Here’s a tip: Anime Boston is freaking HUGE! Register online ahead of time or you’ll be waiting five - yeah, five, maybe six - hours to register at the door. I was kinda on the fence about waiting that long to get in myself - I was expecting to spend all day and much of the night there anyway, but there was no way I was going to listen to [names deleted] complain for that long about how it was too long to wait and their feet hurt and they have sooo many things to do at home… And unfortunately, I’m way to shy to attend an event like that alone. So we had lunch across the street, where the Guiness was served too cold, and went back to the Hynes to hang in the common areas and take pictures of some truly impressive costumes.
You can see the pictures here: Anime Boston 2008 Album
I definitely recommend checking out Anime Boston next year. There’s no way I’m going to miss it! But again, register online ahead of time. There’s more to it than just the costumes.
More info at: AnimeBoston.com
The long registration line was apparently a giant catastrophe. The Anime Boston staff really F’d it up. Even pre-registrants had to wait many hours. A lot of pissed off fans about this: Read on the Anime Boston Forum.
Did I see a Star Blazers uni? Nice!
After some reflection I think it may be appropriate for me to appologise to [names deleted] for some of my comments in the OP. A 5+ hour wait isn’t just unreasonable or excessive, it’s insulting. And laying down to be insulted like that would have been stupid. It’s hardly the first time you guys have talked me out of doing something stupid. Thank you.
Heh. Its mainly that I was unprepared for a 5 hour wait. And, usually, 5 hour waits are preceding getting something for free — not forking over more money to vendors and the like. Hopefully there have been lessons learned here and next year’s Con will be run a bit more smoothly. I hate to say it, but maybe they need to change venues. Which is a shame, as one of the things that makes the Con nice is it being in the middle of Boston — not out in South Boston detached from just about everything.
I agree with you on all counts there Colin.
From reading the AB forum and talking to a friend on the volunteer staff it appears that most of it boils down to two problems. 1) They were denied space at the Sheraton this year, where they usually have a few spillover events and do the registrations, so they were forced to improvise in an unfamiliar space; and 2) they were using a new semi-selfserve registration system that they had not adequately tested. When one (or was it two?) of the card printers broke and it became clear that it took much longer for attendants to self-register than they had planned, they did not have any kind of back up plan, like say pen and paper, to put in place.
The AB Director of Registration has written a formal statement here. I haven’t read it yet so she may contradict what I’ve written above.