Late late as planned was the DDR Cosplay. Jenny and Leo were still finishing up their Yuna costumes so they would be a bit late. So the group at that time was Maryssa as Charmy, ??? (its a secret!!) as RingMan, Elfeater as Devil Zukin, and Mappy as Rage. we all met up in the lobby and had a looong drawn out discussion on RingMan's gender. Damn those pointy shoes! they were a dead giveaway! Leo and Jenny then showed up in their Lady and Tracy costumes and pictures commenced! there were quite a few people out there getting pictures, not even knowing what DDR was! but it was great to get all the attention! Amen!! ^_^
Then came DUH DUN...the BustAMove Party! In MY wonderful room ^_^ Enigmaopoeia and her sister of BAMGLOBAL showed up with their import games. I was psyched to finally meet the webmaster of B-a-M Global! And to play the newest BaM game! Oh joy of joys!! Sadly the PS2's Mod-Chip will only play burned copies and since she had an original (with special controller i might add) it refused to play. so we bust out some BAM2: Dance Tengoku mix in the light of it being a BAM party. to say the least Enig and her sister totally Slaughtered the rest of us; pulling off each and every combo in sheer perfection and timing atacks directly before solos. theres no stopping them! Oh my gosh I couldnt believe how good they were, they had all the combos totally memorized!! Enig KILLED me! But I guess thats kinda to be expected of the person who hosts the biggest BaM site on the net ^_^ After that the two twiddle-fingers played some PopNMusic3 which confused anyone who hadnt seen any keyboard music games. the party slowly died out and people began to leave to find other parties. But Wait! out of nowhere comes a laaaarge group of new people! Lindsay, Candy, Henry, Justin, Kelly, Val, Max, Mike, Matt, and Raya all came in for the late party! even though there was no BAM3, we got to all play DanceDanceRevolution. what made it better was that Henry copied Disney's Rave for Maryssa so it got even more intese. everyone gave the game a try and it ended up we all had a great time.

Saturday, February 17th

early morning saturday was the large gathering of multiple cosplay groups. thanks to the aid of Dommi-chan, we all pretty much knew set times to get together for pictures. in one room was the Ironcat girls getting their group shots. got a few of them and since theyd be awhile before taking other groups Around noon there were a plethora of group photo scessions being held and plenty of pictures being taken. The tiny little room was packed!...we had group pics for American Cosplay Paradise, Cos-Men, and the COSP mailing list...soooo many people. And for the COSP picture we had to hold poses for suuuch a long time! But finally all photos were taken and we got to get out of the room. This is when Danny got a lovely picture of my ass in my Venus costume ^^;; Oh yes perhaps we should note I was dressed as SeraMyu Super Sailorvenus today and Mappy went as Toby from Unico. Since Tikki and Heather were too busy with the Ironcat stuff they didnt get to wear their Unico stuff. So we went around the dealers room but now the security was making people leave their bookbags and stuff outside the room to prevent stealing...but that didnt stop Mappy from hiding his under his cape! After that Mappy changed into his Beat outfit for the JetSet Radio group going on. They all went out to get pictures and over to the mall so we split up for a bit. =p

We both met up again and decided to check out the game room which FINALLY opened. Nothing really good was being played yet, and it was kind of stupid that every single spot was a different fighting game...I mean come on! And there were these 2 guys playing DDR with the hand controllers for some reason X_X augh! We ran into DJ Heat and Enig again, who took a few pics of us. Then we ran into Dan T who took my picture for the costume contest! I was all excited ^_^ We also found Steve Bennett again being interviewed by Otakutelevision. By the way getting between the 3rd and 2nd floor sucked! It took a while for us to find the stairs and we must have gone through that stairwell a million times before finding where we were going. There was a dead cockroach in there too! yuck! We took a few more dealers room runs where this one girl saw us holding hands and was like "Awww!" ^.^ I got a bunch of pictures taken here. We said hi to Van again a few times and then ventured down to the bottom floor. The whole gang was hanging around saying how they were going out to dinner together, and of course we wanted to come! So when Danny added us to the roster including a bunch more people, he told us the reservation was moved to later than it had been since there were so many people going. So I had time to go change out of my Venus costume (but left my cool wig on) and we ran back downstairs ^_^ Meatcon was beginning!!! MeatCon! probably the largest ever group of Otakus all going to an event outside of a con, all at the same time. the idea was conjured up by genrou.net 's Danny Hong. we had a fairly large group of friends all in one place, so what do we do? Go out to eat! Yes! And all at the same time! We decided to try and get everyone together to go, and who would drive. Maryssa and I went with Danny, Zoe, and ???. Yaaay for Danny's car!! We had Initial D music blasting the whole time, even as half our group ran the red light trying to stay together on the way. We all drove up to Malibu Steaks to find an extra large table reserved for us!.....This was the weirdest restaurant I have ever been in. These Spanish guys came around with all these kinds of meat on big swords and they just keep putting it on your plate till you turn the little wooden thing on the table red-side up. (Danny stole one of these later on, along with one of the pairs of tongs you needed to grab the meat off the swords). Sitting at the end of the table with Danny, Johnny (Canasian), Chuck, and Carolina, of course the whole conversation was about cars =p hehe. And I bought my first legal Long Island Iced Tea! I was so excited ^_^ After everyone was finally dont eating, it was time to pay up. Our bill came to.... well, why dont you check Danny's page for that info. hehe. The drive home was interesting as well XD read about it on that page.

