Well, this year, after months and month of planning, I got to stay at Otakon for all three days. We got our hotel room a little late, so had to pay the $259 a night at the Sheraton. But luckily, it was my birthday present ^_~. I must say that it was one of the nicest hotels that I've ever stayed in, the service was wonderful, the place was pretty luxurious, and there was even a special lounge on our floor that only we could use; with snacks and drinks that we could take to our leisure (which led to me stealing Cheerios). We decided on the Sheraton because it was close (connected by the Skywalk) and more safe for us young girls attending. However, the downside is that the Skywalk doors are locked at 8 PM, so we had to walk on the streets to get back when the con was done for the night.

Anyway, enough about the hotel. We arrived in Baltimore at around 2:00, after an hour and a half drive from Stafford and my mother taking a wrong turn at an intersection. After settling into the nice hotel room, my two other congoers, Luna and Elena, and I headed for the convetion. The weather was not forgiving, as it was muggy, raining at times, hot, and SO HUMID! Luckily, the Baltimore Convention Center was well air conditioned.

We didn't have to wait in line to register, which was great. We thought that there would be a line to register, but the front area was nearly empty. Heck, the people who laminated the passes were so bored that they were competing over people's passes to laminate ("Hey! You don't want her to do your card! Come over here! I'll do it! Stay away from her!")

We wandered around, seeing that the Otakon staff was using much more of the convention center this time, even going all the way upstairs to the ballroom. The line to the dealers room was amazingly long. We thought we'd have to stand in it forever just to get in. However, we met up with some friends near the head of the line and they FORCED us to cut, believe me, we didn't want to (I'm lying) but we did anyway.

The dealers room was busy and filled with so much stuff that it was impossible to even know what to buy! Last year, only half of the area was used for the booths, but this year, they moved the artists block and gave all of the room to the dealers. First thing I got was a Malice Mizer CD, because I've always wanted one, heh ^_^

After being overwhelmed in the dealers room, we left and wandered around, finding cosplayers and friends.

Well, at one point, we were sitting down and taking a break by the escalators near the...Pratt St entrance? I think it was.... Well, at Katsucon 2001, we rode the escalators so much that we made a game out of it, so this year, we decided to try the game at Otakon!

It started out simple enough. We went up the escalator. We went down the escalator. I'm sure people were starting to think we were pretty dumb/stupid/drunk/high. However, once, on the way up, we saw someone that we recognized, so we ran back down the other escalator. So me, being an idiot, went back up. Our friend saw us and chased us down and back up again. She got bored quick so we went down again, and saw someone ELSE we knew, so we went back up. She saw us too, and we ran to go back down the escalator, and THE MOMENT that my boot touched the down escalator, it stopped.

Whoops.

So, for most of the Friday, that escalator didn't work.

We felt pretty sheepish and ran away. I don't think we rode that escalator again.

I changed into my original catgirl outfit, I had made the ears and tail out of boredom from leftover material from my other outfit. Note, I wore this AFTER I had downed a bottle of Mountain Dew.

Bad idea.

A friend was dressed as Ed (from Bebop) and had a scooter, so, extremely high off of Mountain Dew, I stole it and ran away. What followed was me running around on a scooter, handing random people fortune cookies that we had bought. I was too hyper to know what was going on around me, but Luna says that people who saw were laughing their asses off. Heh... I'm sure I humiliated my group a lil' bit.

We hung out in a hallway upstairs, me taking a little catnap and trying to look pitiful. 'Anime Dog' came and interviewed us (it was actually the Pets.com puppet, but oh well, heh)

After I calmed down, we went to the dance/rave and watched for a while. When we got bored enough, we went up and caught the last bit of Mysterie Anime Theater. It was pretty amusing. We watched most of the music videos, but with the curfew that my mom gave us, we couldn't watch them all >_< Turns out we missed a lot of good ones.

After going through our booty and talking for a few hours, we finally fell asleep.

We woke up bright and early, had some breakfast, and headed to the con for some early morning shopping. The line for the dealers room wasn't long, but the con was swiftly filling up with Saturday otaku, cosplaying and not. We bought some more stuff, then returned to the hotel room. I changed into my Gackt outfit, Luna was armed with her "Yaoi, shounen ai, bishounen" sign, while Elena borrowed my cat ears and tail.

Back to the con we went!

We were actually prepared this year. Last year, on Saturday, we just stood around and took picures, unsure of what else there was to do.

