Clutch
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Posts posted by Clutch
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There is no Post Otakon 2023 forum so far. In the past one was made within a few weeks after the latest Otakon. Asking because I don't want to miss Registration when it opens. There was no announcement about hotels going active and I stumbled upon that by accident.
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2 hours ago, Daniel Perales said:
There's only a few of us (probably less than a handful), left who were there at the time.
I would have to look, but don't think I took any pictures that year. If I did, they were on film and I was not very good with the camera.
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134.40 seconds just to reload this page.
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9 hours ago, TomDent said:
I think it would be pretty cool to bring back some guests from the first few years of Otakon. Not sure how many are still active in the industry or con scene, but it would be a nice throwback. And maybe industry guests from anime that debuted or was super popular in '94.
They will have to break out the Bean Bandit, Lum, and Ranma standees again, and set up the Dealer's Closet.
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I was curious about the Cambria Suites. Has anyone stayed there in the past who can provide their feedback?
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Unless Otakon is releasing further blocks, I don't see the Hampton Inn on the list any more. Managed to get one there after the Marriott Marquis errors. As I said at work today, "Now I know how Swifties feel."
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Marriott Marquis kept throwing resource lock errors trying to book and then was sold out in 60 seconds. Disappointing.
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10 hours ago, TnAdct1 said:
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE
- Even with the line control, trying to get in on Saturday is still a mess for those who are carrying bags. While I understand the safety reasons for it, bag checks are sadly still slowing things down and creating long lines.
Not disagreeing with your statement, however, there were many attendees who did not have their bags opened and ready for inspection. The security personnel doing bag inspection in the Marriott had to keep stating to have their bags open and ready. Otakon should probably have signs posted earlier in the lines stating that fact to help the line flow, but they can't control people not being ready.
One a side note, repeat instructions may be good to have on sign boards to save the staff from shouting as much. A sign with an arrow pointing left (held high enough to see further away) would be a visual clue to herd the crowd for the Dealer's Hall. Another sign near the escalators would help with that control, in my opinion. Signs can be re-used (like the map boards) to be a lower cost expense. I also thought the staff having glow sticks or wands to point people in the correct direction may be useful, maybe fun. I could imagine someone doing a little dance move with the glow sticks pointing someone to the left (Move to the left. Move to the left. Uh hah...). My point being that in large crowds you can see things before hearing them over the din.
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Just found out about this. Thought someone would have posted it already in the Announcements area.
https://www.otakon.com/info/hotels/
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I think that all the guests charge now, and it comes down to how much you are willing to pay. Bruce Campbell was the featured guest at Wizard World some time ago, and they had tiered pricing on pictures, autographs, and even a special luncheon or something. I remember one price being $80 and that was for one of the small things, like an autograph. Not sure that anyone's autograph is worth that much to me. I'm ancient though, just look at my signature.
Only ever obtained 2 autographs. One was from Colin Baker [the Sixth Doctor] that was mailed to me after he had to cancel a convention appearance. Who knows if he really signed it, but it was a nice gesture. The other was the late Douglas Adams who signed a copy of Mostly Harmless at a local book store (which is long gone 😟). The poor man had serious jet lag and swirled a marker on the inside of my copy of his book. In the grand scheme of things, the autographs are nice to have, but not worth much to anyone else. I would feel foolish after looking at an autograph and saying "I paid $80 for that! What was I thinking?", but to each their own.
Peace. 😀
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One thing that was a little confusing was my Friday visit to the Dealer's Hall. The staff were moving everyone to the left going to the entrance. When I exited the room, I was walking on the opposite side of the hallway, because everyone was being shunted to the left when going in. A staffer with a big fan told me I was on the wrong side of the barrier. So they must have switched sides of the long hallway where people were going to enter the Dealer's Hall between the time I entered and the time I left. My intention was to exit on the opposing side of the way I was directed to enter.
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You can check https://www.animemusicvideos.org for some of them. You will probably have to use their super search to narrow down the results. In the early days, the same song would be used for a bunch of videos for different anime.
Times have changed, and the contents which were viewed one way at the time may now be considered offensive when judged by today's standards. They are a product of their time. Same with fan parody videos.
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I rarely attend panels, but did go to Animation Cels at Work: The Life and Death of Cel Animation. I think the presenter's laptop went to sleep about 3/4 of the way through. It is easy to imagine presenters running on battery instead of plugging in, and laptops do funny things on battery when deciding to save power.
That made me curious if there is a staff person assigned to panels to nudge the panelists along during set-up to avoid technical glitches. The presenter should be doing a connection check and microphone level check, before getting started.
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Just wanted to say thank you to all the staff, gophers, and everyone whom helped put together another Otakon for us. You do great work and deserve appreciation! 😀
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Marriott Marquis:
Good
- Staff is very friendly.
- Has an underground connector to the convention center which helped avoid the heat/rain.
