July 4th Wednesday we mad-packed all morning/evening to get set for the loong weekend ahead of us. As luck had it we arrived at the airport to find out we'd be riding FirstClass! yay! Jenny got her customary "lucky yogurt" before the flight. They sat Leo and i together thinking for some reason we were brother and sister; haha! first class on a 2½ hour flight was the BEST! we got luxury seats, a steak dinner followed by a nice dessert and even got to watch Spy Kids! woo!

Arriving in cali, we sat and waited for nearly an hour for our ride to get there. we even made a banner sign saying the person we were looking for. i got kinda hungry so i headed up to get some grub. they had a Carl's Jr place there! it had the Happy Star too! but it was closed so i went to some cheesy juice stand where i got a REALLY nasty Bananna-Rama. it tasted like a potato was blended with ice cream. belch! No more RiceShakes for me.

Erins dad arrived and we somehow packed everything into the Pinto, even though it meant most of us sitting with stuffs on our lap. Less than an hour later we were at the Hyatt!

I called up Maryssa to learn she was just leaving Arcade Infinity; Lucky! she had already procured a room and everything was set. when she arrived we lugged everything to the room and began setting things up for the weekend. the first thing was to get our badges early so we wouldnt be waiting in line forever the next morning. the registration desk was wayyy out from the hotel. nearly 3 blocks of walking! but when we arrived it was totally empty and we got our badges in no time. Food was our next plan. every single place we had went to ws jam-packed full of people coming to see the fireworks show. there was no way we'd ever eat! Noooo!

Fireworks were really la-dee-da for Cali. some new "style" fireworks but it was no Fantavision show. we got the greatest view though. John, Kris, Crissy, Sarah, Maryssa and i watched them from the 14th floor window which let us see and hear everything without the hustle and bustle of crowds. i stole some of Kris's ramen noodles so i was okay as far as food goes. haha. The rest of the night we played DDR on Maryssa's ghetto pads and just worked more on costumes for everyone. Yaya, Jeremy, and Meg showed up around midnight by then but i was already asleep.

The next morning;Thursday. wow...4day conventions can sneak up on you since you're looking forward to the weekend and its well...already beginning a day early! We got up and donn'd the DDR costumes; Rage (Mappy), Charmy (Maryssa), Yuni (Chrissy), NiNa (Sarah) then we went to go to the opening ceremonies. the lines were totally confusing. we had been standing in the line for music videos/art show when we noticed severtal people heading to the other side of the giant bulding. then we noticed "THE LINE". a huge 200+ people line to get into the opening ceremonies. we hurried to get in it and it turned out we were just in place to get front row seats on the second floor! The ceremony was all on a stage and closeups of all the guests were projected onto a giant screen. The event was "hosted" by a Computer Generated AX Mascot girl who had a really really (almost sickeningly) cutesy voice actor. they announced all the famous guests, some new some old, and also discussed the future plans for Expo. get this- theres going to be one in NewYork! east coast will now have expo! woo-hoo! Maryssa was really happy about this, being a newyorker and all ^_^

since we were all in costume we just had to get a DDR group pic on the machine. The hotel actually had arcade machines on one floor! it was so amazing. the list was; ParaPara1stMix, PunchMania, Drummania3rdMix, GuiltyGearX, Snk vs Capcom, DDR4th mix and DDR 5th mix! it was just so great and the prices for play was only $1!! we all got on the machine and got a great group picture.

it was now time for the real deal costume group; Girl From Phantasia! Jenny and Leo had already finished getting their Malon and Short costumes and were waiting for me to show up to finish mine. it required me being there since it was practically hot glued to fit me perfectly. The Wig and Elf ears were essential too. after an hour of burnt fingers and quick patching ups, the costume was finished! i had become the evil wizard elf Roll! the costume looked so great and the wig even fit to look almost natural. We hauled off the VeryWellAirbrushed Girl From Phantasia rug then headed out to get pics. we were mainly looking for the cosplay registration so we went to the normal registration where someone told us it was. it ended up being allll the way back at the hotel so we had to go through cali traffic in the heat wearing our costumes carrying around a rug. we got a few odd looks and some thumbs-up from local drivers (and even a cop!). The registration was really simple. we just checked in on our names (which was originally an Eva group but we couldnt do that now) and showed the people [digital] pictures of the costume being constructed to prove it was totally made by us. one girl in the room totally loved my elf ears and was asking about them.

We eventually found Gideon dressed as [the BEST] Dryden in the dealers room. he treated most of us and the STFO crew to a lunch which we all ate on the GirlFromPhantasia rug. we all went together to Karaoke to watch his wife sing. Miyu caught me then and we wandered off to chat. while out we found Elfeater and Sung walking around. my ears and wig were getting a bit uncomfortable for me now so i headed back to the room and took them off.

Friday was just kind of lazy day for me. no costumes so i got to get lotsa picture and video coverage. we started early with Maryssa getting in her Miki costume for the Chrono Cross group. the group wasnt that fantastic but a few people showed up. what was really impressive was para para that day. Jenny and Leo were waiting in line to play in their Angelic Layer costumes when we went up. I got this all on tape too! They did really well for their first time and Leo even invented routines as she went along! it was so great. Maryssa played OneNightInArabia in her Miki costume which went just SO well with the song because of the different "poses" you can do between lyrics. it was really cool. I got to play DDR5th for the first time that day too. This is where i met SN109. hes a DDR freestyler just like me and he was cool on playing whichever song i picked so we went and played Neverending Story, Dive, and B4U. i got to see how to unlock other modes of the game also, the codes are so easy this time around! Since i was in the DDR spirit i hopped on the 4thMix machine as well to play all of my routine songs. i did the spainish dance for LaSenorita, the spins of Afronova, and my fav all out Luv2Me routine. EnoOn was here, and now that he lives in California he was all set up to compete in some of the cons tournaments. he was sure to win the Perfect Attack [which he did ^^].

