Jun 29 2010
Botcon 2010 Just Happened To Be At Disney World
When we found out that Botcon was going to be held in Disney World this year, we decided to bring the whole family. We confirmed that Chrissy’s mom and sister Cassie could come with us. But that was six months before the actual event. So it kind of snuck up on us, kind of like your birthday. You barely know it’s coming until it’s already the day. At least it felt that way to me. Chrissy, on the other hand, had us packed and ready to go a week ahead of time.
We got to Florida a week before Botcon so that we could spend a few days in the Disney parks. We had a lot of fun, but it was tiring because the weather consisted of 95° heat and 88% humidity the entire time. Besides the heat, Harry Potter World had just opened across town at Universal Studios, so attendance was down in the Disney parks. This meant that we got to try lots of fun rides that we had never been on before because the lines were really short. So it all worked out.
Botcon was fun, but there were some downsides. I missed the autograph session with Peter Cullen because I only showed up for the line one hour early. The line started at 5 AM and it was completely filled long before I got there. On the bright side, I did get a couple of chances to speak to Hideaki Yoke during the convention. This is the guy that designed the original Megatron toy. He has had a hand in every Transformers figure since Diaclone. I have met Peter Cullen a couple of times in the past, but meeting Yoke-san was a real treat.
I met a lot of celebrities of the Transformers world over the weekend, but I also caught up with lots of friends. This was the first year that I socialized with people at Botcon, mostly with people that I met on Twitter or Facebook. It was nice to meet everyone in person. Usually I just go and hang out with Chrissy for a couple of days and buy some toys, but this time I hung out with some people while Chrissy went out to the parks with the boys. I took pictures of almost everyone that I met and put them on Twitter.
I like to hear what new stuff is coming out next year during the Hasbro panels, but mostly I go to Botcon to buy Transformers. I have most of the modern figures, but I still need to fill in parts of my vintage collection. This year I neglected to bring a Visa or MasterCard. We only brought the Discover card to spend on, and of course none of the vendors accepted Discover. I could still buy some of the figures from the ’87 and ’88 lines that I needed, but I could have easily blown another thousand bucks in the dealer room if I had brought a Visa.
We also attended an Awards Dinner on Saturday night. This was designed to honor real people and fictional robots into the Transformers Hall Of Fame. The dinner was pretty good, and we saw induction speeches from Peter Cullen, Hideaki Yoke, and Bob Budiansky. I was surprised that music by Stan Bush was not used during the introductory videos, or that Scott McNeill was not asked to speak after the Fan’s Choice character was announced, since he was the voice of Dinobot in the Beast Wars series.
During the dinner, they announced the location of next year’s Botcon. It will be in Pasadena, California again next year. This is the same place as last year, but they’ll have a new movie to promote again. Michael Bay and several actors from the movie made appearances last year, so I assume that plans are in the works to do something similar for Transformers 3. This is the first time that Fun Publications has re-used a Botcon location, however, so I think that lots of people were upset (at least those that don’t live anywhere near California, like us).
The next morning, all of the hotel rooms in Pasadena were booked. If I recall correctly, the problem last year was that convention hotels did not have enough rooms to accommodate all of the Botcon attendees. Chrissy heard at Disney World that the Disneyland parks were completely different, so we might stay at the Disneyland resorts instead. This means that I would have to rent a car and drive the twenty five five miles to Pasadena every morning in LA traffic. I suppose that’s all right, but I’ll have to wake up extra early in order to make the Peter Cullen autograph line. At least I’ll be able to spend the rest of the week at Disneyland with my family.






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