WONDERFEST 2009
Ok here is my tale from Wonderfest 2009 told from our perspective.
This year, the drive wasn't that bad at all. Only
one traffic jam on the way down, and it was actually near the
start of our adventure. This did put us a little off schedule,
and with a 3 PM check in deadline made me a little tense for a
while.
But we arrived with a half hour to spare.
First impressions of the hotel after the remodel.
Meh.
I missed the Wonderfest 'smell'. Which will mean nothing to those
of you who have never been there before. But those who have been
to past shows, you know what I am talking about. The hotel had
it's own particular scent. And I can smell it right now, just
thinking about it.
Next problem became apparent at check in. When I made my
reservations, I had requested a room with a balcony. I am a
smoker, and they no longer have smoking rooms, so I wanted a
balcony that I could step out on and have a few puffs.
I soon discovered why they couldn't give me a smoking room.
They eliminated the 3rd and 6th floor balconies. You can still
see the doors outside, but the railings are gone from the
balconies. And from what I heard from people with some of those
rooms, the doors have been plastered over. Why they did this, I
have no clue. But they also changed their remaining balconies.
You can no longer access the courtyard from the 1st or 2nd floor balconies. And you can no
longer get to the 2nd floor patio from the remaining 3rd floor balconies.
So some things are very different.
We got checked in, and took 4 trips to get
everything up to our 5th floor room.
The rooms aren't much different. Though the bed are more
comfortable, and each one is covered with a ton of pillows.
The rooms also sport flat-screen TVs now, though there isn't much
selection of what to watch since they still don't have the SciFi
channel.
On our trips back and forth, we saw a bunch of
old friends.
So after getting settled in, we went down to the lobby to hang
out and chat.
The lobby has also been re-done. And not for the better either.
They removed the carpeting and installed tile, with some throw
rugs here and there. That greatly increased the noise levels due
to sound echoing now.
The whole place now hos this cold / streril feel to it.
Everything is so new, the place has no character or warmth
anymore.
I will say though, for all my griping about the changes, they
make the show itself a lot better. The contest room and other
rooms used for the show are much nicer, brighter, and make seeing
stuff on the tables a whole lot easier.
We still had a lot of fun hanging out with old
friends and catching up. While making a few new friends.
Once things opened up down by the dealers room, we paid for our
admission and contest entries. Then went up to the room to fill
out our entry forms and for me to add a few more touches to some
of my entries.
Then we went back down for the evening festivities. We passed on
the Lizard Lounge, as the new smaller room for it just seemed too
crowded.
We opted to hang in the lobby and outside some of the doors with
people we knew.
Then we headed up to the Cult-suite for some movie viewing and
other entertainment.
Some more wandering around, and I think we ended up back in our
room at around 3 AM
Up early on Saturday, so we could get our contest
entries down and into the contest.
I needed 3 trips to haul down my 7 kits.
Then we hung out in our usual places until the dealers room
opened at 10.
Then the chaos began.
If you have never experienced the WF dealers room, you are
missing out.
A giant room, filled with tables full of goodies for model nuts
like us.
I think it took about an hour to make our first lap around the
room.
Between oooing and aahhing over cool kits, and stopping to visit
with vendors and other friends we knew it just flew right by.
Then it was time to go back around again to see all the stuff we
didn't even notice the first time through.
I scored one of my minor grail kits on the second pass.
On the first pass I had spotted a Taarna on Bird on AFM's table.
A kit that I have wanted for years, but could never afford.
They had one, but it was marked at $120. Which was close to my
total budget. But after mentioning it to John, he pointed out
that they had a box of bagged kits under the table. They were
marked for less as they each had some kind of casting issue. When
we got back around to that corner of the room again, that box was
now sitting on the table. In it, I found the kit I wanted for
only $80. I snatched that baby up before I had a chance to change
my mind.
By now, it was getting close to noon. So we stopped and picked up
the 2008 DVD and headed up to the room for a quick snack before
hitting some demos we wanted to see.
A quick pass through the now open contest room, then I hit the
Bama discussion that was upstairs, while Britny went off and did
something else.
When I got down to the dealers room, I had decided to grab a kit
for her that she had been eyeballing since we saw it on our first
pass. Ran into Brit on the way and made sure she hadn't stopped
and gotten it already. Then we made a bee-line to the 2 Fat Guys table. Where I bought her
the Cuddles kit.
Then we were off to see the Dinosaur demo. Sat through about an
hour of that, then we got bored and went back to the dealers
room. It was already after 4 and that meant less than 2 hours
till the doors closed.
We checked out the other dealers area across the hall, and
checked out all the stuff over there. Another look at the contest
room, and an abreviated look at the main dealers room before they
kicked us out.
