I recommend against the Travelodge in Sharonsville. The internet access doesn’t work. I made my reservation for Friday two weeks prior to this event. I call the place up at like 9 PM Friday and make sure they are going to hold my reservation if I arrive late. The guy on the phone looks up my name and says they will have my room. When I finally arrive at 1:30 AM, a very rude foreign guy who hardly speaks English tells me my reservation had canceled automatically at 6PM and now I’ve got to pay 10 dollars more per night for an upgraded room. I realize it’s only ten dollars and I didn’t bother to argue at that time of night but the fact is I had CALLED AND MADE SURE at a time that was ALREADY PAST THE EXPIRATION of my reservation.
Somewhere along the road I realize “There is a time change, I’m going to get there are two thirty not one thirty and the zoo still closes at five. After some debate I decide to go ahead and hit the zoo anyway. I can’t get into the con and I need something to kill two and a half hours. I’m glad I did because it’s a very nice zoo.
Anyway, around 4:50 as I’m finishing up photographing the penguins, I get a call from Naladahc. He and his group and going out for dinner and they wanted to see where I was at. I told them I’d meet them at the hotel.
This first group consisted of Naladahc, Giga, Mr. Terrific (fairplaythings), Teresa, and a friend of Naladahc and GigaMutt, JKNotRowling. We went to an restaurant which was located across the street from the hotel. After the food we headed back to the hotel for some very very uneventful “room trading”. Which lasted about ten minutes before we all landed in the bar downstairs for a few hours of crazy yacking and general mayhem. It was a lot of fun.
The next morning, I managed to completely sleep through my alarm clock by twenty minutes, something I NEVER do, which was kind of odd. After cleaning up I headed out to find gas and a Wal-Mart to buy some breakfast. This turned out to be a totally awesome idea when I found a lone Transformers Animated Bulkhead and a pair of the Optimus vs Megatron two pack. I picked up the two packs for my fellow bloggers and bought the Bulkhead for myself.
I’ll continue with the story of Animated toys in a bit.
It’s like going to a flea market or craft show only everyone is selling toy robots. As expected, most of it was priced more than I was willing to pay. After meeting back up with the group, which also now included Despotes and the guys from the About Heroes podcast,I did quickly find my first purchase, a tenth anniversary Beast Wars Megatron. I’d never seen one on the shelves and it was only fife dollars over MSRP, I went ahead and made it my first buy. Next, I found one of the items I’d been planning to buy, Encore Skylynx for only 60 dollars, 40 dollars less than I’ve ever seen it listed for online. I also later would pick up a World’s Smallest Thrust and two Revoltechs, Rodimus Prime and the Patlabor Ingram.
After the panel we headed back to the dealer room for a bit. The line for autographs was dwindling so like a complete dork I decided to go ahead and get Tara Strong to sign my copy of Final Fantasy X-2. She was obviously very bored during the whole event and I swear she was text messaging on her cell phone while some guy was yakking with her. Like a boob, I had dumped my Beast Wars Megatron in my car when we had taken a break for lunch without thinking about David Kaye being at the con signing things. Oh well, I’m not really a huge autograph person anyway.
Actually maybe they avoid bridges due to a fear of Trolls (LOL Internet humor is TEH FUNNIES). At the first Wal-Mart we found Prowl, Bulkhead, and Lockdown and a Prime. I picked up Prowl and Lockdown. I then proceeded to break the hand off of my Lockdown in the car because, I’m a genius.
Some people went down to the bar. Crazy Steve, and a couple of other scratchbuilders were there talking about resin casting, molding and kitbashing. Interesting stuff. If I had more time it might be something I could really get into actually.
