AWA7 Sucked- Review By Mappyman

AWA7 SUCKED so reads the unofficial t-shirt we made up on sunday morning. thats pretty much suits this con completely.

Friday i headed out on the 'hound to atlanta. suprisinly i arrived almosta full half hour early! Jenny, Puu, and Leo came and picked me up. we circled around the airport a few times (its a maze!) but eventually found our way out. Made it to the con center already noticing oddness. outside were con zombies and lurkers as well as hippies playing guitar to a small group.

The hotel was clearly dead. a few people wandering around. we first caught Max coming out of the pool. then saw Ichiban Crush, who was only "partially sober". Videogame rom was still going on. 1 ddr pad and 3rdmix. jenny and leo attacked canasian and tried stealing his watch but only got his bracelet. We finally settled down close to the lobby, off to the side by the stairs.

The people all eventually came in and started talking with us. WackoTTL, Shin, Kate, Nato, Bobette, Captain Obvious, Gabby, Maryssa, Max, Matt, Mike, Dogbert, and a few others. Shin explained pretty much the con totally sucked and that even though last year was ghetto, this year was worse, and to have just stuck to the original idea and not come at all =P.DaveCion was going on down the way. he set up the laptop and was playing the unedited version of Jay & silent Bob Strike Back. big crowd as always. We were waiting on DannyHong to show up so we could go eat but he couldnm't show so we ended up just going out with Cookie, Shane and Wes.

Near the Waffle House i noticed a little starving itten. sobeing the good cat-loving samaritans we are; jenny and i took it home to get some food and fixed up the poor thing. we just kinda kept it in a cage and fed it clean milk and food. We stayed up that night watching a tape i made for her with Expo footage and 80s cartoons.

Saturday!
whew, big day.I would have gotten a badge but uhm... why?? i mean really; $25 for just 1 day is pretty harsh. And from what i noticed only the dealer's room checked for badges and well... therewasn't even nmuch in the dealers room anyway ^_^;;

Kate and Nato had brought me a birthday cake which was great because i was just starving by the time the afternoon rolled around. We took it down to the lobby to sit around and eat it and since there were so many people gathered Kate got them all to sing happy birthday to me. Thankies Kate! ^.^ There was still some cake left so we lended Jenny a hand in her traditional caking of Danny. it was really funny! so many people saw it happen and took dozens of picxs! ha ha! after that Bee, Liz, Lee and I went to the Sheraton to drop my stuff then get some eats. I just mooched off everyone else's food as i didn't have a wallet on me at the time. Tim Flannigan arrived about then and ate with us. Locky and new girl Leslie showed up before we left too. We all trekked out to where Maryssa and gang were taking Naruto pics outside. We got some Massively cool fujikoma super group shots here too. We all were just chatting about the con and other stuffs for awhile. Terra showed up around now too out of nowhere in a sexy catgirl outfit. We deacided it was about time to bust out parapara and Battle Royale. but we all wanted to do it in StYLe so we figured just hook it up wo the con lobby and play there were we'd have plenty of room and couches to lay on.

And WOW did it draw a crowd! haha, we set everything up quite easily. the TV was just sitting there. so we hooked up the ps2 and parapara and got playing. everyone got to play at least once as we just played that whoever wanted to play just step up in line. some random bemani-loving con guys wanted to play and even hotel Staffers sat and watched! Thank goodness cosplay was going on at the time so we wouldnt get a ton of fanboys and gimps who would be shouting they wanted to play. it was kinda cool that it was only the Fujikoma elites and friends.