Then we went upstairs for a little while before mappy had his race scheduled with Danny I wasn't about to give up on the tournament i had specifically brought my HachiRoku for! so we arrived fashionably late by 20 minuites to join the Lonely Drivers in their heated challenge atop Mt. Akina.The only problem was that Danny said "meet on the roof." So we went all the way up to the top floor to find we couldnt get on the roof and that no one was there anyway. There was a cool fishtank thouhg =p oooooh. So we thought maybe he meant that little outside part of the 3rd floor. We checked there and no on was there either but finally we found everyone infront of the dealers room door. The race was on! There was Danny and Andy with their souped up RCs and then came mine. unfortunately there was a power equal to mine...speaking about RadioFrquency that is, as Andy had the same model type as me and thus-same controller frequency. which at first seemed like a curse, but later came as a gift. you see, now we could both easily pull off twin drifts, synchrinized turns and even Double-wins agains Danny's FD. mwahaha. We even got Carolina's brother Alex to DJay some songs from the Initial D soundtracks as we raced. it was so funny!

The DDR tournament was at midnight. the tournament all went fairly well. Fairly well...considering this con had never even seen a DDR tournament =P. It took place midnight saturday. there was a signup sheet earlier in which we both noticed TWO people had put their names down as the legendary Jenith (a well-known DDR personality). Of course, Jenith wasn't there. they pulled names off the list and had them come up and play on both dance pads. whoever played had to decide which song they would both play. unfortunately only 1 pad was fully working. the other was missing the up arrow. Got to see Eric and Tony from WEDOCA there. Eric was competing and did quite well. I also got to see Melissa Chasko play again. hadn't seen her since Sugoicon, and shes gotten even better! It was Jian's turn to go up. at that time they were replacing the 2nd pad so he got to play alone. Jian pulled off Massive knee-drops. more by himself than i have ever seen anyone else do! it was great. unfortunately these were the budget 3rd party mats and most kneedrops didn't even register. bummer. They called out some random guys name and Maryssa. Noo!! i wanted to DDr with her! but luckily the guy wasnt there so we got to go together. Yay ^_^ She picked brilliant2u so she could do her spins, because in this competition; its not about score, its about look. we wanted to give this rookie audience a show! we both did really well...we overheard someone saying "How do they know when to use their hands?!" but it turns out now her pads werent working and since i got on the newly replaced ones, mine did. Argh!! I was so mad about this! And the guy keeping score just stared like a retard at anyone who said right to him THE PADS ARENT WORKING! >_< Oh well... So i advanced and she unfairly lost out =[. The tourny went along as people picked totally easy songs scoring S's on them. nobody aside from maryssa, mappy, and some Columbus Performance team members did anything flashy. Y2KJ pulled off a flashy SS with some freestylin with it! the audience was soooo new to this game. everytime someone broke a 100+ combo they would cheer as if it takes GREAT skill to pull off a 100 combo on Basic mode. funniest moment: This conslug in front of us is watching and he turns to us saying "Hey guys; did you know that theres an arcade game like this?" we couldnt help but pull off 100% sarcasm with the guy saying "Oh Reeealllllyyy???". it was just SO lame ^_^ Ugh there were just a lot of losers at this thing...I swear the east coast is so ghetto...most people don't have a clue about this game here. I mean, singing along to Butterfly? HellLLOOOO?? You just dont DO that its so overplayed x_X And this one guy got up to play and everyone was like "Everyone get away from the dance pads, this is his big Afronova routine." Okay so I figured maybe there was someone who knew what they were doing. So he starts dancing and we wait to see something cool. And we wait. And wait. And wait. He does a 180. We wait some more. ¬.¬ Why were we supposed to move away from the pads again? I'm sorry, it was just a sad, sad tourney. The tournament was coming to its end. i was up with DED7 from the Columbus team. we both met at Ohayocon so he was nice enough to let me play my best fresstyle song "luv2Me". we both did well and audience loved the way i would play this song using hands/reversals and spins. But since it was a score competition and neither of us got S's, we didnt win. THis was the stupidest thing... they didnt even write down number scores, it was done by LETTER score >_< Got to see Tomoe there (from Eyes on Me)) and Henry later showed up. we All wanted to showoff Henry's skills but they wouldnt allow anyone aside from registrants to play and by the end of the competition they ended up closing the game room.

