+ A-KON 13 +
I’m Not That Kind of Girl! : My A-Kon 13 Report
Before the Con - Thursday, May 30 :
On Thursday night I was packed (4 bags of junk O.o’) and ready to go. I went to Katy’s house to sleep over since we were leaving early in the morning and her mother was the one driving us to the convention. I spent most of the night watching Rin and Katy play Tekken 3 with Katy’s diseased kitten, Paka, sleeping on me. We tried on our costumes to see how we looked together and talked to Jason and Lauren (Katy’s brother and his girlfriend) for a while before going to bed. We were so excited that we decided to stay up the whole night and just sleep during the 4 hour car ride to Dallas, but of course that plan didn’t work and we all fell asleep around…uh… I’m not sure…it was in the wee hours though ^^*.
Day 1 – Friday, May 31 :
We woke up around 5:45 A.M. Friday morning and were ready by 7:00. We left around 7:30 (I think…hard to remember >.<’) and were on our way at last!
The car trip was not interesting, but went well and we got to the Hyatt hotel in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport a little after 11:00 A.M. Just as I had feared, there was not a single parking space left in the parking garage for the Hyatt and the Pre-Reg line was already outside the hotel. After driving around aimlessly for what must have been at least half an hour we gave up and just parked the car in the carport to check in and claim our Pre-Reg badges and reserved hotel room. While Katy and her mom went to check in, bring in all the luggage, and find a parking spot, Rin and I stood outside (in the heat with black clothing on >_<’) in the Pre-Reg line that already had a 2 ½ hour waiting time. Luckily for us, Katy’s friend that lives in Dallas named Kayla and her friend Jessie (<-spelling? ^^’ and we called her Hiei-chan) spotted us and kept us entertained until we had met up with Katy and gotten our badges hours later.
About halfway through the Pre-Registered line we miraculously met up with a friend of mine that I had met online only a few days before A-kon and made hasty plans with. Her screen name is Moo and she had a beautiful Anthy (from Utena) costume. Very cool and pretty girl ^_^. Anyways, the first thing we did after receiving our badges was head to our hotel room to organize a bit before hitting the actual convention. I was kind of mad that we were given a hotel room with only 1 bed for 4 people when we had specifically reserved a room with two beds months before *sighs*. After getting the first look at our small hotel room and grabbing our bags that held our cameras, money, and schedules, we followed Moo to the bigger of the two dealer rooms. I quickly proceeded to blow most of my money on 2 pencil boards and 10 manga XD. I kept wandering away from my group to goggle at merchandise and got yelled at quit a few times *sweatdrops*. Sometime after leaving the Dealer Room we met up with two really cool brothers named Jason and Justin (I think they were Kayla’s friends…). Jason was in a Harry Potter costume and Justin was wearing a dress he bought off E-bay. It was great *grins*. I’ll be putting up some pictures of Justin so you can see his pretty long hair and just how good he looked in his dress ^_~
Oi, my memory is already getting fuzzy…I think we just kinda walked around and looked in all the rooms while trying to find the second Dealer Room for a while. Uh…ok…after that we…I don’t exactly remember what we did *sweatdrops*. Wait…I think Rin and I went to Moo’s hotel room to watch a bit of my Siam Shade DVD and the last half of Earthian before returning to our room where Katy and Kayla were to wait for the rest of our gang to meet us at 7:00 to go to the opening ceremonies. After getting sick of waiting we just went to each of their rooms (namely Justin and Jason’s and Moo’s) and got them ourselves. Moo had been to A-kon the year before and didn’t really want to go to the opening ceremonies because she said they were pointless and boring, but we dragged her along anyways.
Arriving on the lobby level around 7:30 be headed down the stairs (which seemed to be really crowded…) and tried to find the line. A nice A-Kon volunteer politely told us that the line was all the way up the stairs and twisted around the hallway already @.@’ So…we went and stood in the really, really long line to wait for the opening ceremonies to start at 8:00. Well, despite being near the end of the line we still got fairly decent seats for the opening ceremonies. The ceremony went fine (although it was kinda boring ^^’) and Merri (the main A-kon woman ^___^) got proposed to!! It was really sweet! After that was the best part of the convention…yes, the Duel Jewel live performance (at 9:00)!!!!!