- Requested to check in early, which helped planning some afternoon activity for the Thursday before the convention.
- Conditioner, shampoo, and liquid soap (body wash) are provided in pump dispensers in the shower if you care to use them.
- Beds were comfortable, and the hotel provided a small bottle of lavender spray to mist the pillows to help you sleep. Nice touch.
Bad
- Wi-Fi is no longer complimentary. They want you to register for a "free" Bonvoy account to access it, otherwise you are charged some amount per day, $13 I think. The Otakon hotel page still has it listed as complimentary. I would suggest that be reviewed and updated for the future.
- The hotel staff don't seem to monitor the hallways/rooms at night. Plenty of loud shouting in the halls. There is a couch in the hall on some floors and that becomes a party spot. Almost ripped the door open this morning to confront someone screaming near my room after waking me up. It is after Midnight, jerk. I feel sorry for those airline crew who are staying during the convention. Can't imagine they get good sleep during Otakon.
- Not much noise insulation in the rooms. Voices, T.V., etc. carry through the walls.
- I don't know if the other hotels in the area get the throngs of photographers doing cosplay shoots in the lobby, but the Marriott Marquis seems to be inundated with them. The elevator bank to my room was located at the end of a hallway, with 2 elevators on opposing sides. Some photographer is having a person with a 5 foot sword slung over their shoulder, with their arm outstretched, to take their photo. This is the public elevator space for the one side of the building. I walked through the guy's shot and really didn't care. They should not have been there in the first place. The convention center has plenty of open space to take photographs, and you don't need photographers blocking stairs, paths, and hallways to take photos. I wish the hotel would crack down on that.
I had more thoughts, but can't remember them right now.
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Looks like the Nintendo 3DS won't access the schedule page. It throws a SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) error. Probably is using an older version which is no longer supported.
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I have noticed a lot of places are aggressively doing things to not accept cash. The local Lowes has 2 self check-out booths that are listed as "cash or card", but they are never turned on. The local Whole Foods used to take case in self-checkout, but stopped that as well. They want you to wait in the long lines with full carts when you only have 1 item, because you want to use cash.
I was saying to @Revan that I'm getting a pre-paid card to take down there, because I expect it will be very difficult to pay in cash in a lot of places. One coffee shop near the convention center told me they were not accepting cash (happened a few years ago). When you see that cash empty out of the wallet, you think twice about purchases. Tap-and-go with a card and it is easy to rack up a quick debt.
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There is (or was) guest Wi-Fi at the convention center, but it will be slow. No data plan on my phone, so I would load the schedule page on the hotel Wi-Fi and keep the tab open to hook up again to the convention Wi-Fi. It was easiest if you only loaded the page for the day of the schedule, so there were fewer mistakes in finding content. They also had digital screens with the schedule grid and a marker showing the current time. Used that a bunch of times when the Wi-Fi was acting up.
Not sure if you can access the schedule on a Nintendo 3DS. Meant to try that, but Nintendo shut down the store for it.
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Last few years, it has been slow throughout the convention. Never understood why, because the old guard are the ones who post for the most part. We do appreciate having the announcements on the board. I happened upon the hotel block release notice by accident. Logged in and saw a post that said it was opening the next day. Would have missed it completely otherwise.
If they ditch the board, can we signup for an email blast of announcements? Good old Majordomo.
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1 hour ago, nettefairy said:
Where are the industries? 😭 No Crunchyroll, Rightstuf, Viz, Goodsmile…. I miss all the freebies. Remember the Ponycanyon paper lantern display? Will they ever be back?? I miss the dealers room looking like Times Square.
I think those days are gone forever.
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Spoke too soon. Got this message after I logged in:
Contact us. Error code: 2S119/1
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7 hours ago, KyoKyo said:
Slow as in speed or slow as in volume? As for the latter, as social media has taken off over the years this board has become a ghost town. I can still remember the good ol days in the mid to late 00s when this place was hopping.
Could be worse. Nekocon's forums were constantly hacked by Brazilian porn sites until they eventually got rid of the boards entirely.
They were slow loading any pages. It has been better in the last 24 hours.
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From the article below:
QuoteIt’s my dream to go to Comic-Con — will that be affected this year?
Honestly, yes. Several show and movie panels have already been canceled and the strike notice forbids SAG-AFTRA members from promoting any work made by struck companies — even if those projects were long in the past. There are certain exceptions that would allow members to attend some conventions, but the bottom line is that major events like San Diego’s Comic-Con will indeed be diminished during the strikes.
https://apnews.com/article/how-hollywood-strikes-affect-fans-b7d9f908207629dd3c30e65a77666d8f
Otakorp Galleries for 2023
in Otakon 2023
Posted
I don't hold hope for this board being up much longer, let alone new galleries being added. 😟
Been on these boards since they opened, but they seem to be abandoned.