Off to the *cough* WORST *cough* dance. Glowsticks in hand, we went straight from the DDR tourny to the dance downstairs. Yuck/Stupid/Smelly...all words to try and explain how bad the dance was. I asked Kevin Bolk if they had played anything Remotely decent and all he said was "Info high and some Orgy". otherwise it was total crap music. not even anime, just total crap. not only that but dispite the large room they used it it, it was totally packed with fanboys, conslugs, unbathables, and just really dirty people. (if you dont believe us, click HERE...notice how there are only two girls in the whole place who are dancing with EACH OTHER!) The stench of body sweat filled the room and there was no way i would stay in there anymore than 5 minutes without getting total clothstrephobia. its was just sooo bad. So we head out and chat with Dommi-chan, Chuck and some others.

We wandered around more and ran into the SCC group and Mike looking verrrry interesting...they were all wearing each other's costumes!! Mike was wearing Jenny's, Dave was wearing Mappy's, and the girls were all wearing Mike's costumes. I guess this is what happens when you get no sleep at cons! We all went back up to my room to play some DDR together and so I could change out of my skirt since we werent going back to the dance.

It was pretty late but we were determined to stay up for the whole night! So we went back to the video gaming room to see what was going on. We peeked in the door and I screamed out Oh my GOSH its Bust-a-Move Dance Summit!!!! We ran inside to check it out! We were so psyched since we couldnt get it to work in the hotel room but now we could play! It was really cute and the music was great but it was kind of confusing how it decided which people out of the dance group got the solos & stuff. Mappy played through one song and did awesome! it was even his first time ^_- Then the guy in charge of the PS2 put in Unison. This is where Maryssa proceeds to have a heart attack from excitement. First of all, the girls in it are adorable with totally cute outfits (and verrry cosplayable), second I see some of the songs you can perform are Night of Fire and Love Machine...then when I tell the guy to play Love Machine I freak out even MORE when I realize they use the actual dance moves that Morning Musume uses in the video. AaahhhhH!!! I must have this game!! Unfortunately they closed the game room before I could get to try myself ;_;

We wandered around after that and found Henry and Kelly; Henry, for some reason, had a phone receiver hanging from his pants ^^;;; They explained how they had stolen it because it was just lying around inside the elevator @_o; ooookay. We sat on the ground out in the hall together and just chatted about stuff like how Henry, Kelly, and Maryssa all live on the east coast but go to west coast cons. About this time I think we started to feel a little dizzy from the whole wine bottle we chugged earlier ^^;; Mappy then proceeded to take a picture of me 'cosplaying' as him with his goggles and gloves. ^^;; More wandering, then we went to SCC and Mike's room for a while, where Jenny was forcing Mike to give her foot massages. Mike was all tired from practicing the whole day for the cosplay skit they did. We talked about art stuff for a while and then he needed to go to bed but be awake by 8am. So we promised to come back to the room and wake him up (it was about 6am at this point). The 2 of us decided we really needed at least some sleep now so we decided to take a 2 hour nap and then go wake up Mike. We slept on the floor this night because we got in so late and all the beds were taken in my room.

Sunday, February 18th

I dont even remember the alarm going off at 8 so Mappy just went by himself to wake up Mike ^^; But then a few people in my room woke up so we got to sleep in a BED for a couple of hours after that. But we had to get up because we needed to pack etc. Not too much happened this morning since we kinda procrastinated getting up =p We went for a last dealers room run and stuff, and spent some last minute time with the gang. Then Mappy had to leave with SCC so I was on my own.