MichaelandChrissy.com

The whale watching trip was still very fun, despite being dejected by Nile and calf. We were thinking about doing it again some time, maybe during an Alaska cruise or something. Once back on dry land, Chrissy had a whole lobster for dinner, which was gross because the digestive tract was still intact. We were pretty tired once we started back towards Providence, and it was starting to get dark. Unfortunately, the roads are confusing out that way and they’re not very well marked. I got us very lost.

Luckily, our good friend Chip was able to figure out how to get us back on track. I called him on the cell and told him where we were. He broke out the laptop and followed us on Google maps. I thought that I was going in the right direction, but it turned out that I should have headed west much sooner than I had. So Chip gave me the right directions to get back to Providence, but it took us much longer to get back than we had anticipated.

We had signed up for a whale watching expedition with Captain John Boats in Plymouth, Massachusetts. We showed up about two hours early, so we had some time to see Plymouth Rock and visit a local winery. Parking is hard to find around that area (it’s very touristy), but the guy at the winery was nice enough to let us park in one of his reserved spots for the day. We tasted half a dozen wines and bought three bottles. We also managed to find some 12-month onesies for Aiden — one that said “Cape Cod” and one that said “Got Butter?” below a picture of a cartoon lobster.

The boat trip was four hours long. They tell you ahead of time to bring a jacket since the Atlantic winds can be brutally cold, but they don’t say anything about being exposed to the sun for long periods of time. My face and forearms got very burned. About an hour and a half into the trip, we started to see some whales. It was very cool, but they were pretty far away from the boat. The naturalist guide explained that these were wild animals and it was ultimately up to them on how close they got. We eventually found a whale that was known to the naturalist, named “Nile”, and her unnamed calf. They kept their distance and eventually the boat turned to find some more whales.

Right after we left, another whale watching boat got close to Nile and her calf. Nile swam right up next to the boat and turned over, showing her underside and fins. She then swam behind the boat and splashed her tail repeatedly. This was all well and good for the other boat, but our boat had been out at sea for three hours and only saw whales a mile away. Nile had totally dissed us. Our boat turned around to get a better look at Nile’s show, but she stopped by the time we got close enough to see her without maximum zoom on my camera. Defeated (and very jealous of the other boat), we turned around the headed for home. We were glad that we brought our jackets and left the shorts at home, since it was very cold out there on the way back.

Chrissy and I planned to head out to Cape Cod on Saturday. I only wanted to get an autograph or two from Peter Cullen before we jumped in the car. Somehow, the alarm clock was reset to one hour later, so we ended up in the autograph line at 7:30 AM instead of 8:30 AM. I didn’t mind so much, but Chrissy was clearly grumpy because we rushed out the door. We hung out for an hour before the dealer room opened at 8:30, and then Chrissy held my place in line while I went down to the dealer room.

Cory had managed to put some more pieces together overnight, so I grabbed some more stuff from him. I also found some odds and ends that I wanted to buy elsewhere. The dealer room, with Cory as the exception, was rediculously overpriced. Vendors were selling movie items for twice what you could find them for at the local Target. Even the vintage stuff was overpriced, which is why I passed on a few tables that actually had G1 stuff. $750 for a boxed G1 Scorponok? That’s a little steep; I would expect to pay that for a boxed Fortress Maximus, but not a Scorponok…

After taking some pictures at the Hasbro booth, including the huge Optimus Prime statue (movie Prime, not G1 Prime), I went back to meet Chrissy in the autograph line. Peter Cullen had shown up early and had already started to sign things. About ten minutes later, we had our autographs and were heading out the door. I have a very old collage poster of Optimus Prime (a 1998 Botcon exclusive) that I wanted to have signed. Cullen said that he had never seen one. I’d like to have it framed for my office some day.

On summer nights, you can rent a gondola for a ride along the Providence River. It’s very Italian, with a well decorated gondola and an authentic Italian gondolier. Marcello was as authentic as you can find in Rhode Island; his family was from Italy, and he had visited Italy many times, including a trip to Venice where he was able to steer his own gondola. For gondoliers, this is evidently the Holy Grail.

Marcello was great — he told us about all the architecture that could be seen from the river, explained how the Fire Water nights worked (there are braziers every five feet down the middle of the river that are fed all night), and sang us a couple of songs in Italian. It was pretty amazing. Chrissy and I sipped wine from souvenir wine glasses and enjoyed some chocolates from a local confectionary.

The ride was over far too quickly though. We were enjoying ourselves so much that we barely noticed a half hour go by. The gondola dock was very close to our hotel, so it was a quick walk back. On the way, we found the Union Station Brewery and decided to stop for dinner. We tried the micro-brew beer sampler and some food to go along with it. It was very tasty and a great topper to the night.

Besides the box set, Fun Publications also produces a special figure that is only given to attendees, a freebie just for showing up. This year’s extra figure was a Classics Mirage, molded in clear blue plastic to simulate his “invisibility” power. Mirage also comes with instructions and a “tech spec” sheet. You get this one at registration time along with the box set.

Fun Publications also makes two other exclusive sets available to attendees, but these cost extra. This year we got both sets: one Alpha Trion and Weirdwolf set and one Springer and Huffer set. All four figures are repaints of Cybertron figures, and they did a very nice job on them (better than last year, I think). The lines to buy these two sets were long and slow, but it’s well worth it to pick these up.

I always keep my exclusive toys, but Chrissy sells hers on eBay. Last year, we saw the sets go for huge amounts of money, but that dwindled to smaller numbers as time went on. Last year, Chrissy waited a week or two before putting her sets on eBay, so we only got about double what they were worth. This year, we decided to bring the laptop along and put the sets on eBay as soon as they were in hand. They sold almost immediately, and Chrissy ended up with $1300 in her pocket.

