GaryOak's Bronycon Post-Mortem Report – Part 1: Old Fashioned Fun · 8:29pm Aug 7th, 2014
Hello, everyone. My third Bronycon has come and gone, and boy, what a Bronycon it was. Much of this report was written during my flight back home from the convention, so please excuse the bleary-eyed nature of it.
Day -1
Yes, Day -1. You read that correctly. There are a few reasons behind this, the first being that I'm lucky to have gone to this year's convention in the first place. Why? People who I thought were my friends stabbed me in the back. I won't go into too much detail here, but suffice it to say that they had problems with me on a personal level, did not express it during the convention—so I had no idea I was doing anything wrong—and went behind my back to determine that I couldn't room with them this year. Flying across North America is very expensive, and I'm required to split my hotel room at least four ways to afford the trip.
Fortunately, Dusk Watch, a fellow panelist at Everfree Northwest, heard of my situation and agreed to take me on as a fifth in his room at the Hilton. Not only did I get to go, but I got a discounted room. Because of all this, and that I live in British Columbia (northwest Canada), I had to book my flight three weeks before the convention. This meant red eye flights both ways, which is something I've had to do for most of my other trips. On the way there, I don't mind a red eye flight because it means I get to land at around noon on the Thursday, allowing me to check in, pre-reg, and take a nap before the domestic fliers arrive.
I had to leave my house at about 2:30 in the afternoon. Horse Voice came to my place at 2:00 and we hung out as I made any final preparation required. After that, I took the ferry to the mainland, the bus to Vancouver, and the sky train to the YVR airport, where I had to spend four hours waiting for my 11:11 PM flight out to Chicago. I spent most of this time reading.
I got a good chunk of sleep on the Chicago flight, and I had a pretty good breakfast at Chili's in the ORD airport just after 6 AM. Bringing my own down pillow instead of Rainbow Dash turned out to be a fantastic decision.
Day 0
Since I landed in Chicago at 4:45 AM local time, I transitioned to the Thursday. With more time spent napping, reading, and chatting with some other passengers, I finally landed in Baltimore just before noon eastern time. I never check bags while flying because I never spend more than a week travelling (protip: Don't check your bags!), so I didn't have to play carousel roulette. I met up with a bunch of bronies from my flight and others and took the tram from the airport to the hotel.
I arrived at around 1 PM, and I couldn't check in because our room wasn't ready yet. I grabbed lunch with one of my tram buddies at Jimmy John's, checked my bags at the Hilton, and then went to pick up my badge. We had to wait in line until about 2:30 or so before pre-reg opened (it should've opened at 2), but to my pleasant surprise, badge pickup was done shortly after 3 despite a brutal line.
One important thing to note about Bronycon this year is that the convention itself expanded by a lot. Last year, they only took up about a third of the convention centre, only occupying a few third-level floors, the entire fourth floor (the cavernous mane stage that seats roughly 10,000 people), and one of four of the massive first floor halls (the ones with the high ceiling and concrete floor usually where the vendor's hall is). This year they took up a huge chunk of the third floor and at least four of the five lower level halls, plus the fourth floor. The convention centre itself can house a con of 40,000-50,000 people, I believe.
Anyway, at around 3:15, the room is finally ready, and I go in and crash until Dusk Watch and the others arrive. We have a fairly substantial group consisting of us two, Web of Hope, Schism, and Destroyer of Hotel Rooms (DHR for short). DHR and Schism mostly kept to themselves for the weekend. We met up with the other people from our group, who stayed at the Holiday Inn, including 24th Pegasus, his brother, Loyal Liar, Ruirik, and Skeeter the Lurker.
Most of us went to the bar crawl that happened before the con. We didn't get to go until very late because of myriad stupid delays plus barely missing a bus that only comes every half-hour or so. At least that bus was free. Before we went on the bus, we went to the liquor store. I bought myself a 6 pack of beer, a crazy 500mL can of 8% lager, and a 750 of Fireball, which has become my signature con drink.
We hit up the first bar, had its custom pony shot, dinner, and a lot of beers. I had about three beers, some godlike pulled pork fries, and an uber hotdog. Afterward, we went to the Green Turtle and had our shot. Dusk Watch asks the waiter for an old fashioned. The waiter says, “What's an old fashioned?” The amount of facepalm was immense, and it became our groups in-joke for the rest of the con. They didn't even make them properly, either. A few drinks there later, we went to the last bar, had our last free shooter, and ordered another drink. With that done, we went back to our hotels via the really nifty Uber app.