We all stacked our chairs in piles and shoved them to the back of the huge Enterprise room and crowded around the stage while people on the stage were setting up the instruments and testing them. Since I happen to be really short I could see nothing and decided to shove my way to the front. Everyone else decided to just follow me and I managed to get all of us to the front row – only a few feet from the stage!! I won’t go into too much detail about the concert because this report is getting really long, but let’s just say that all the band members are EXTREMELY pretty, the singer has a great voice, they put on an awesome performance, and when they tried to speak English is was very, very, very kawaii!!! ^__^ Oh, and it was so loud I couldn’t hear myself when I screamed at the top of my lungs, people kept trying to shove in front of us (-_-‘), we took some good, close-up pictures of the concert (those will be put in the photo gallery), and the speaker right in front of us started smoking and blew out only a few minutes after the concert began @.@’
After the concert we had originally planned to drag Jason and Justin to the midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but Katy was tired and we all kinda had headaches and such from the concert so we gave up on that plan and just headed back to our hotel room for a nice quiet evening. Almost right after we got back Moo called (she had left during the opening ceremonies and missed the Duel Jewel concert…poor girl…) and told me that the people hosting the yaoi party decided to let people under 16 get into the party after all. Since I am a HUGE fan of yaoi (I am the yaoi no miko!! *beams*) I really wanted to go (it was about…10:30 or so I think) and I got Katy’s mother to grant permission for Rin and I to go for 30 minutes (Katy was too tired). We met Moo at the elevators and waited in the hall outside the hotel suite where the party was to be hosted for them to finish setting up and let us in. I had brought a bag off all the Gravitation stuff I had already bought (which was a lot x.x’) and I enjoyed showing it off to the rest of my fellow waiting yaoi fans and talking to this nice man that was sitting next to me (he was so girly…it was adorable! ^_^). We wasted our whole 30 minutes waiting to get in so while Rin went to go get something back at our hotel room she asked for another 30 minutes. When she got back we were let in and crowded into the suite to watch either FAKE or Kizuna. Surprisingly enough, nearly half of the people there were boys O.o’ Oh!!!! And there was this man in a really good Ryuichi (from Gravitation!!! My main bishie!! *squeals and loves Ryuichi-sama!! XD*) costume (his singing outfit! The one with the short frilly shirt and leather pants ^^’)!! I got Rin to take a picture of him since I didn’t have my camera ^_^.
Anyways, I sat with Rin and Moo in a corner of the room that watched Kizuna (which really disappointed me because I wanted to see FAKE, not Kizuna -_-‘) and listened to the people nearby make hilarious comments the whole time XD It was great fun and the yaoi party is where the strange title of my con report came from, in case you were wondering ^^’ After our 30 minutes were up we left and went back to our room and…slept, I think. That’s pretty much all for Friday! ^_^
Day 2 – Saturday, June 1 :
Never coming! I forgot everything before I could write it. Gomen! I don't think we did much that day except get out Duel Jewel pictures signed and shop more.
Day 3 – Sunday, June 2 :
Never coming! I forgot everything >_> Mostly just us coming home.
Summary :
A-Kon 13 was awesome and this may sound really pathetic, but it was also one of the best experiences of my short life. My favorite part had to be the Duel Jewel concert since the performance was so good and the band itself was so cute (I loved Hayato-san’s kawaii English! ^__^). The two dealer rooms had some great anime merchandise, the convention was extremely fun and organized, and it was worth all the difficulties we had. I am definitely going to try my best to go again next year (A-Kon 14! XD)!
What I Bought :
+ Duel Jewel picture ($2)
+ Duel Jewel t-shirt ($22)
+ Gravitation manga #2-11 (about $9 each)
+ Time Stranger Kyoko manga #1-3 (about $7 each)
+ Gravitation artbook ($28)
+ Gravitation folder-thing (uh…around $5, I think…)
+ 2 Gravitation pencil boards ($4 each)
+ X/1999 pencil board (Kamui! XD) ($4)
+ A-kon 13 t-shirt ($18, I think…bought it with my Pre-Reg ticket)
Advice :
1] Get there EARLY if you don’t want to wait in line for hours. A day before the convention actually starts would be a good idea.
2] Bring plenty of money. I brought about $250 and came home with $2.50… O.o’
3] Bring small snacks. Unless you want to pay for –expensive- hotel food the whole time (which really is a waste of money since hotel food usually sucks anyways), bring your own food and drinks. Believe me, you’ll most likely be so excited the whole time that you won’t get hungry often!
4] Pre-register and buy your ticket early if possible. It’s worth it.
5] Get to any popular events early because it’s most likely that lines are starting more than an hour before the event starts and you want to get in or at least get a decent seat, right?
6] Let loose in the dealer rooms! A lot of the items there are the cheapest you’re ever going to find them and rare. Just be sure not to spend all your money there…>.<’
7] If Duel Jewel is performing at your con, see them!!!!! ^______^
8] Take lots of pictures so that you can preserve your memories! There are lots of people that put lots of effort into making their costumes that are more than willing to let you take their picture!
9] Go in costume at least one of the days, even if you don’t plan on cos-playing! It’s great fun and you gets lots of attention! ^_^’
10] Bring stuff to keep yourself entertained when waiting periods between events come up. Believe it or not, you will probably end up spending a few hours lounging around your hotel room.
11] Don’t be anti-social! At the con that I went to everyone was nice and made some great new friends of my own species (otaku, gotta love ‘em ^_^)!
12] Don’t lose your badge. I bet that sounds stupid, but it’s easy to do and I lost mine on the first day. I ended up with an ugly, make-shift badge -_-‘
13] Take the stairs unless you are really tired and willing to wait a long time. The elevators are always packed and busy.
14] Carry a small bag around the convention with you to hold money, a camera, film, and any merchandise you may buy.
15] Don’t lounge around in your hotel room when you don’t know what else is going on. Get a schedule! There is always plenty of fun stuff to do (and if there are no panels or anything then go to the movie or J-rock rooms!)
Photos Taken During the Con :
Click
HERE to see them!
