BronyCon 2014 Wrap-up, Part the Second. · 11:04pm Aug 14th, 2014
Dear Princess Luna,
Apologies for the, um, name calling in my last letter. I shall refrain from accompanying Berry Punch on her next adventure. I shall instead confine my drinking to the company of *real* friends. That’s the first thing I learned. Also, have mercy on the poor waiter pony when you judge his soul. I didn’t know he had a heart condition when I mentioned we were supposed to get that discount. He was really great at dinner. Which leads me to my second friendship lesson; be nice to your waiter and always mention the discount you are supposed to get before you order dinner.
Your Faithful (and apologetic) Subject,
Dusk Watch
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BronyCon 2014, Day One
Friday morning. Water? Check. Expected hangover from Bar Trot. Surprisingly absent. Good way to start the con. I should probably qualify this statement and point out that I was (due to personal issues we won’t discuss) reasonably self-medicated for pretty much the entire duration of the con. I don’t do so well in crowds anymore.
Slept a little late and headed straight to the vendor hall when it opened. Picked up a few prints and generally milled about. Thankfully there wasn’t much of a line that day, except for the Interplay booth. Everypony was trying to snag a Derpy promo card. All around, I don’t have much to say about the day. It was fun and very laid back. I did manage to pick up a second copy of Twilight Sparkle’s Secret Shipfic Folder, along with two of the promo cards for BronyCon. I also snagged a awesome PonyTones Abby Road cover, which I later got signed by Tabitha St. Germain, Kazumi Evans, and Peter New (who was by far the coolest one of the three to talk to), but more on that in the next post. Hopefully, I'll be able to snag a signature from Daniel Ingram, Danny Balkwill, Cathy Weseluck (Toe Tapper's and Torch Song's VA), and Jerrica Santos (Torch Song's singing VA) at some point for a full set. You can check out the unsigned version on the artist's deviantArt page, if you like (or just keep scrolling down). I'll snap a pic of the signed one once I get it framed.
The highlight of the day was definitely—and this is probably gonna surprise the hell out of everypony—getting the check at dinner. Sunchaser put together an “authors and editors” dinner at this swank irish pub called Tir Na Nog. We’ll ignore the fact that a impressively good Irish pub is even located in a city that used to (and likely still does) loathe hard-working immigrants who have some of the best accents in the world. That’s a history lesson for another day. The point is that dinner was only an irrational pink pony percent less awesome than the most awesome pony ever.
Fifty eight ponies showed up, and we almost all had separate checks; no small task for the wait staff at the place. The waiter that ended up helping my end of one of the three long tables we overran was a smiling, gregarious fellow whose name I cannot recall. His service all throughout dinner was impeccable. The food was good, but the drinks were great. I had a “Harbor Master”, a shot of Booker’s Bourbon, and two of this thing called a “Dark and Stormy.” I especially recommend the latter if you ever get a chance to visit the place.
When it came time to get the checks, the waiter got them all sorted out and started to collect cards and cash from everypony. Again, this is no little thing for a party so large. He must have already fully processed 15 or so of the bills when he came to get mine, but I had a chance to look it over in the meantime. When he came back I mentioned that we were all supposed to get a 10% discount on account of being part of the convention. His face went from happy, if a little frazzled at having to deal with such a large party, to the best look I have ever seen. I can describe it only as “abject, soul-crushing horror” the likes of which would have caused even Discord himself to take pity on the poor lad. Sadly, I was not quick enough to get a picture. I was far, far too busy laughing. I almost wet myself, it was that good. (As a formal note, we absolutely did not make him recalculate any of the bills. I actually gave him an extra big tip just for that look.)
After dinner, it was back to the hotel to hang out and just generally lay about while drinking even more and playing a few rounds of Twilight’s Secret Shipfic Folder. Fun times. Day 2 of the Con was… irritating, but that’s for the next post. Stay tuned.
So far, sounds like y'all had some helluva hijinks that night.