Uber is a crazy good service. Think of taking a cab except without the ticking meter, requirement to tip, and drastically lower fees. What would've been a $20 cab ride was just over $8, and Bronycon had a promotion for it going on that gave us plenty of free Uber credit, so we ended up getting a free ride. We ended up using the Holiday Inn as our party room and the Hilton as our pass out room.
In the hotel room, I went through one of my beers and most of my huge can before being too trashed to drink anything else except water. We played some drunk TSSSF and had a dramatic reading of Rainbow Dash's Stiffest Wingboner to a steady chorus of laughs and groans. Loyal Liar kept intentionally mispronouncing Doctor Panacea's name. The poor girl! At around 2 AM, we went back to our room at the Hilton and passed out.
Note: Dusk later informed us that when he got to the Hilton room at some point, it smelled like total ass. Why? DHR got a meatball sub, ate half of it, and left the other half out for about twelve hours. Wooooooooo.
Day 1
We woke up at 7 AM and went to the Holiday Inn for breakfast. This is the most annoying aspect of Bronycon. Aside from the built in hotel restaurants, there are no actual breakfast places close by. Obviously, the Hilton is way too expensive, so we had to use the Holiday Inn and its atrocious service. We got there at around 8 and didn't get out until after 9. I wish I was kidding.
We then went to Bronycon itself, and I opted to skip the opening ceremonies (I've seen enough of them by now) and line up early for the vendor's hall. I was on a mission to get a full Andy Price commission this year, as I was denied last year due to the insane lines. Such a terrible feeling.
Despite it being 9:30 AM on opening day, the vendor hall line was enormous. I got in eventually and bolted straight to the IDW comic booth, thanks to doing research on the hall layout beforehand, but Andy Price's line was an hour long. When I finally reached him at around 11 AM, he was already done accepting commissions for the day, but not the weekend. I was pretty devastated and ended up going to the autograph room and picking up the only three VIP autographs I needed out of the 17 invited: Josh Haber (writer), Terry Klassen (voice director), and Ian James Corlett.
I kid you not, I got Ian to write “Hey Tony, Bitch, I look (& sound) like Goku” on my poster. So much awesome! Also, for those curious, here is the complete list of MLP VIP autographs I have on my poster currently (I may have forgotten someone):
Lauren Faust
John de Lancie
Meghan McCarthy
MA Larson
Amy Keating Rogers
Josh Haber
Big Jim
Wootie
Sibsy
Raven
Cathy Weseluck
Tara Strong
Ashleigh Ball
Tabitha St. Germain
Andrea Libman
Vincent Tong
Andrew Francis
Lee Tockar
Peter New
Ian James Corlett
Claire Corlett
Michelle Creber
Maddy Peters
Daniel Ingram
Terry Klassen
Georgia Ball
Heather Nuhfer
Tony Fleecs
Katie Cook
Heather Breckel
Andy Price
GM Berrow
Marÿke Hendrikse
Brenda Crichlow
Michael Dobson
Kazumi Evans
Rebecca Shoichet
Shannon Chan-Kent
Nicole Oliver
Nicole Gauss
If Bronycan goes well, I will also add Jayson Theissen and Steffan Andrews to this list. The really big names I'm still missing are Rob Renzetti, Kathleen Barr (both are nearly impossible to get), William Anderson, Babs, Cadance, and the new Spitfire, plus a few of the writers (Dave Polski, Cindy Morrow, Cory Powell, and—sigh—Merryweather Williams). There are a few more, but I'm closing in on the point where it'll be about as done as it'll get. Anyway, I think at this point I ended up grabbing a lunch from Jimmy John's before I headed to the mane stage for the VIP Apples to Apples panel. That was amazing, and at the start, they even jokingly suggested playing Cards Against Humanity (thanks, Katie Cook!). The first green card was something like “awesome,” and the carded that ended up winning was “ponies.”
Tabitha spent most of the panel talking in Granny Smith's voice, and when the “beauty” card was played, she said, “You only need to look in the mirror!” in Rarity's voice. They soon started to write down their own phrases on the red cards with sharpies. There were a few highlights of this that I can remember, including Alicorn Princess Mike Tyson vs Flutterhulk in a boxing match, which someone ended up sketching during the panel and handing to Andrea Libman.
