D and I left late Friday right after work to get there. Of course being the path from gummytown to Atl, we stopped over at Newnan Hooters. He had an outdoor camera so we got a pic of our waitress outdoor. I suggested we pull a bangbus and get her in the van with us but nah. Anyway, Nikki called once we got there asking if we were there yet, but I was only an hour away. Ordered some quesadillas. Only ate 1. Called Babs & chris and whatever other fuji had a cel phone. Everyone was there, everyone had met up and most of all; Everyone was bored.

Headed up and met chris and josh at the entrance. They helped unload the twin giant 100watt Sony speakers planned for the DJ Inubito takeover Saturday. Luckily we were only on the 7th floor so there wasn’t any roblems getting in the room. UGA Anime lucked out getting end of hallway rooms which gave more privacy and more space. We got the 3rd room from the end. The Quiet room, which later became the weekend-long SmashBrosMelee tournament room. D also got to meet some UGA kids and find a place to chill out later that evening.

Changed into semi-FFBall clothes and went down to see that about 90% of all the otakus had dressed up for this event. It was like a high school prom! FFBall was at first an invite, but it became a full-fledged event. People gather in a large room together in either classy final Fantasy costumes or just really nice dressy clothing. Every girl in nice evening gowns, some a touch of gothic but mainly sparkly. Guys had their suits, collared shirts and ties. It was NICE! Even some hefty fanboy types were dressed up, hair slick back and clean shaven. They should really have this event more often. It gives reason to bathe! Saw Kate, bobbete (and her boy toy), Lionel, Babs, Nato, nikki, gomez, Melanie, Marissa, Cali, McKayla, Inubito, Grif, and Lindze all standing around here. The line went out, around the corner, past the elevators, and down yet another hall. The room was way way way beyond full. So they moved down a wall. Still full. From what I heard, at first the admission price was $5, but they did away with it after quite a few people complained. Took a pic of Lindze’s costume and heard staffers yelling "Clear the way! Move Move!" apparently one girl dehydrated and passed out. Our guess was she died of boredom. Found Joanna here too as Zel and even she didn’t stay for the Ffball even though she herself was one of the main people who started the idea.

Hit up the game room. An improvement but still cramped. DDR was separate from the rest of the games in its own corner. Two custom-made hardmat dance pads, and of course, broken, or barely working. Im sure this happened all weekend likeit does at every anime con. Get a REAL machine people! Theres plenty in atlanta to rent or borrow im sure. DWI was here too next to it. A really really well done fan mix of custom DDR songs like "Tank" of cowboy bebop, "Angel no thesis" of evengelion and quite a few more. Very impressive! SmashBrosMelee had its corner on the side, and X-Box’s Halo had a huge semi-circle of linked consoles and TVs.

Unfortunately the Lobby TV that helped us score the biggest anti-cosplay party last year was gone, but we chilled out there anyway. Talking with Emuko. Lindze showed up, but oddly…she was leaving! Ha. On a Friday too. Brad and CaptSteve were here too. Since they were leaving, Lindze offered her badge and everyone with her too! Score! So that night I became Brad, Kate became Lindze, and Chris became Steve. Not only that; but we became honored Guests as well. A total kick-in-the-face to the people who denied us from preregistering.

All dressed up and nowhere to go basically, we rounded up and went hunting for parties. Of course Uga was the first place to go as it was OUR party. Things were already getting started. The noise from the rooms wasn’t too bad, but as the night went on more and more people snuck in. There weren’t any cups left (or to begin with??) so I settled for the hotel’s mini coffee pots. Pez made an awesome mix of stuff that I had at Ichi’s 21st birthday party and I carried that around with me through the night. Unfortunately the DJ takeover wouldn’t work since we had no receiver to plug the stereos into, but luckily I brought along DJ Inubito’s "Gamers Delight" (a killer mix of remixed NES songs and more in a nonstop stream). The group seemed to like it. The party got way overcrowded with people coming in, taking our supply, then leaving. Other people asking for people we didn’t even know! "Hey! Anyone seen Dave??" whos dave? "I dunno but he said that hed be here man!". Leaving the party someone on the elevator was telling everyone about "That bigass room party on the 7th Floor" AKA OUR ROOM PARTY. Not a good thing when you get half the entire con in your room.

