. The internet had switched overnight & I would have had to pay another $15 to use it just for the morning, so I passed on that. Got my shower & got dressed & packed everything up except for what I was going to take with me back to the con for the last day. Made a few trips down to the car to put the stuff in the trunk. I then checked out of the hotel. The car was in a parking garage that was connected to the hotel, but wasn't controlled by the hotel, so I still had to pay to get out of there, but since it was separate, I was able to leave the car there when I checked out of the hotel. I knew there was a skywalk between Union Station (big train station, subway stop, etc) & the convention center. I didn't find out that Union Station was right across from my hotel & the hotel had an underground walkway over to it until this morning. Basically, I could had gotten out of the rain & not had to carry the umbrella around all day Saturday if I had known about this. Oh well, too late now. I made it over to the con & picked up a couple of DVDs & found a Graphic Novel I had been looking for all day Saturday. Took a few more shots at finding the comics Greg wanted, still no luck on those. Got a few odds & ends (basically trying to spend the Canadian money I had left). Took a few more pictures. Then left the con. There was a burger joint called Harvey's in Union Station that I got some food at before leaving. Got to the car & paid the $28 it cost to park for the weekend (luckily they took plastic) & headed out for home around 2:30pm. Weaseled my way back onto the highway & basically drove forever. Got to the border around 7pm & after waiting to go thru customs, I was the next car in my lane (there was like 8 lanes) & they basically shut the border down for some reason. No one was moving in any of the lanes. We sat there for about 10 mins before they opened back up again. Got thru with no problem & paid the toll with most of what I had left of my Canadian money (I ended up with $2.34 left when I got home). After I got a little lost trying to find my way back to the highway (better signs would have helped) I got back onto I-75 for the last chunk of the drive. I was getting rather tired by this point, so the only things I remember was that when I stopped at McD for dinner, the fries were warm & that the one cop that was in the median I didn't even noticed until his headlights shown thru the drivers side window. I was focusing on just the road ahead & not on anything outside that area, so didn't even see him. I was using cruse control most of the way home. Got home around 11:30. Took out the trash. Brought the luggage in. E-mail my mom, so she knew I made it home safe. Posted here. Then went to bed.
Con was interesting, with the different genre of cosplayers floating around. Not sure if it was really worth all that I spent (between gas, the hotel, etc) to go on this trip, so I will probably not go again unless other people are wanting to go. I wish I wasn't so tired & hurty after the con, since I think the stop at Niagara Falls would have been cool. Might have to plan that trip by itself someday.
Let's get this started.
Left home on Friday around 10am. I had been wanting to get some of the money changed to Canadian before I headed up there, but I would have to go downtown to get that done, so I said the hell with it & just headed north. Nothing exciting happened on the drive. Took about 10-15min to get thru the border. The drive thru Canada was even more boring than the drive up I-75. They have NOTHING off their exits, so their "rest areas" are "service centers" that have a gas station & some fast food. At least with everything in kilometers, things seemed to go quicker. When I hit Toronto, I was doing well, until I got off the wrong exit & had to take a local road over to the street I needed. Once I got there & a few other screw ups, since I didn't know the area & missing my hotel the first time, I finally found the parking garage for the hotel. Got my hotel room & the stuff out of the car. This was around 7:30pm. Since the con was going until 9pm on Fri. I decided to find my way over there to at least get registration out of the way. I had bought my ticket online beforehand, so had my paperwork for that. There was a foreign money exchange place in the convention center, so got $100 changed to Canadian (which got me $102 plus change) then made my way to the Expo. The Fan Expo was in the South building, so to get there thru the North building, you had to go up 2 sets of escalators to get to the skywalk to go over the mess of railroad tracks that separated the 2 buildings. then go down 2 sets of escalators to get to the lobby area of the South building. Then you took another escalator down to the level where registration was being done. There was no one inline at the Advance Ticket booth, so got my Pass easily. Then, you had to go down another set of elevators to get to the floor with then video/panel rooms HOWEVER, you couldn't get to them this way, you had to go down to the bottom level where the dealers room was & then take an elevator back up to get to the video/panel rooms. Well, if you could get past the barrier & the people stopping people from going around the barrier, you could get there, but that wasn't the way they wanted people to go. So down to the dealers room. I had about 45min to look around. BIG room. Wandered around a bit to get the feel for the room. Ended up in the Artist Alley part of the room & said Hi to Ghastly of Ghastly's Ghastly Comic. Bought the 2 books/pamphlets the was selling. Was going to buy the CD for the band he was in, but the bandmate that had them hadn't gotten there with them for Friday, so that was something to pickup on Saturday. Since the room was closing, I figured it was time to leave & make the trek back to the hotel for the night. Got the high-speed internet working in the hotel room (cost $15 for 24hrs use) & got caught up on things, then went to bed.
