WONDERFEST 2011

Ok, here is my tale of WF2011 from my own perspective.
For those who do not know, that is us in the pics above. Me (TAY666) on the left, and my daughter (Evil3) on the right.
This year marks our 10th consecutive year attending the show.
And for me at least, it was the best one to date.

We had a nice uneventful drive down. A little rain, but not bad, and it cooled things off nicely.
Got to the hotel around 4:30. Got our room and hauled our stuff to the room and unpacked.
I didn't get the balcony I had requested, but we still ended up with a great room.
2nd floor, right next to he elevator and across from the door going out to the 2nd floor patio.

At 5:30 I discovered that dealer set-up started at 5 :o
So, I scratched plans to hop in the shower and made my way down to the dealer area to try and locate Dave Hodge.
Amazingly enough, it didn't take that long to locate him and have him show us where to set up the PS display.

For those not aware. I ended up helping to organize a Prehistoric Scenes display at the show again this year.
We had 7 tables to set-up, and I had brought a bunch of stuff. Turns out, our room location was even better than I thought.
We, were just up the stairs from the back door of Dealer Room B. And the van was right out the doors from there as well.
So, we hauled everything in and set it up.
While this was going on, I was hooking up with others who brought stuff for the display as well, and they were all in there helping too.
IT WAS AMAZING!
4+ hours of setting up, and arranging PS kits and other related stuff.
Getting to meet and chat with others who are as into the series as I am.
I was like a kid on xmas morning.

After that, I finally got into the shower to wash off the road grime.
We snacked a little, and headed to the lobby to see who was about.
This whole time, I had been running into and chatting with many old friends from WFs past.
Because of the set-up we didn't get as much hang time as normal Friday night, but we still had fun and actually made it to bed at a reasonable hour.

Saturday rolled around. Ate some breakfast. Got my contest entries hauled down to the contest room.
Then headed down to the dealers area.
Stopped to check the display, and chat with the guys keeping an eye on it during the show.
The same two that did so last year.
Then headed over to the main dealers room for a quick once around the room before the main opening at 10.
The rest of the day was spent alternating between the dealers room, the display, contest room, and running up to the room for snacks and beverages. With a demo by Crazy Joe on glazes squeezed into the mix.

Before I knew it, the day was over and the dealers room was closed.
Man, it felt sooo good to kick off my shoes and flop on the bed.
We ordered pizza, ate, and recharged a bit.
Then, back down to the lobby to hang out.
Our couch was taken, so instead we grabbed a couple chairs in the hallway down by the Iron Modeler cometition.
Ran into more friends, then after a while our couch opened back up and we moved to the lobby,

Ran into lots of people we knew down there. And spent some time getting caught up.
Then everyone gathered for the group photo on the stairs.
After which we got dragged to a private party. Which was cool. Got to meet a few more new people there.
And had a bunch of laughs.
After that, we made a trip up to the Cult's Suite to hang a bit and watch some movies.
After Steve decided to call it a night, we ended up back in the lobby again.
Still managed to get in bed by like 3:30, which was cool.

More of the same on Sunday. Except we squeezed in 2 demos. Then the awards ceremony.(got skunked again)
Followed by the mad dash to collect contest entries.
Thankfully, I am pretty quick at this and had mine collected, back in the room, and was back down to see the massive line of people waiting their turn.
Another quick pass around the dealers room. Looking for anything we might have missed, or was marked way down.
Plus to say bye to a few people who would be leaving right after the show.
Then over to start tearing down, and packing up the PS display.
Which went surprisingly fast. My duaghter and I are pretty efficient about things, and had it all packed up and loading into the van in about an hour or so.
Then I went up to the room and had dinner and relaxed a bit before packing up my contest entries and modeling supplies.
Got those loaded into the van . Then I swung down to the dealers area to see if anyone needed any help.
Only saw a few people I knew, and they were just finishing up.
So, back to the lobby.

Ran into a lot of people again. And spent a lot of time with some new friends that we made that night.
Talked, joked, and had fun into the wee hours of the morning.
I think this was a first.
Every year we have 1 or 2 really good nights hanging out. But this year, all 3 nights were a total blast.
No real down time. No kind of boring time when no one was around.
This meant we did very little wandering at all. Which also meant we didn't go to the upstairs movies,
and didn't stop at several room parties we knew of.
Why would we? Everyone seemed to be coming to us. And that couch is pretty darn comfortable.

Now, we get to the one slight glitch of the weekend.
We had so much fun Sunday night, we stayed out later than we planned. And managed to oversleeep!
Britny had a class she needed to be back in time for, and we hoped to roll out around 8:30 or so.
Well, we didn't wake up until 8:40.
Just over half an hour later, we were dressed, packed, loaded, and checked-out.
Good thing I did a lot of packing and loading the night before.
The up side to this though, is that we didn't spend a lot of time lingering around kind of being sad that it was all over with.
Major down side though was we didn't get to say goodbye to many people.

Another uneventful trip home.
Got Brit back in time for her class.
I got home at a reasonable hour, and only had to deal with more rain.
The whole weekend was kind of rainy and cool, but we loved it. It was nice and comfortable when outside, as opposed to hot and muggy like years passed. We both had sweat-shirts with us, just-n-case anyway.

This year was just one big blur of fun and excitement. No real down time, or lulls. Except when we wanted them to recharge and eat. So it was totally awesome.
Plus we both brought some cool goodies home as well.
To go along with a boat load of great memories.

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