Mel, chris, and I went to find something else. She knew where IronCats room was since she was staying with them so we went there first. Nobody home =[. Looked around some more but all of the other parties turned out to be duds, well cept for Emuko’s room where we found Hex and learned the high-five contract, heh. Ran into josh out of nowhere and these people who run a comic con in Tampa. They really thought we were Brad & Lindze Merrit! Talked to them for lie 20 minutes and headed off. Eventually the ironcat room was back open and about 15-20 people there. Steve telling stories and the Tampa guy and his friend making jokes too. Some crazy blonde girl Chicago "Silent Jay" came in dressed as the Scream reaper and spooked Steve as he came out of the bathroom. It was pretty funny since everyone was watching. Chris left early but I stayed all of the way through the night.

Got up "early" (daylight) Saturday, making sure to grab my empty coffee pot as I headed back. Everyone else was awake too. No hangovers anywhere. Wow. Grabbed chris and went exploring. Dealers room was nicely laid out this year, without any bootlegs I didn’t plan to buy anything but looking around was okay. Found Carolyn there and got her to mill with us. Saw Renee and Jen outside the dealers room too. Nobody I knew was in costume though, heh.

Found babs, gomez, james, mike and the kawaii senshi group near the stairs just Lounging. The lounging group just seemed to get larger and larger really, but that’s fine, because we enlisted everyone to lounge with us. Then….DUM DUM DUM, Dave Merrill shows up. Call it impulse, but I just had to say hello to the guy. The man who began this con. The man who back at AWA2, I admired and wrote a personal letter saying just how great the con was and what I great time I had there. Also the man who ignored my request to link my AWA tribute site, and who later bashes our group as "Whiny cosplayers", and then personally rants out at a little-known comic convention Fluke to my friend and fellow fujikoma member, Mike. Well here he was. I just do a simple, "Hey, Dave. Whats up?" "Its fujikoma" *points*. And well yeah I think I asked to take his picture too. But then he gets up close & personal and gives me a warning. Hey. Hey you know if Anything should happen I know who to come to. Which yea well was fine I guess since we didn’t PLAN to do anything, and its not like weve done anything in the past anyways. Lobby takeover ParaPara Battle Royale party had complete say-so from the hotel staff last year. But… then he saw my "Brad Merrit" badge. Buzted! Heeeeyy….youre not Brad Merrit! Ack then he grabs my wrist and quickly radios in that he needs backup. Uh Oh! Here I am yelling "hes grabbing my nipple!!" and all everyone else can do is watch. I eventually break loose of his kungfu grip and head off ( I nicely set down my CodeRed in a chair before going, so I did give him a chance to catch me [or spell my early demise!]) out into the convention center. Staffers would soon be alerted so I dashed outside and around to the entrace of the hotel. Called up chris on the cel phone to see that everyone was laughing/panicking/wondering what had happened. Even Liz had been on the phone at that time so we politely told her now was Not the best of times to call. But her timing was flawlessly right.after the whole event. From what the latest gossip going around was; I was in big trouble. Kate’s radio intercepted the closed security radio and she heard I was being hunted down, mainly by h descriptions of clothes I was wearing. So chris and I took the stairs to get up to our floor. Smash Bros Melee room was still going on its 42nd hour straight so I just wormed my way around everyone and grabbed my playstation and Beatmania collection and took it to the other room to play. Changed clothes, and played Beatmania for a few hours till everything died down. And apparently… they never did. Within the time we were up playing games the entire CON knew that I was a fugitive of badge-stealing from a guest or something. In all; the MOSt entertaining event at the entire con.

HK rooms had a good showing this year. Shaolin soccer and Battle Royale were both playing back to back. Ko was just finishing the DDR tournament which he scored 3rd Place in so I grabbed him to come watch. He really couldn’t stay much longer since he wasn’t staying overnight but he said he liked the first half hour of it. Walked around and found Peter with Gabby where he screamed "HEY MAPPYMAN". I had to duck & hide since I was still trying to keep a low profile though! Sarakate, John, John, Erin, Daniel, and Michelle were in a group and saw me with the almost same reaction, even though they already heard I was being watched. It was soon after this though, that I found Noki! Noki, the girl I had been trying to find out about since Otakon was here in her Digicharat costume. Tre Cool~! She was just about to head out to Ruby Tuesdays to get some food with her friends so she invited Chris & I to go too.

