The Amecon 06 Report

Written by Ross Locksley on 18 Aug 2006

Welcome to my Amecon diary. Over the next 3 pages I'll attempt to piece together the events of the weekend, despite the obstacles of booze, cosplay and... well, I'll get to the rest in time...

Friday
After a pleasant trip down by car, ably aided by my Sat-Nav, I arrived on campus at around 10:30am. I didn't know if I needed to collect my room key during registration, so I decided to find somewhere to park and then collect my stuff, and hopefully find out what to do next. I found a small clearing which contained a few other cars and made my way toward the main building.

Amazingly there were already about 100 or so people milling around, and about half were already in cosplay! Naruto was certainly popular this year, but I saw a Sonic and an Alucard, so there was plenty of variety even this early in the day.

I was only waiting 5 minutes before I received my con badge and goodie bag, which contained Pocky (what is the attraction of this stuff?), a Gundam gashapon, Tokyo Sneaks book and all the convention information. I heard that they had under-printed the timetables, so a lot of people were milling around without one, which must have been tricky to say the least!

The Tour
I then ran into Rum, a jolly chap who took a group of us on a tour of the convention. Bless him, he tried, but the tour basically consisted of showing us empty rooms and bars, but at least I had a first hand account of where everything would be. Eventually.

Since Rum and myself got on well, I gave him a lift to the rooms where it turned out we were both staying. This proved difficult as the parking spot I had selected turned out to be a health-club staff car park and the manager had kindly blocked me in (no signage incidentally). Luckily another person had pulled the same faux-pa and the manager, though grumpy, shifted his car. Which was good because it saved me shifting it for him ^_^

I bumped into Rum a few times during the convention, and I don't think he slept until Sunday. Not often you meet a man with that kind of staying power - look out for Rum at a future convention ladies ^.-

The Rooms
My lodgings consisted of a room with a sink, a wardrobe, bed, shelves and a bedside table. So the furnishings were ok. However, the major drawback was that 8 bedrooms were sharing one bathroom, which had 2 toilets and 2 showers (and no soap). Traditionally I hate sharing bathrooms and later on in this article you'll find out why.

The Dealers Room
By the time I got back to the convention it was time to start lining up for the dealers room. Luckily I was pretty near the front, so I managed to get in with the first wave. Sadly the dealers room opened 25 minutes late, which turned a 45 minute queue into a much longer one, and people were pretty grumpy. I had heard it was down to ADV not getting themselves organised, which sounds about right. Still, once in, the room proved to be a very fine affair, with MVM, Sheffield Space Centre, Otaku.co.uk and many others hosting plenty of tables full of wondrous bounty not seen outside of Ebay ^^

Still, the dealers room guarantees 2 things: products you can get cheaper on the internet, and an atmosphere where you forget that first bit and spend loads of cash anyway ^_^ I think I managed to spend £250 on Doujinshi, gashapon items (from a dealer whose name I don't know, but he had some really fantastic gashapon items on sale - respect to you sir!) and my favourite haul of the show, a Gundam Fix Freedom Gundam, which now adorns my desk.

Also worth a special mention is the little undead kitty I picked up from the Sweatdrop stand (I actually bought two, one of which now lives with forum member Cheese) and he's pictured top right.