<< Milage Note | Main | ACN Day Two >>
September 23, 2004
ACN Day One
I no longer fear death, for I have been part of Day One of ACN 2004.
I arrived at 11:30 after a wonderful drive (again, no traffic except at construction sites, and even that minimal and quickly-passed, and this time I'd predicted to drive length and set up the iPod to within minutes of the actual drive time) and when I asked if I could park even though my room wasn't ready yet, I was told I was staying at a different hotel.
"How is it that the Con HQ, which is where I'm staying, can be in a different hotel from the Con?" I wanted to ask, but I knew better than to ask that of the man at the desk. I would check my email and see what my co-organizers had to say.
But the settings I had worked out laboriously last year to get my Mac to connect out of this hotel's Windows-instructions-only business center didn't work, so 45 minutes later I'd managed to read URLs off my laptop and type them into a spare windows box, finding only unclear and uncertain email that didn't really suggest anything like I had been told.
Then Craig arrived and told me. Yes, it was actually true... At least 6 of the con's rooms (the 3 rooms the con itself had and 3 attendee's rooms) had been moved to another hotel, 5 blocks away. Oh, and those aren't suites there, but rather closets with beds in them. And the hotel compensated us for this inconvenience by 1) making these arrangements for closet-sized replacement rooms 5 blocks away at the new hotel's standard rate (no discount) and 2) giving us the hotel basement as gaming space.
Which could actually be pretty nice, except that at 6 PM, just before the 6:30 game slot began, we found out that half of that basement space had been promised to another group at the hotel as well. We moved out as they set up the overhead projector and screen (which we had taken down earlier, as we didn't need them). Con members were arriving with confused looks on their faces. No one seemed to know what was going on.
It's now 8 PM. No one knows now. No one know what tomorrow will bring. In fact, we have less information that we usually would.
Tonight, after the events end around midnight, I will walk 5 blocks to get to my bed. Then tomorrow around 7 I will come back to GM my Teenagers from Outer Space/Amber cross-over (which starts around 9). I may well just have the poor PCs try to negotiate space for a school dance rather than my original plot. I'm feeling inspired with things to make that task fiendishly difficult.
Posted by ghoul at September 23, 2004 08:11 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://noneuclidianstaircase.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/170
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference ACN Day One:
>> ACN 2004 post-con report from Flaming Monkey
I recently attended the 2004 edition of Ambercon North, which was held September 23-26 in Toronto, and, despite the hotel problems that the con had, I had a good time again this year. For Jenn and I, the annual trip... [Read More]
Tracked on October 3, 2004 04:05 PM
Comments
So irked that I'm not there. We're doing a major system rollout this week and there's no way I could get away for the weekend. Liz and Michael et al have permission to glare at me in effigy, if they so wish, since I'd promised I'd make it.
Posted by: Bryant at September 24, 2004 10:53 AM
I can't believe the hotel would treat you folks that badly. Crummy ingrates.
Posted by: Arref at September 27, 2004 09:07 AM
Bryant, we did miss you horribly, but we understand work. (That would be the royal 'we' although MC might disagree.) Will we see you at ACUS?
Posted by: LizT at September 27, 2004 09:40 AM
That is my strong intention. Still rather cheerful about how much fun TBR was; in fact, I'm laying my own plans for a similarly-styled non-Amber gaming con (which I will be emailing you about soon, since I hear a rumor you've got some experience in these fields...)
Posted by: Bryant at September 27, 2004 10:38 AM
You missed out on some good gaming, Bryant, and the wonderful city of Toronto (with perfect weather), so I think that's punishment enough.
If you don't actually make it to ACUS though..... ;)
Posted by: Michael at September 29, 2004 08:27 PM
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)