The dealer room was open for registrants at 4:30 on Friday. Walk-ins would not be able to get in until 10 AM on Saturday. I was pretty disappointed in the dealer room this year, since there weren’t that many dealers this time. Stylin’ didn’t show up at all, and they usually have a very large display of t-shirts and accessories. Chrissy had wanted to get Aiden some tiny Transformers clothes, but no luck. Most of the dealers only had recently released toys for sale, and many of them had only movie toys for sale. This was upsetting, since part of the reason to go to Botcon is to get all the hard-to-find pieces to fill the holes in my collection.

To solve this problem, I sought out Cory from Decepticon-Matrix.com. I usually do a lot of business through Cory at Botcons, since he only deals in older parts and figures. This year, he gave me a complete G1 Monstructor for $150 (an amazing deal) and a full set of orange G2 Devastator accessories for $20. I was surprised that he had so many orange Devastator parts, since I’ve never been able to find any in recent years. I’m going to send my want list over to Cory soon to see if he can hook me up with some other stuff that I’ve been having a hard time finding.

I called ahead of time about the Hasbro tour, and it turned out that I could go in Chrissy’s place. They gave us a wristband at the time of registration, and that was all I needed to go on the tour. There would be two tours on Friday, and my group was leaving at 7 AM. That meant that I would have to wake up at 6 AM (after getting back from the movie at 1:30 AM the night before), but I was happy to get a chance to go. Chrissy would be waiting in the horrendously long exclusive line while I was away.

The tour was very informative, and I took a lot of pictures. We went into the molding factory to see how new toy concepts were turned into prototypes, but photography was banned in there. We went into the marketing room where new ideas are pitched and saw a presentation on how the current marketing campaign got started. The Classics line was only supposed to be a nostalgia-building leading up to the movie line, but it has been so popular that they now plan to carry it forward after the movie line ends.

The tour ended with a short presentation on items that never made it to production. There were some very rare and mythic (never thought to have existed) figures in prototype stages behind glass. They also said that the 6-inch Titanium line was being scrapped, and they had the last four (and arguable the coolest) figures in prototype stage on display. War Within Bumblebee was neat, but the G1 Cosmos figure was awesome, and they even had a G1 Arcee figure (would have been the first figure of her classic styling). I guess we’ll never see those.

After the tour, I got a coke and some chips to eat outside. The bus was a little slower on the way back than on the way in, since traffic had since picked up. Chrissy called me twice while I was on the bus, since she was almost to the front of the exclusives line. It all worked out, since the bus pulled up right in front of the convention center and I was able to get upstairs quickly enough to meet Chrissy at the front of the line, just before the sales people breaked for lunch.

Hasbro gave a special preview of the new Transformers movie on two screens. Chrissy and I made our way to the theater about an hour early. We found plenty of seating, especially since we got into the second of the two theaters that were showing the movie. I had heard a lot about the movie through online forums, but I had avoided reading the script that had been leaked last year. From what I had heard, and from the robot designs that I had already seen, I didn’t have high hopes for the movie. I basically came in expecting to be disappointed.

There were things that aggravated me that I had heard online, like a scene where Bumblebee pees on somebody. Or the first words out of Jazz’s mouth being, “What up, bitches?” Or Bumblebee not being able to speak except through radio chatter through his speakers. I was sure that the entire movie would suck. However, I was wrong. The movie was awesome. The parts that I thought would be lame were just throw-away gags that played off well, often to break up the intensity of the action. The transformations were too busy to follow, but you couldn’t help but smile to see them do it.

I spent the last several months hating Shia Leboeuf, thinking that he would single-handedly rape my childhood, but he pulled it off nicely. He has made a career out of being a geek-who-ends-up-winning-in-the-end, and that’s essentially what Sam Witwicky is in this movie. He added a lot of humor to the movie, which was greatly appreciated, and made me rethink my stance on not having humans in the Transformers movie. I still don’t see how anyone like him would ever in a million years end up with Megan Fox, but he does in fact end up making out with her on Bumblebee’s hood at the end of the movie. Ha ha — spoiled the ending for you!

Registration was at 4:30 on the upper level of the Providence Convention Center. There were Botcon signs everywhere, and they had set up a huge Optimus Prime standup above the staircase leading to the registration area. We had to wait until 5:30 before the “blue” group was able to register (there were four groups that were assigned according to how soon you registered), so we waited in the general area until we could get in line. The original Transformers movie was projected onto the ceiling and there were people walking around dressed up as G1 Transformers, so there was plenty to gawk at while we waited.

We finally got to the front of the line for registration. This is where you get your name badge, your movie tickets and your exclusive box set. This year, the box set was made up of repaints from the Classics line: the three seeker jets that didn’t come out at retail (Thrust, Thundercracker and Dirge), a Jetfire mold painted like G1 Dreadwind and a new Bumblebee repaint named Bugbite. You can’t get the other two exclusive sets in the registration line, however. To do that, you have to wait in another line (and it didn’t seem to move at all).

We heard a rumor that people would be allowed to go through the exclusives line as many times as they wanted to in order to get as many sets as they wanted. The line was rediculously long, so we assumed that it was because people were returning to the back of the line from the front. We were pissed. We found out, however, that this wasn’t true — your name badge was marked when you bought the sets, so each registrant could only get one set until everyone had a chance to get one. Once this was understood, we decided to wait until the next day to wait in the rediculous line.

Chrissy and I woke up early this morning so that we could make our flight out of O'Hare on time. We said our goodbyes to Aiden at about 6:30 AM. We'll be sad without him for three days, but this would not be the best trip for him right now. Despite some traffic woes, we made it to the airport by 9 AM.