Another top favourite of mine was when the green card said something like “deadly” or “death,” and Josh Haber wrote “Fluttershy's Shed” on the red card. Oh, and he was wearing a “Rarity is Watching You” shirt, too. Following that, I caught the end of the Thoroughly Analyzing MLP panel, which was fairly interesting, before I went to the GM Berrow panel at 4:15 PM (they were in the same room).
Oh, yeah, and I ran into this guy:
For those who don't know, she wrote the canon MLP books, which includes Princess Cadance's origin story about how she was originally a Pegasus. It turns out that she ended up writing an episode for season 5, so be on the look out for it! GM is very nice, and I highly recommend giving this panel a watch if you're interested in expanded MLP lore. The books are kind of neat and contain many little references for the fandom, such as Nine Inch Nails and a bunch of DHX staff, plus little things like Derpy, Lyra and Bon Bon being together in scenes, etc. She also held a short book trivia at the end, where I won a small pony bag. I'd have won the big prize, too, but they wouldn't let me answer since I already won something. Drat. At least I got to chat with GM briefly (she remembered me from last year), so that was really cool. I got a picture, too!
After that, I went to the Advanced Writing panel with Applejinx and Wanderer D. It was a pretty solid panel with a lot of useful knowledge, but I already knew pretty much everything said. I highly recommend it to the less experienced writers out there, as both of these gentlemen have been at this for a long time.
The day's nearly over by this point (6:30 PM), so it was time for the huge author dinner at Tir Na Nog. I missed last year's, but I RSVP'd for this one, and holy Celestia, was it incredible. Most of the big name writers in the fandom were there, plus tons of people I knew online. We ended up with almost 60 people and took over four huge tables. Of my group, Dusk Watch, Ruirik, Web of Hope, and Loyal Liar attended.
Off the top of my head, the others at dinner included: Sunchaser, Obselesence, Pen Stroke, Alextrasza, Applejinx, Sleepless Brony, Biker Dash, Bad Horse, PresentPerfect, Wanderer D, A Bag of Vicodin, Skeeter the Lurker, Aquaman, Cloudhammer, Golden Vision, Burraku_Pansa, Comrade Sparkle, Pegasus Rescue Brigade, Midnight Dancer, CyborgSamurai, and NotSoSubtle—and this is to only name about half of us. The dinner was fantastic (oh god the Nog burger!), and we had a huge group photo by the harbour outside.
Got a picture from Obs's blog post:
OBSELESENCE'S BEARD IS A LIE.
Also, I'd say that Biker Dash is definitely my biggest fan, and it was really cool to meet him at the dinner. Seriously, man, it's a very humbling experience. I wish we'd have gotten a better chance to chat at the convention.
Our group plus NotSoSubtle headed back to the Holiday Inn to get our party on. Most of us proceeded to get drunk while chilling out and playing TSSSF and chatting. At about 1 AM, I went for most of Bronypalooza, where I got to see Silva Hound. As usual, I was flasking, and I ended up going through half my Fireball, the rest of that 500mL beer, another beer, plus the two I had at dinner. Fun times ensued. I crashed shortly after 2 AM and set the alarm for 7. Tomorrow, I had a mission.
Stay tuned for the second half of this blog, which I will post sometime next week!
Bleh! Fireball... I went with getting hammered on Wild Turkey Thursday night lol
2351696
Fireball is the shit. It's cheap, goes down easy, and tastes good. Plus, I've found that drinking a few shots of Fireball and chasing them with a couple of beers = very fast drunk.
2351706 It's too sweet for me, personally. Thats why I normally drink Vodka, or a good stout or Porter if I am drinking beer. and I cannot mix beer and the hard stuff. even one beer and one shot is enough to upset my stomach to the point where I'll feel sick. I think it may be the burn of the whiskey combined with the carbonation in the beer that does it.
2351719
I do love me some room temp vodka and cranberry juice. Maybe I'll do that at Bronycan in two weeks.
2351747 lol, I prefer my vodka ice cold. Gives it a fire n' ice effect goin down
Dusk Watch (who, as of yesterday, is now my new roommate) has been telling me all about it. Grr... wish I could have been there, especially the writer's dinner. But, as you note, flying across the country is damn expensive!
2352119
I can picture you laughing your bag off when he told the "What's an old fashioned?" story.
