MTAC TRIP REPORT!!
Thursday
We left Memphis around 4:30 in the afternoon, and didn’t make it to the hotel until around 10. We got lost!!!
I’ve been spoiled by staying in nice hotels the last two times I’ve gone out of town. One of those was a really nice Clarion (Claritin) in Gatlinburg, and I was expecting similar with this Clarion. Well… it wasn’t. It must have been older or something. I didn’t mind, because Ash and I had our own room – the moms had a room down the hall. The part I disliked most about the rooms was that the bathrooms were yellow. I thought maybe it was to induce you to pee or something.
The channels on the TV were lacking. CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS, CNN, HBO and TBS. That’s it. I was ironing my Milly jacket when Ash yelled, “OH MY GOD! NAKED SHAKESPEARE!” I thought she was talking about a guy acting as Shakespeare being naked, but oh nooo. OMG. I tried to get her to go back so I could see but she wouldn’t LMAO
Friday
I didn’t sleep well Friday at all. I woke up at 4:30 am freezing to death. I jumped out of bed and pressed some buttons on the air conditioner. Thankfully I managed to turn it off. I laid in bed until 5:30, trying to go back to sleep. It was then that the wake up alarm went off next door. And no one was in that room. The stupid thing blared until around 9:30 when the maids went into that room and turned it off. I gave up on sleeping at 6, and got up and opened the curtains and made Ashley get up.
It was then I realised I hadn’t seen my MTAC confirmation letter in a while. I hunted around and couldn’t find it anywhere. I waited until our clock said 7:00 and called dad on my cell phone (that’s when he usually gets up). Turns out the clock in our room was 20 minutes fast, and I’d woken him up. Oops. He went in the kitchen and looked for it for me, and found it in the garbage can! He said he’d take it to work with him and have it faxed to the hotel.
We hung around the room for a while. We ate breakfast (tasteless :P). I went to the desk and got my fax from dad, yay! I would have just used my license to register, like Ash had done, but dumb old me had forgotten it and left it in my car at home… Anyway, we wandered around for a while. Finally got registered and I found my art table and all that good kind of stuff. But nothing was going on, nothing was really set up yet, so we agreed to go to the mall with the moms.
We got back a few hours later and decided to go on down. But Ash refused to get into costume. I gathered up my art stuff to take downstairs to my table, and as I was standing at the door, I thought, heck. I don’t need to have somebody else in costume to get in costume myself! I told her I was going to put on my Selphie dress whether she wanted to get dressed up or not. She finally conceded and put on her Ranma costume. So we went down and sat up my stupid table.
(Ash manning my table!)
We sat around down there for a while. We only saw a couple of other costumers… a Tifa and one or two others I couldn’t place. I FINALLY talked Ash into putting on her Meryl costume. I don’t know why she didn’t want to in the first place, her Meryl costume turned out so great!! I put on Milly and we went on downstairs, raided the dealers room again (Ash found THE Meryl gun, but… something like that neither of us had enough money to buy! and it was gone the next day anyway), and sat up my table again.
Not much going on Friday. I did sell my Aeris pic, yay! We headed upstairs … can’t remember what time, but when we went to tell the moms we were back, they said that someone had come into the room next to them with a huge cross. So Ash talked me into putting Milly back on the next day so we could have pictures made with the inevitable Wolfwood.
Saturday
Slept better Friday night š I ate nothing on Saturday morning. I was already in my Milly costume, and Ash was in Meryl. I sat at the table with Ash and our moms while they ate. Ash had to be so proper when eating cause of her costume… her mom said that she should wear it all the time if it was going to make her act like that, LOL
Then we went down and sat up the table again. The moms came very close to embarrassing us to death, but then my mom found out one of the security was a star trek fan and they talked for a long time. Then we had our pic taken with the Wolfwood, who was a very good Wolfwood too, and finally I was allowed to go change. The moms watched our table while Ash and I went upstairs. I changed into Utena and Ash got into Ranma again. She said it was very comfortable! So then back downstairs and back to the table. Our moms left to go to… I dunno, some touristy places. Saturday seems to mostly be a blur.