Then it was back to the room to unload and take a
load off.
I ordered Pizza Hut and we just lounged while we waited for it to
arrive.
Discussed some of the things we were considering for purchases
the next day, and what we thought about the show, and the
contest.
Fortified with some real food and a little rest, we were ready
for the evening festivities.
Which included hanging out in the lobby. Scoping out the contest
room when it was open from 8-9, hanging with the Ledbelly guys
when they were on smoke breaks. Visiting the Cult-suite, and
Griffworks 'Build or Die' suite.
Never did make it to the Saturday night movie upstairs in the
theater. And we didn't hang out much outside, as it was
uncommonly chilly that night.
We spent a lot of time hanging in the lobby talking with Don,
Bill, and Scott. Which was great as the first two hadn't been to
the show for a couple of years.
I think we finally called it a night around 3:30 or so.
We actually slept in a little Sunday as there
were no early demos we wanted to see and no reason to be down
before the dealers room opened. So I think we crawled out of bed
around 8.
And pretty much repeated what we did the day before.
We did take in an awesome scratchbuilding demo. Before we went upstairs
for the awards ceremony.
Seemed like it was longer this year. Probably becuase there were
so many entries. 501 - a new WF record.
That and I had a feeling that I wouldn't win anything. None of my
kits took a merit and I only figured 1 or 2 had an outside shot
at bronze. But after seeing other kits that took merits, I could
tell the judging was pretty tight this year.
Which to me, is a good thing. I love that WF keeps it's standards
high. Really gives something to shoot for, and when you get
something, you know you earned it.
Right after the awards, I shot down to the contest room to take
my first batch of kits to the room.
I took the back way, through the courtyard and got there before
there was a line.
After I got back for my second load, the same could not be said.
I will give them credit though, things moved along very well.
Seems like the contest worked very smoothly this year. I know I
had absolutely no complaints about it.
Then back to the dealers room. After a quick pass, Britny decided
to head to the room about 15 minutes before the show closed.
I stuck around trying to find a few last minute purchases. Which
was difficult, as a lot of dealers were already packing up when
we got back from the awards ceremony. I was thinking about
grabbing a loch-ness-monster kit, but that table was already
closed. No one had any giant insect kits left for sale (Steve
left his at home)
I finally settled on a Bandai Mecha-Godzilla kit.
Then they were rushing us out the door.
I ran into Chris and Baity of Resing Rhino, along with Bubba, and
we ended up sitting in the hallway near the dealers room
chatting. Which is where Britny found me. Since I never made it
back to the room she came looking after grabbing a quick snack.
After sitting there BSing for a while we went our separate ways.
They were heading home, as Chris was fairly local they didn't
usually stay Sunday nights.
That brings up one of the sad parts about this year. Many of the
regulars left early. Tom and Kenny and crew left earlier that
afternoon. Mark and Saul left shortly after the dealers room
closed. Dan and Barb left after they got their booth packed and
loaded up. Thankfully I got a chance to visit with them before
they left. They are always so busy during the show that it is
hard to just chat with them.
The rest of the evening was spent hanging out in
the lobby. No Cult-suite that night as they were all at the
banquet. We did stop by Griffs again. We were supposed to meet up
with Crazy Joe and company at the Canadian Embassy, but that
never happened. As we ended up sitting in the lobby talking with
some newer aquaintances. (sorry, I can't remember their names).
Then Rick and Chinxy showed up and we talked with them.
Chinxy had to load up his stuff as he was leaving in the morning.
Good thing too, as he discovered that his battery was dead.
I jump started it for him, and tightened down his negative
battery terminal which was extremely loose. Hope nothing else
went wrong for him.
We were still there in the lobby when the bar closed and everyone
came wandering through. Which meant we were there for the group
photo. After which everyone milled around for a bit, then
everyone started going off their own ways. Either to bed, or to
different room parties.
We ended up calling it a night. I'm getting too old to stay up
until the wee hours only get a few hours sleep, then make the
long drive home.
We got up in the morning, ate, showered, and
started packing and hauling stuff down to the car.
We always wait until Monday morning to do that, as it gives us a
chance to run into a few last people before we leave.
After we loaded up and checked out, we hung for a few more
minutes, but didn't see anyone. Normally we would wander a bit
and hope to see someone. But they already had another convention
going at the hotel, so it wasn't really conducive to our modeling
types hanging out.
So, off we went and made the trip home. Made good time too. Only
took 6.5 hours to get back.
It was another great year.
The staff did a stellar job at putting on another awesome show.
Now we are already counting down until the one in 2010.