The DDR Freestyle tournament was now coming up and Maryssa wasnt feeling well. maybe it was lack of food or dehydration or something else (?), but she wasnt up for the tournment. we were guessing since this was Cali that there would be some amazing routines and we didnt have any planned. our only hope was to wear the costumes and switch pads from time to time. itd get the audiences attention to costumes but not much else. it turned out in the end though, that wearing costumes and just playing would have put us pretty well in the tournament. not only was it poorly organized (you had to "sign in" early?), but there was a severe lack of really good routines. SN109 had a fun routine and we cheered for him. There was a homo routine by two guys; one with a giant cowboy hat and the other with an afro wig. Chang0 had arrived now which caused a huge commotion, a Very funny one. cheering for each others teams TCL (Team Chang0Land) and Step Squad had the whole crowd going. what was funnier is that whenever dancers failed or did really homo routines chango would let them know by getting the crowds to shout with him "gaaay, gaayyy, gaaay" or "Fail! Fail Fail!". The only good routine would be Step Squads very own CrackPr0n & Fiona's "Dynamite Rave". they went all out on this one with serveral props and humorous visuals. it was so funny!

On the subject of dance, there were pretty badly scheduled dances at this con. not only were they wayyy over at a building down 3 blocks but the times of the dances were horrible. 6-9pm? thats still daylight! we heard some japanese DJ was there and Pioneer hosted another but never actually got to head out to any of them. the timing was just so bad! who dances during daylight hours?

the next morning was Thousand Arms day! we got up sort of mid-day that day since no big events were going on and wandered off into the lobby. but we forgot! Erin! she was going to meet up with us and get group pics since she was wearing her Marion costume. funny enough several people got pics of us in costume and we kept telling them to wait for her to arrive ^^;. Erin was in her room still finishing up her Crowlia costume from Rhapsody. indeed the details on her costumes were simple amazing! she made such great detail on every part of Marion, she even had an art book to show all of the details done in the original sketches. we all headed down and just took pics outside of the lobby where lots of other groups were. we met a japanese cosplayer named Rei who was wearing a really cute FiveStarStories costume. she seemed really delighted that i recognized her! Most japanese cosplayers seemed so exited that we're interested in this hobby! ^_^ But the biggest thrill had to be meeting the creators, yes Creators of thousand Arms! first we met one of the character designers. he tried to speak the best english he could to say that we were costuming as his characters. i insisted that he autograph Erin's art book while he was there, that was really cool. then, out of nowhere two guys from Red Team showed up. they showed us their badges and WOW were we amazed! they even told us that they would put pictures of us on the official Atlus site; which they did (Click Here!). they took some funny pics too like Wyna beating up Meis with a hammer while Marion kicks him. it was really cool!

We spent most of the time looking around the dealers room. going through CDs and posters, deciding which soundtrack to buy. then i saw a deal on ParaParaParadise where you could get both the game and controller for a good price. so even though i didnt have a japanese ps2 at the time, i figured i wouldnt find this deal anywhere else (all others cons this year had sold out of them). Maryssa and i headed outside to the grass and talked with Dommi and Ollie for awhile. turns out the cosplay would be near-impossible to get into so id have to find another way to tape it. Since we weren't going to go Canasian decided to have another party. Ah yes the alcohol, get-wasted-and-have-fun party idea. Well it almost was; then wasn't. Maryssa and i met up with Canasian and we all headed about 2 miles down the streets of Calivah to the closest convinence store to pick up some heavy boozers. on the way we caught a few cool signs. CALL DDR and a No Skateboarding one. we also caught Kevin Bennet wandering around the streets as well. When we made it to the store we picked up all sorts of drinks. some wayyy too expensive so we kind of had to limit ourselves. No Aftershock for $25 a bottle, geez. I randomly saw rap artist Jagged Edge "Youngblood" there too. Canasian offered to pay with a canadian travelers check which not only would look stupid but being that this is america the legal drinkin' age is 21...not 19 =P. we had wayy to much to carry around so we hailed a taxi to come get us to help take the stuff. by the time we got back the cosplay was just ending. we dumped off the liquor in Canasian/Dommi/Christy's room then went to go dance for a bit. But when everyone finally came out of cosplay nobody wanted to drink. christy was really worn out so we let her have the room, and we took some liquor over to Maryssas room. everyone sorta came to the room to just chat and talk all night about things. Jeremy and I got some serious Pokemon discussion/trading going on but everyone made fun of us. Nahhh~. i dunno when but eventually i just passed out that night.

The last "day" of the con. everyone was tired, hungry, and just kinda worn. The dealers room was the only place we went that day and just spent what litle we had left over from the rest of the weekend. got to talk a bit more with Mandy, give a quick Hi to ShawnTheTouched, and group pics with EyesOnMe. Jenny decided to sell the Girl From Phantasia rug earlier but Gideon never showed up for it. so instead we brought it over to the hotel lobby, sat it down, and left it there. If you have ANY idea who the lucky person who took it home is, please let me know!