I’m gonna try to recall the order in which things happened. Around 12:30, I think, we gathered up all my junk and took it upstairs to put it away. At this point I was carrying my messenger bag (heavy), my portfolio (even heavier), and that stupid InuYasha pic that wouldn’t fit in the portfolio. So it was a lot of stuff. In order to go anywhere we had to get rid of that stuff first. But… we got up there… and our keys wouldn’t work. We tried for about 10 minutes straight. We also tried the key to our moms’ room that they had left us. No luck. So we walked back downstairs and sat for a few minutes, then went back up and tried again, then went back down to the front desk to figure out what was wrong with our keys.
I’m not going to repeat the whole conversation, but the women at the counter was incredibly rude towards us about the keys. She refused to fix them because the room was not under our name (despite the fact that the rooms HAD been reserved under my credit card – “I don’t have ANY –your last name— in the system.” WHATEVER, if they room wasn’t under my name, it was under my mother’s name, and we have the same last name!). I can understand that she couldn’t fix the cards because it wasn’t under our name (the cardkeys didn’t have room numbers on them, so they could have been for any room), but she did not have to be SO rude towards us. Well anyway, Mean Hag Lady managed to really piss me off.
(Me and Ash, photo by Fan’s View)
So what to do? We had all this stuff, we couldn’t put the stuff away, and we couldn’t get around anywhere with all the stuff. We sat in the lobby for a while, waiting on the ACP and COSP shoots. I calmed down a bit, and got to meet AshleyV and Melissa, who were also there for the ACP & COSP ml. We took the pics, and then Ash and I went upstairs to try our keys yet again. Of course they still didn’t work. I did discover that the gap between the floor and the door was big enough for me to slide pictures through, tho! So I slid all of my pictures underneath the door, thus lightening the portfolio load considerably. Since I did haven’t the pictures with me anymore, we just stored the empty portfolio and messenger bag underneath my artist table, and finally got to go in the dealer’s room again! Then we just sat at our table like idiots.
(ACP group photo)
Around that time the moms waltzed in. We intercepted them and both of us started trying to explain what happened at once. Mom took the keys up to the desk, where a different lady was working now. This lady took the keys and fixed them, no questions asked. We asked why this would have happened. She went through a number of reasons, finally coming to – “if the key was put against a credit card, it’ll deactivate it.” That was probably our problem – I had my key in my wallet, probably right behind my credit card. And, she said, if one of the cards was deactivated like that, the other one would automatically deactivate as well. Explains why Ash’s wouldn’t work either. BUT it didn’t explain why our moms’ key to their room wouldn’t work – Ash had that one in the top pocket of her Ranma jacket. And it still doesn’t explain why the previous clerk was so rude to us. š
Oh well, we were finally able to get in our room after that. I really wanted to change costumes. Utena was getting boring, itchy and the sticky on the velcro on the shoulder things had worn off long ago. I started to put on Asuka, but then decided on Jupiter. We went downstairs and sat up the table again. I was uncomfortable wearing my Jupiter costume, for some reason. I was being overly selfconcious I guess. Moms came down, and I took my mom in the dealer room and pointed out stuff she could buy me for Christmas LOL Then Ash did the same with her mom. I wish I could have caught up to the nice Sailormars that was there and had a picture with her! We had a conversation with a nice girl while we sat at the table, unfortunately we didn’t catch her name, tho!
I didn’t stay in Jupiter very long, mostly because I never felt comfortable in it and also cause it was getting close to time to be downstairs for the cosplay. We changed into Suppi-chan and Ruby Moon, which took forever. We were running late, but we got down there and found out the music videos were still showing. So we hung around in the hallway (not easy when you’re wearing wings) and talked with AshleyV, and watched all the other cosplayers getting ready for the cosplay!
(photo by Neko7)
Finally it did end, but we found out Ash couldn’t come in with me. So I went in and found a seat where I could sit with my wings (had to pull the chair out some). I couldn’t really lean back with my wings on – or, at least, I was scared to – so I had to lean forward the whole time. I was second to last, so I didn’t get to see much of it. It’s no fun going last, is it? We were shuffled into a tiny room on the side. It was kinda gross in there. Had I been wearing anything else, I would’ve just sat on the floor, despite the fact it was like a basement in there. The cosplay went pretty fast, thankfully. I managed not to fall on my face, but I wasn’t exactly Miss Graceful up there, either.
