-Saturday-
We started the day off with the 12:30 panel about Gaia Online because my fiancé is a hardcore player of that online game. Then we grabbed a bite to eat by hitting Sharp Edge, again. Still delicious pudding, by the way.
When we came back we jumped in line for the Brief History of Sailor Moon panel. And it was certainly brief, because the women running the panel showed up twenty minutes late for their own panel, then claimed they still had ten minutes before the panel started.
By this point in time we’d been waiting in line for 45 minutes, and there were people in front of us, too, that had been waiting even longer.
The panelists claimed that staff had told them their panel started at 3:30, not 3:00. That would have been fine and dandy if one of the panel runners hadn’t been a staff member herself. They also didn’t really know what the hell they were talking about, truth be told.
Afterward we hit up another panel by Travis Willingham, proving his hilariousness is not a mere fluke, but it is genuine.
After that we stuck around for the War Stories of the Conventions panel with Kevin McKeever. Kevin is a VP for Marketing for the Robotech franchise (via Harmony Gold). He handles the Robotech info at numerous conventions, domestic and abroad. He’s also a really funny guy; we went to this panel last year and found it quite amusing. Last year he even had two, a regular and one and an adults-only panel. Both were very amusing.
Needless to say we enjoyed Kevin’s panel again this year, although it was a bit tamer than the year before; but that might be because we’d already heard a few of his good stories and were rehashing them. It was still a fun time, though.
We then went back to Sharp Edge for dinner and some more pudding (I decided the whole ‘getting back into shape’ thing was suspended for the duration of the convention, BTW).
When we came back we decided to find a comfy spot and I let my fiancé have some nappy-time for a couple of hours. We were planning on attending the Voice Actors After Dark panel with Travis and another actor, Todd Haberkorn at 12:30.
We decided to go up early, about 11:25, to get a spot in line close to the front. Boy were we disappointed to learn that we should have been napping in line! We were already pretty far back in the line when we showed up over an hour ahead of schedule.
We banked on our fancy, expensive Premium Badges, though. No problem, we’ll just hop at the back of the premium badge line. We asked the staffer handling the lines if he was running a PB line, and if so…where it was.
In return we got a glare and a gruff, “I’m not doing that!”
The extra $60 bucks I paid for these two badges suggests you are, or are supposed to. Needless to say we quietly went to the back of the line, decided that we were fed up with the way staff had been running convention this year. They’d really screwed us over this year. The past few years there had been administrative hiccups, but that’s to be expected in something this size. This year, though, it seemed like they were legitimately trying to screw us over (and succeeding at it, too).
We talked about not coming next year and figured we’d make a decision on Sunday after we attended the Feedback Panel to voice our concerns, and basically bitch out the convention staff.
Needless to say we were in the middle-back of the room when we were finally let into the panel. Todd Haberkorn was alone, because something had come up and Travis was indisposed of. There was talk of duct tape and a rope, but no definitive cause was given.
"I'm sorry, Travis can't come out and play right now...he's, urm, tied up at the moment."
Needless to say Todd was another interesting chap, very funny; I really liked his panel. He ran it differently than most, in that he ran it from the flip of a coin.
Normally you raise your hand, when the panelist calls on you, you ask them a question. But Todd decided to do it this way: You raise your hand, he calls on you…you call heads or tails and he flips a coin. If you guess right, you get to ask him a question; if you guess wrong, he asks you a question, instead. All in all it was pretty hilarious panel.
We were planning on seeing another panel after that, but when we came out there was already a line for it and, again, no premium badge benefits. So we left and officially decided we won’t be attending next year. We felt cheated, jilted, and betrayed, after being loyal customers and attendees, to be treated like that. Especially when you consider the folks who have enough money to buy a Premium Badge, are the kind of folks who have enough money to go to a different convention.
Needless to say, we ended on a happy note with Todd Haberkorn’s panel, but it was a happy note to an overall souring composition.
Friday gets us to the last day of the convention. And ultimately my final summary of the convention. You also get to find out if we changed our minds and whether or not we’ll be there, again next year.
Also there will be pictures in the final post.
~RCS
Richard C. Shaffer 