2352139 Yeah... I've had to explain drinks to bartenders way too many times. Thankfully not that one, but a few years ago... I was at company conference. Professional IT thing and all that. After hours, they set up the exhibit floor as a social mixer, with open bars all around between the booths, with black-tie staff from the hotel serving drinks. In line is a whole bunch of techies trying to look "professional," so polo shirt was about as fancy as it got. I order an old fashioned, and like three of my colleagues behind me in line are all "What's that?" The bartender, well, he's like this 50 year old guy in a black-tie outfit, and his explanation is "It's a drink for old men." I argued that was unfair (I was only 30 at the time) and that it would be more accurate to say that it's "a drink for professional drinkers."
Anyway, apparently I started a trend, and all these other guys that probably had never had anything more fancy than jager-bombs and vodka cranberries before are all ordering the same thing by the end of the night. So hooray for a bit of sophistication!
Damn... now I really want an old fashioned, and I'm out of whiskey. To the store!
2352179
Pfft! Well done, sir. We need to drink next time we're doing the whole con thing. I usually just swig Fireball like a champ. I drank enough to make Dusk go, "holy shit" at Bronycon. 750mL of Fireball plus a ton of beers down in 2 nights.
Are you coming to Bronycan? I'm thinking of switching to Vodka + cranberry this year since I already did Fireball at both EFNW and Bronycon.
Remember me, Senpai?
2352884
Yes! It was good meeting you!
2352888
2352317 The weird thing about alcohol is that there's this very, VERY fine line between being "an enthusiast" and "an alcoholic." I'm not sure exactly which side of that I fall on, but I suspect I don't want to know. Regardless, 750ml of Fireball would still be "holy shit" to me, but mostly for your choice of swill. That is WAY too much sugar and way too little alcohol. I've slowed down in my old (30-something) age, but back in college, I used to START a night with two double-shots of Everclear; effectively 8 drinks in 4 seconds.
But yes, sadly I didn't drink at all during Everfree. Downside of being staff: people are actually counting on you! I got wasted during the writer's party we through in my room at BABScon though. A lot of the same cast as your dinner at Tir Na Nog, and only half the size at peak... but organized in like an hour... in my room... with no food, just liquor. I was on the dance floor at 1am with a mixed drink in an open cup in my hand. Apparently most of it was going to the floor by that point. :-)
So yeah, would love to make BronyCAN, but... really trying hard to figure out if I can justify/afford it. Dusk Watch has the car that gets good mileage (mine is a beast of a truck that gets single digit MPG), and we can split gas, but I can't quite justify the cost of rooms at $140+ a night up there. Let me know if you or anyone else you know/trust is looking to split a room though, and I might be able to swing it. There's also the chance that I might get a job in the next week or two, in which case I'm more willing to spend from my disposable income.
All that said, how is BronyCAN? How does it compare to EFNW or other pony cons you've been to?
2353233
Some people don't even clearly fall on one side of the line
2353233
Heh, I see. Never touched Everclear myself, despite having the opportunity at EFNW. I'm also surprised you got away with an open cup at a con rave. You're technically supposed to drink at all during them (though lots of people do), so that's why I just use a flask when no staff are looking.
Anyway, the Vancouver group is renting a penthouse suite, and I'm not sure about the status of it. I'm going to ask the guy in charge of filling it to see if we have any spots left. I'll get back to you when he answers me.
The con itself is a lot of fun, but it's very small and relaxed. Last year, it was 800-something people, so I predict 1,000-1,200 people this time. It's a small venue and quite light on the programming side, which I appreciate after Bronycon. Definitely the place to go if you want a more intimate con.
2353643
I only abuse alcohol at conventions and parties, so only a few times a year. At a con, if it's past midnight, I'm not sober.
Dear Princess Celestia,
Today, I learned what an "old-fashioned" is. I will now proceed to forget it forever.
2353926
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Fashioned
2353699 wasn't referring to you
2353699 Oh, it was a HORRIBLE idea to take a drink out in the open like that. I'm honestly surprised I didn't get busted. Did I mention I was really, really drunk already?
As for BronyCAN... I'm all for smaller cons. BronyCon honestly sounds larger than I'd really want to go to... at least more than once. I prefer the EFNW size thing at most. That said, if room sharing is an option, definitely let me know. I'm totally willing to bring my camping gear and sleep on the floor if it means I can afford the trip. It will be last minute though if I can make it. I'm leaving on an actual camping trip (like in the woods and everything) on monday, and returning the 15th. So sync up with civilization will be really close in time to the con itself (if I can make it at all.)