We were wandering around for a bit, Luna with a video camera taking video of random things and cute guys. We went to see Jet Li in "Scripture with no Words". We DID NOT expect it to be a comedy, and we were so surprised to see Jet Li playing a comedy role. It was soooo cute and funny. I didn't really want to see it at first, but after the first few minutes, I didn't want to leave *laugh* The subtitling was a little weak at some parts though.

After that, we walked around some more, hung out with friends by the dealers room and took some more pictures. When that was done, we headed to 'The Best of J-Pop' where they showed Japanese music videos. They played L'arc, Dir en Grey, and Utada Hikaru, as well as many others, but THERE WAS NO GACKT!!!! *sob* That's the only reason I went to watch. *sniffle*

When THAT was done, we met up with some more friends, took a rest, and decided to get ready for the cosplay. When we went up there, we DID NOT expect the line to be so long so soon! But luckily, we were up far enough to get in and have a decent seat. Luna manned the video camera during the cosplay.

The cosplay this year, in my opinion, was very weak. Sure, some of the skits were pretty funny, but the whole thing seemed unorganized and chaotic. I was even afraid that there would be a riot or something eventually. It also seemed like most of the skits dropped out and many numbers were skipped. Out of 60 skits, I think only about...30-35 were performed? The guy who was announcing kept screwing up, some of the tapes were not cued correctly, and the constant shouts of 'CHAIR' got very irritating.

And not only that, the costume contest was unorganized as well. The list got messed up, so the announcer couldn't name all of the costumes and the people flaunting them. So they just walked across the stage, and I'm sure that the judges passed on and forgot about the costumes from anime that they didn't recognize. Though I do think that the costumes that WERE very good got awards, like Johnny (as Wolfwood from Trigun) and his cross, the Talgeese (from Gundam Wing), and the absolutely georgeous Anthy from Utena.

The winners of the modeling contest, the music video contest (I got half of the 'Hit me' from Utena, all of "Happy Boy and Happy Girls" from Various, and "Right Now" from Various on video, which could be avaliable for upload...someday) And gave out the awards for the skits (The X Skit got best in show, which was pretty obvious the second their skit was over)

We finally got out of there and quickly headed downstairs to watch "Attack the Gas Station", a Korean movie that Elena, Luna, and I have seen SO MANY times (we love that movie to death). We got there in the last half hour of it, and, at seeing that the room was packed, we were so happy that everyone else wanted to see it. The movie was hilarious, as it always was. People got such a kick out of it. However, again, the subtitling was VERY VERY weak and messed up a lot of the jokes and took the surprise out of stuff (such as Bulldog, who's name was subtitled as 'Bulldozer', telling everyone to put their heads down before his friend suggests him to put their heads down.)

When that was over, we went to the dance/rave and hung out, I even tried to dance, but it was NOT easy in platforms, so I gave up fast *lol* After a few hours of that, the music suddenly shut off and we were all confused as hell.

Turns out there were more underground explosions and we had to be evacuated from the convention center. So we calmly went outside like the nice otaku we are. All up and down the streets, the fire department had opened the fire hydrants and were letting the water run into the sewers to clear out the gases trapped down there that were causing the explosions. Many an otaku took this as an advantage to beat the muggy August night and catch a quick shower in the fire hydrants.

We hung out for a little while, but it was late, so we all headed back to our hotels.

We overslept a bit, and woke up just before the con started, so we quickly got dressed and headed over to check out any decreased prices in the dealers room. I blew the rest of my money on Gackt trading cards, some wallscrolls, and some shounen ai anime (you know I can't resist) We found some more cosplayers, and hung out.

Around noon, we said goodbye to the convention, packed up, and left. The drive home was a little unnerving, since the traffic was horrendous. But, we finally made it home, I watched my anime, and fell dead asleep while it was storming outside.

...the convention was fun, although a little unorganized. The costumes were okay, some were really nice, but not as many impressive ones as there were last year. There were a lot of Trigun cosplayers this year, I noticed, as well as Cowboy Bebop. I guess I'm gonna have to watch Trigun sometime, heh.

Hopefully, next year, the Otakon staff will better manage overflow in panels (such as the Hikaru Midorikawa panel, which I heard was PACKED and couldn't fit everyone in) and keep people (those who shout "Chair" during skits) under control.

However, I did enjoy my convention experience and will definitely be back for Otakon 2002 ^_^