Since we now had a pretty ecent crowd and the same people were playing parapara we set up Battle royale about this time. Danny Hong and his group came around too and the thought it was cool that wed be playing that movie right in the middle of the con. it was too great. Everyone was watching too! its a great movie to watch in corwds too because of the different reactions to all the death scenes. everyone particularly loved the chipper BattleRoyale host girl. Koonnichi-WA! ^_^ Joey showed up now as a really cute Zel from FF8. seemed kinda upset i couldnt make the unico gathing but still cute as always. sometime in all of the movie and stuff she thew a leaf off the 2nd floor and...got her badge taken away! x_X Shin, Bran, and Babs were heading out about now to...(get this!) SLeep so we continued on. Dance was pretty bad too from what i heard. i really wanted to see it NOT suck this year but it was so bad this year i heard that they told me better if i just avoid it all together. gag!

some con girls convinced Chris to give in and let them use the VCR we brought so we finshed watching BattleRoyale then tok ParaPara up to maryssas room to play some more. got some Bo0oZe there too and everyone had fun. Max and Liz even got their turn to play the blanket game! yay! Some people wanted to hit the pool before it got to late so we took a break from parapara and headed down to the pool. it was cool since the jacuzzi and pool were almost connected. it reall want even that cold and was indoors too. we did this for awhile and then headed back up, dried off and played more parapara.

DaveCon aka DaveLand was underway so we thought we'd all go check it out. they had set up a japanese ps2 and were playing DanceSummit2001 on 4-player mode. it was really funny how everyone was playing it for their first times, not knowing the system or how to really play team mode. but eventually we all got the hang of it. especially maryssa who "won" nearly every round by getting the most points, yay! Parappa the Rapper 2 was now set up and we played that and laughed along with the totally goofy lyrics. the game is really cute and funny. Poor Dogbert was dozing off over and over, and eventually Liz and i followed suit. we then decided that 5am was our limit so we went back to get some much-needed sleep. luckily the breakfast bar was just opening so we grabbed some morning doughnuts before going to sleep, heh. I had Parappa2 lyrics still ion my head so we were joking about those as we all went to sleep. we must have annoyed Shin, Bran, and Babs to no end haha!

Sunday was...short?
bleh, got up, packed up, headed out. saw a few random people wandering around and everyone was just dog-tired. OH! before we left our hotel room we came up with an idea for a tshirt. i had noticed Bee was wearing a simple, plain white shirt so i wanted to at least write Something to spice it up. we figured an unofficial AWA7 SUCKED shirt would be so funny since everyone we knew had that opinion about the con. i got out a badge and copied down the AWA7 logo (withthe two globes) and it looked really cool since i had red and black markers (lucky!). going into the con i got a few laughs and funny looks, so i wanted to take it a step further; the Dealers Room! i found a lost persons badge posted on the door so i snagged it to get in and found out the Dealers room rumors were true. no HK CDs r anything that id spend any money on,. there was just...nothing there worth paying money for. Got to see Tikki over at the Ironcat table and funny enough; Dave Merrill himself. he somehow spotted my AWA7 SUCKED shirt and made an announcement (or was it someone else who announced it?) "Attention; there is a person wearing an AWA7 Sucks shirt on. Feel free to let your will loose on this person." I just grabbed the Fish PuyoPuyo plushie and nobody really said anything. or. well. until we got into the elevator where mr Staff guy seemed to be particularly inquisitive about why this con SUCKED. we all jumped on the guy stating the reasons why and how blah blah... you know how it goes. Oh! and on the Con Sucked subject- the elevators pissed us off! you could NOT take the stirs down to anything below the third floor. all of the stiars were labeled as Fire Exits so im not even sutre if we shold have been using them but when you got hunders of con-goers using the elevators on the same floor it can take forever. the best we could do was to take the stiars to the third floor, then take the elevator as it was going up.

We all eventually made our way down and there was everyone near the door just chinning out and saying our goodbyes. got a few great group pics of all of our friends here too. but the con was ending and people were sad to go.

Hrm, not sure exactly how to wrap up this review. i know it seems like a total rant, but in a way AWA still has its non-con appeal. a LOT of people go to this. cosplayers , friends, Atlanta locals. So far its been the most popular for everyone and since it was my first con theres still some love i have for this place. but this year is prolly the last one. hotel staff sucked, staff sucked, video game room sucked, prices sucked. The T-shirt pretty much says it all. AWA7 SUCKED. but as far as friends go, its one of the best places to meet up and hang out.