Got up around 10:30am. The room I had was across from the service elevator, so got woken up around 8am, lucky I can fall back asleep easily in the mornings, so could sleep in. Checked the internet & turned on the TV. There was a Yugi-Oh marathon that seemed to be the end of the show arc, so I ended up watching that while I messed around that morning. What was left of the hurricane Ernesto hit the town overnight, so it was raining outside all day. Once I got things together that morning, I went back down to the car to get the big umbrella out of the trunk & headed out to the con. Took my camera this time. After walking the whole way there, the line was still kinda long to get into the dealers room. I kinda cut in line & got in without waiting. Looked around to see if anyone had the comics that Greg wanted, but no one did, since the comic dealers only really had DC, Marvel, & image comics. Saw Carrie Fisher, but between the line & the handlers, there wasn't a way to get there to take a picture. I did try to take a picture of Linda Blair, but got stopped by a handler & was told I had to pay $10 just to take a picture. Screw that. Did get pictures of a few other guests. Bought the CD from Ghastly, which got me a free pass to a concert they were doing at a club about 6-7 blocks away from the convention center. Even gave me a map on how to get there. Since the concert was going to happen from 10pm-2am & it was still raining & my feet hurt after the day at the con, I passed on going. I took lots of pictures & didn't really by anything. Got tired at one point & walked back to the hotel. After resting for a hour, I went back to the con to see about the masquerade. When I got back there, the line was already long, so I said the hell with it. Wandered back into the dealers room until it closed, then checked the line again, which had gotten really long, then wandered back to the hotel. I found out later that you needed to get separate tickets to the masquerade & since I didn't have one, I wouldn't have gotten in anyways. I kinda vegged at the hotel & browsed the internet until I went to bed.
Since I had the stuff to carry back down to car & had to check out by noon, I got up around 8am with the housekeeping noises in the hall. The internet had switched overnight & I would have had to pay another $15 to use it just for the morning, so I passed on that. Got my shower & got dressed & packed everything up except for what I was going to take with me back to the con for the last day. Made a few trips down to the car to put the stuff in the trunk. I then checked out of the hotel. The car was in a parking garage that was connected to the hotel, but wasn't controlled by the hotel, so I still had to pay to get out of there, but since it was separate, I was able to leave the car there when I checked out of the hotel. I knew there was a skywalk between Union Station (big train station, subway stop, etc) & the convention center. I didn't find out that Union Station was right across from my hotel & the hotel had an underground walkway over to it until this morning. Basically, I could had gotten out of the rain & not had to carry the umbrella around all day Saturday if I had known about this. Oh well, too late now. I made it over to the con & picked up a couple of DVDs & found a Graphic Novel I had been looking for all day Saturday. Took a few more shots at finding the comics Greg wanted, still no luck on those. Got a few odds & ends (basically trying to spend the Canadian money I had left). Took a few more pictures. Then left the con. There was a burger joint called Harvey's in Union Station that I got some food at before leaving. Got to the car & paid the $28 it cost to park for the weekend (luckily they took plastic) & headed out for home around 2:30pm. Weaseled my way back onto the highway & basically drove forever. Got to the border around 7pm & after waiting to go thru customs, I was the next car in my lane (there was like 8 lanes) & they basically shut the border down for some reason. No one was moving in any of the lanes. We sat there for about 10 mins before they opened back up again. Got thru with no problem & paid the toll with most of what I had left of my Canadian money (I ended up with $2.34 left when I got home). After I got a little lost trying to find my way back to the highway (better signs would have helped) I got back onto I-75 for the last chunk of the drive. I was getting rather tired by this point, so the only things I remember was that when I stopped at McD for dinner, the fries were warm & that the one cop that was in the median I didn't even noticed until his headlights shown thru the drivers side window. I was focusing on just the road ahead & not on anything outside that area, so didn't even see him. I was using cruse control most of the way home. Got home around 11:30. Took out the trash. Brought the luggage in. E-mail my mom, so she knew I made it home safe. Posted here. Then went to bed.
Con was interesting, with the different genre of cosplayers floating around. Not sure if it was really worth all that I spent (between gas, the hotel, etc) to go on this trip, so I will probably not go again unless other people are wanting to go. I wish I wasn't so tired & hurty after the con, since I think the stop at Niagara Falls would have been cool. Might have to plan that trip by itself someday.
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