After all the entries had gone, they began showing the winners of the AMV contest. Ash came over and sat next to me. All the videos were great and fun to watch. I do wish I could have taken my wings off, I know they were in the way of people behind me. Then they announced the winners of the cosplay. I was surprised to win Best Craftsmanship, but I was very, very happy with my prize (a red wig!!)
(photo by Neko7)
Ash and I were both dragging by that point. We went upstairs and got changed (ash’s wings were beginning to strangle her ^^;) and the moms ordered steak-out. We both got cheeseburgers. I changed into Selphie and Ash put on Rinoa’s jacket (she didn’t feel like putting the whole thing on). I heard the elevator ding and ran out to meet the steak-out guy! We ate fast (I only ate half, despite it being the only thing I’d eaten all day, except a reese’s around lunch), and then went down to check out the dance.
We peeked into the dance room … it was kinda funny XD There were only like four people in there, but they were all dancing. It was funny! It was cold down there, so we decided not to stay. We ran into Neko7 again and he took pics of us and found out he’d been having trouble with the air conditioner in his room like we were. Then we found out they were replaying the Cowboy Bebop movie! We watched for a few minutes, but the subtitles were hard to read so we left. Then I found out that I’d forgotten about InuYasha!!! We caught the last couple of minutes of it.
We went upstairs then and went to sleep.
(Me and Ash, photo by Neko7)
Sunday
How frustrating. I wanted to see both the AMG movie and Pretear on Sunday – but the moms wanted to leave around noon. I finally gave in and agreed to leave around then. I got up and packed. I put on Cammy and Ash put on Ranma (AGAIN!) We were all ready to leave when I realised I couldn’t find my con badge. We spent like, 15 minutes looking for it! I finally found it and we went downstairs and sat up the table for the last time. The moms went out to McDonald’s and brought breakfast back for us, yay! We managed to sell 3 more things (finally!). After about an hour in Cammy it was starting to drive me crazy, so Ash watched the table while I went to change. I got all the way upstairs when I realised Ash had my wallet and key, oops! So I went back and got it and went back up and put on normal clothes for the first time since friday.
I sat with the table while Ash went upstairs to change. We didn’t do much Sunday. The moms sat with our table while we went in the dealer’s room once more, and then the moms went and watched the fandom documentary. Then we packed up the art for the last time and went upstairs to get our stuff.
(Moms at the table, photo by Neko7)
It was earlier that morning when I realised we hadn’t seen our camera in a while. We had bought the disposable Saturday morning, since I had left the flash on on the regular camera all friday night and ran the batteries down. We hunted for it but it was no where to be found. All of our pictures! x_x The last time I remember seeing it was when Ash was taking a pic of the ACP group. We checked at the front desk and the registration table when we checked out, but no one had turned in our camera. I was pretty upset for a while, but finally, a couple of days after the con, Ash found it in a bag in her suitcase. YAY!
So we checked out and Ash’s mom brought the car around for us to pack. I remembered my stuff down in the art room, and asked mom to go down and get everything. She put it in the trunk and we were off. It wasn’t until we were down the road that I thought to ask if she’d gotten the Trigun print, since it was on the back wall away from my other stuff. Turns out she got everything BUT that, oh well, free print for somebody…
We stopped and mcdonald’s for lunch, and then went straight on into memphis.
And so like that, it was over.
Well not quite. I came home and found out the fansubs my aunt got for me had arrived. HUZZAH!
The end.
Pictures
I didn’t get a lot of pictures because I’m an idiot when it comes to cameras. First, we bought a camera from home, but I left the flash on all night friday night. So we bought a disposable camera for Saturday… and promptly lose it by Saturday afternoon. We found it two weeks later, stuffed in a bag in Ash’s suitcase. But, here’s the few we did get, as crappy as they may be