Friday

Woke up, fooled around for a couple hours and drove to Madison so I could get a taste of ChibiCon 2k3. Wow, there were more than 5 people at this con and I was totally surprised about it. After a bit of bugging from people at the reg desk and after talking with Todd I finally got my badge. (Staff=Free badge, oh yes.) I started wandering this con, and to my horror.only 3 rooms. Panel Room, Dealer's Room, and a "Main" room which was used as a video room when an event wasn't going on. But no video game room to be found. ;_; Another thing that was cool is they had a staff member go into each room and notify people about panels going on so they wouldn't miss them. Anyway, afternoon rolled around and I had to go home for a few things. While there I realized I should cosplay. So I went to my room put on Junior from Xenosaga on. Pretty easy to do since its just regular clothes.Got to see Lauren again finally. Havn't seen her since Christmas. ^_^ Mostly I just spent Friday hanging around the dealer's room talking to the guys at Anime Pavillion and Todd. Also got to check out Johnny Otaku's panel about anime on radio. The whole thing kinda felt like a self promotion though. Too bad we don't get his station in Huntsvegas. After a bit more wandering, I met the video/sound guy to discuss my dance for the coming night. All was worked out so I went to opening ceremonies and Kevin's panel on "Mecha". More people showed up, surprisingly NOT Huntsville locals. A lot of us were going "Who ARE these people!?" Anyway. Since nothing else was going on, everyone went to the courtyard for socializing. Also made it a pristine time to take group pics. ^_^ ALL the cosplayers at the con in one pic.
Afterwards, the AMV competition began. Some skills right there to the one guy who took home half the prizes! Later not much was going on so Schu had a party in her room, which in turn moved to the hotel Jacuzzi/pool area! It was INSANE! One guy dressed up as a ninja all of a sudden jumped into the pool while we were relaxin in the hot tub. And he just started "sneaking" around inside the pool. It was comedy gold at its finest moment!

Saturday

Fooled around some and didn't get to the con until about 2:30 after hitching a ride with Brad. Turns out I missed the DDR tournament. There I met up with Justin(crossscarx.com). Good guy, glad I got to talk with him for a bit again since AWA last year. ^_^ Went out to eat at McCalisters on southside, while out I took a few pictures of the Madison/Huntsville scenery. They turned out better than I expected actually, I'll have to go out on my own sometime and take pictures. Anyway, got back, did more socializing in the courtyard. Turns out Melissa from Anime Nashville was here! Finally another familiar face! Afterwards the cosplay happened. It was good and quant, and DIDN'T take 5 hours including setup! Just about an hour for the whole thing. Good stuff if you ask me. Schu's group, street fighter girls, and the guilty gear X characters were the ones to take home prizes.After the cosplay, the moment EVERYONE was waiting for (well at least the moment I was waiting for), setup for the dance. Turns out everything worked when we set it up. Was pretty painless since hotel staff helped clear the chairs out. I set up my laptop and turntables and just started. Had a lot of requests for DDR stuff, luckily I found my DDR CDs since I didn't have a lot of my laptop. Overall I think it went well, probably about 30-50 people were there NOT being wallflowers.. Even though only 2 showed up for the first ten minutes. It was a good loose atmosphere, I would have liked to do better though. Plus my speakers lost a lot of volume at the last 30 minutes. But the crowd didn't seem to care so I just tried to keep a nice rhythm of bass going and it worked. ^_^ Unfortunately I had to cut the dance off at 9:30 (Only 2 hours!) so I needed a song to play to get people the hell out. Eric came to the rescue with "Rocky Top", but..a strange thing happened. No one left.. .they just kept dancing.. So I kept the dance going for 10 minutes longer, but then Lauren the conchair made me stop again. After the dance, not much else to report. Cosplay awards were given out and they set up DDR MAX in the main room. Just a lot of socializing. Went and hung out with Brad and Eric afterwards and had a big meal at IHOP since I was in a good mood from the dance(even though some spooge at IHOP got on my case for saying "fuck," but that's a story for another time.)

+Pros+

Good small con atmosphere.
Very approachable staff.
Easy to find people.
Great dance (^_^)
MELVIN the hotel staff guy! This guy deserves honorable mention for the con.
You needed water? BOOM! He was there. A chair moved? BOOM! He was there..
The guy must have had clones of himself running the hotel 24/7.

-Cons-

Speakers going out at the dance. (-_-)
RockyTop being played at the dance. (-_-)
Hotel Jacuzzi having a timer and shutting off, unable to turn it back on
after a certain time.
Dealers "closet."
Spooges at IHOP.