The timing was amazing. Not even a minute after we arrived, Marissa, Cali, Michiru, McKayla and lots of others all came to eat too. Renee, Alisa, and Derek were already here. Earlier on when we went to eat we saw Allison and her friends. This is what happens when the only eatery within 5 miles is one place and an airport! The food took awhile but it wa well worth the wait. Three different kinds of meat. YUM! We even had room for dessert but it was so overfilling!

Cosplay was over, DDR room was over, most events were over. But what saved us… the Dance was far from over. Mixed reviews left and right we weren’t really sure if the dance would be woth even going to but it wasn’t too bad. They played the DDR Nonstop 2ndMix AMV Project with the music videos matching in on projection screen while everyone danced in the back. Plenty of room and firly cool people running it. They announced the Final song and played something really slow. NO! Anna and I ran up with the people running & saying they couldn’t end it like this. Not so early, not on a slow song. We begged them to go out with a BANG, and well while it wasn’t much of a bang, it kept the event going for at least another 10 songs. We danced every dance known and invented some new ones. "Do the Lawnmower!" glad I brought glowsticks. Nobody else knew how to dance with them, and oh wow, look Joey Can Break!

UGA Anime party had been shutdown. Permanently. Pez told us the hotel had warned the room to the point of alerting the police of a noise disturbance. You guys kick ass, heh. Back downstairs everyone was starting to group around the patio area talking, ranting, laughing, smoking, etc. Nikki passed by and told us there was some arty starting so she took us there. It was a room of about 7 people, with GrandTheftAuto3 left on pause with music playing and Carmel Apple Schnops. YUM totally D-lish! Mani was here. Haven’t seen this guy since way back at AWA5, and only for a second at AWA6. Still cool as ever. Chilling out with everyone. The party’s supply was running low so we all decided to go on a hunt. Mainly to Hentai Pope’s room and discretely borrow some of whatever he had. Failure. His room was dry. -Bone-- Dry. Empty cans, bottles, and shotglasses everywhere. The place was totally raided by every fanboy in existence with the Pope nowhere to be seen.

So back to they patio party to recruit more cool people. Joey was our target this time but getting her away from everyone wasn’t an easy task. Ichi was totally out of it. Funny as ever but spaced. Everyone had stories of the infamous plastered fanboy dubbed the name "CornBread". We managed to snag joey, amu, and Sophia and bring them to IronCat. Steve was already in sleepyland when we got there, and we told joey to poke him. Haha. It was just such a funny scene! Most of that party was hangout out with hot dealers room girls and more jokes. I played Door Bouncer that night so no nerds could get in. cornbread somehow made it to that room so that’s why they needed someone to be sure it didn’t happen again. Chicago stopped by too asking if anyone had seen her wallet.

The rest of the night Joey, chris, Mel, tirkiMan, myself and whoever else passed by stayed up talking in the 2nd floor lobby above the stairs. Somewhere around 6am (yes, and we were all still wide awake) Josh showed up asking when chris planned to leave. We thought he had been up all night too just like us! Haha! But it turned out he fell asleep in some video room.

Sunday, once again the evacuation of the hotel was hellish. Elevators were not only jammed and cramped going both up and down, but hotel & con staffers both were trying to moderate the number of people on them. I would have no problem taking the stairs normally, but with two 4ft speakers to carry, we really really would have liked the elevators to help out. Time ticked by and after 20 minutes with not a single person on our floor getting a spot in the elevator, we took the stairs. Yes, took the stairs all the way to floor 1. Through the hotel kitchen and right past the fire alarmed doors (which BTW, don’t go off when you open then) and surprisingly were the only people who braved them. Sunday was bland and I couldn’t find anyone to say goodbye to. Saw a few party faces in the dealers room. Steve Bennett of course and some others. Near the very end we managed to get cute lobby group shots with as many people as we could gather. Fujikoma or otherwise.

+GOOD+ yes, there was some good, actually a good amount of good. FFBall was a great idea that pretty much turned janitor-looking fanboy funk into fabulous classy dance bellhops (what?), it has major potential for the biggest con hygiene cleanup ever. HK room played great stuff and wasn’t "Hidden" this time around like it was back at AWA5. Game room, although mostly domestic games, was nicely set up and didn’t fail to have quite a good selection.

-BAD- location, people! Come on, we can’t take another year at this reject place! Dealers Room prices of course. Badge price. Same guests. Broken escalators. Con Suite hours. Empty ATMs.