Anime Central 2007

Prior years:

• Anime Central 2004
• Anime Central 2005
• Anime Central 2006

Official ACen website

2007

When

The convention runs May 11-13, 2007, Friday thru Sunday

• 3/14 -- Jay has one room, two beds, nonsmoking, reserved at our venerable Motel 6 #1024, Chicago O'hare / Schiller Park
• Until 3/18 -- Registration is $40
• Until 4/21 -- Registration is $45
• Wed 5/9 -- food shopping?

• Thu 5/10

  • appx. 10am -- depart
  • appx. 3pm -- arrive in Chicago (1 hour early due to time zone change)
  • 3pm -- hotel check-in available
  • {TODO: what does preregistration look like this year?}
• Fri 5/11 -- con
• Sat 5/12 -- con

• Sun 5/13 -- con

  • 12pm -- hotel check-out
  • appx. 2pm -- depart
  • appx. 10pm -- arrive home

Convention Notes and Highlights

• http://panelprogramming.com/ has information on scheduled panels but not times

  • http://mnsi.net/navi/acen07schedule.pdf is available!

• guests: http://acen.org/guests.html (without descriptions). Notables include:

  • Caroline Curtis of 9th Elsewhere (confirmed in person @ Wizzywig sometime in April)
  • Yasuhiro Nightow, Trigun manga-ka
• They have apparently remodeled the Hyatt. o_O

Who

Staying at Motel 6

1. Jon Keim / JayRandom
2. Chad / Chad
3. Alan Castonguay / codepoetica - Registered
4. Todd Miller / _Quinn
5. Jeremy Wagner-Kaiser / Kalium

Needs a place to stay, and would helpfully make the room $11 cheaper per person

1. Stephen Satterthwaite, Scott's friend (who lives here)

Staying elsewhere

1. Crystal / Kitty
2. Wenjing/Wabbit (Yay for WoK-ular Convincing!)
3. Scott Loper / icywindow
4. DarkMorford

Invited but probably not coming

1. Tanetris
2. Chad's friend

Jon posted about ACen on LiveJournal? and/or called these people, and they've either not responded or made various "probably not"-sounding noises

1. Laine and Allen

2. Jon's friends:

   1. Keith not so, I want to go!
   2. Tracy
   3. Brittany
   4. Nicole

What

Questions do you have?

• something
• something something

Do we eat?

snackfoods for room:

• crackers

• drinks

  • pop?
  • water (A water bottle worked great for me at Otakon. I bought a little 1" carribeaner clip thing and clipped the bottle to my belt by its lid-loop thing. -- ^> )
• granola bars / breakfast bars, etc
• canned foods?
• tuna
• loaf(s) of bread
• peanut butter
• jelly/jam
• ramen
• meatstuff
• rice cooker?
• ice for cooler?

In the past roomfood seems like it's been a mixed bag, neither clearly cheaper nor more expensive than eating at-con. Alan and Jon always seem to get overly ambitious and spend a lot on roomfood, though Jon has not actually compared costs.

Where

Are we staying?

Four options, depending on how many people are in our group:

• Hyatt Regency O'Hare, official Convention hotel: $139 / night + hotel taxes. Only likely we'll get a room here if we move fast. Staying in the 'con hotel is very convenient, but costly. Rooms are also pretty small (especially the ones in the building's four corner towers). (Relatively) expensive parking. But convenient!
• Motel 6: appx. $60 / night? + hotel taxes. The venerable Motel 6. Very, very cheap. Almost exactly a mile away from the convention center, which is an easily bearable walk (provided good weather? Which we've always had.) and not through a bad neighborhood. Rooms are no smaller than the Hyatt, and easy to reserve much later in the year than the official con hotel. Depending on how fast we make arrangements, this may be our only option.
• Hyatt Regency O'Hare, homeless man method: $50 / night. Cash only. Requires walking around with a "Will pay for slice of floor" sign. Convenient, has shower.
• Car: appx. $0 / night. Relatively expensive parking at the Hyatt, free parking at the Motel 6. No shower facilities.

Stuffing more than 5 people in any room, Hyatt or Motel 6, would be painful. 3 is usually pretty tight, but the savings offered by 4-6 are very attractive.

Option the taken! : Jay has reserved Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights (5/10 evening - 5/13 morning) at our venerable Motel 6 (see timeline above for link to Motel 6's page and/or 2006 year info page).

  $65.54 / night
*   3
= 196.62
*   1.115 (11.5% current tax rate, according to Motel 6)
= 219.23 total

three people: 73.08 each
four people:  54.81 each
five people:  43.85 each
six people:   36.54 each

Them's the facts, so get recruiting and just save a bucket of money!

Sleeping arrangements

• Jon - always takes floor (and likes it)
• Alan - floor spooning for great Warmth!
• Tan - also likes floor
• beds for Todd and Chad then, it seems.
• Keith - fine with whatever
• Jeremy - will sleep wherever he can

How (much)

payment: all group expenses (hotel, gas, parking, etc) usually go on Jon's credit card. He keeps a log of who pays for what and hands out bills on Sunday, keeping it relatively simple to divide costs. Checks are preferred, cash also acceptable.

• Gas round trip: $40 (per-car?)

• Hotel:

  • Motel 6: $55/night (or less, depending on numbers)

• Parking:

  • Hyatt: $10/car/day
  • Motel 6: free, unless some people want to drive up to and back from the 'con hotel (which Jon thinks requires an inconvenient amount of scheduling and coordination)
• Food: $40-$60 for the weekend (depending on your frugality)

• Badges:

  • Until 3/18: $40
  • Until 4/21: $45
  • Door: $50
  • commemorative 10th Anniversary badge: $5 extra

Each person needs to take care of their own registration. Group registration requires at least 10 people, saves each person only $5, and has the disadvantage that if any one person's registration is held up for any reason, the whole group is likely screwed when signing in at-con. Pre-registration is advised. Various previous attendees have horror stories they can use to suitably terrify n00bs.

Todo

• bring

  • Jay's cooler
  • A lanyard, if you don't want to pin your ACen badge to your person (getting a lanyard at the con is hit-or-miss), and any lanyard accessories (like bells?)(WoK likes to jingle to remember that she has things attached to her!)
  • A straight DC/AC car power?
  • Custom badges, with all-new WoKart?! (When WoK remembers...)
• go shopping (see shopping list in "what do we eat" section)
• Wibble and hope that Fred comes to ACen. T_T