Gemucon 2013

So Gemucon just came and went. It was such an... Odd experience that I felt the need to actually post a journal about it. It's not like a con I've been to in the past.
I may do a separate TL;DR journal because this is stupidly long and just my stream of consciousness basically.

And before I forget to say - yes I was probably the one that started the con plague. I'm sorry, but hey, I'm feeling better now...
Get well soon lovelies~ <3

Thursday
This was travelling day. Special-Pleb and I got to Nottingham with no delays and our hotel, Travelodge, was just 10-15minutes walk away from the station which was an easy walk even with all our suitcases. Turns out the Britannia, the hotel the convention was held at, was literally 2 minutes down the road from where we were. It was a decent location with a lot of food outlets nearby which was a bonus. We thought of maybe going to the Brass Monkeys which was where the pre-con drinks were but we didn't really know any one going, we also kinda wanted to check out Nottingham nightlife but instead, had an early night because we were both rather tired. Oh so exciting.

Friday
I looked at the con timetable in advance and there wasn't much going on in the morning, so instead we decided to go shopping! Shopping in Nottingham... There were a lot of weird shops. Granted, we didn't stray too far but in one of the shopping centres we didn't see that many big branded shops, they were all mainly off-brand shops. Maybe I'm just a bit spoilt from living in Guildford where everywhere you go it's all the high end posh shops with some normal shops dotted around, but I heard Nottingham shopping was suppose to be pretty good. But I wasn't that impressed, though I did see some nice things in New Look. I love big New Looks.

Around mid-afternoon we decided to finally go back to the hotel and change into cosplay to see what Gemu was like. I dressed up as Luka from Vocaloid in her Happy Synthesizer outfit. BernieBear was my matching Gumi for the day!

Registration went smoothly and we were given this cute bracelet in our con badge, and a cupcake. I don't really like sweet things very much and the icing on the cupcake was far too sweet for me to handle and the cake itself was a bit stale, so I ate a tiny bit and left it. Some idiots however thought it was a good idea to smear the cupcakes around the hotel walls and bannisters, no that was not a good idea, why would you think that? We also got a free drinks voucher, everyone assumed this was an alcoholic one but it was just a soft drink, didn't matter as it was refreshing nevertheless and I guess an alcoholic one for 700 people would have been expensive.

Apparently the games room was 7 hours late of opening? I wasn't there most of the day so I didn't know or care, but if this is true then that's not an impressive start to the convention... But it was fun when it did open. However the gaming room was on the 10th floor (same place as ops) and so we had to wait a while for a lift as they only had 2 small lifts (later down to one working lift) to get up there, no stairs at this time. Special-Pleb and I played a bit of Soul Calibur and then some Mario. I failed so hard at Mario, we were joined by a few other friends and discovered that if you had the WiiU controller thing, you could be the ultimate troll. I already failed without having someone to troll me ;;___;;

We later went down to the opening ceremony, which was an hour late... And not worth waiting for. They just told us con rules, introduced us to the guests, told us some guests cancelled but they had other guests to make up for it. It wasn't the most exciting opening ceremony I've ever been to...

Did a quick shoot, ate at the hotel restaurant which was surprisingly really nice, worth the £5. Went back to our own hotel to change and then went along to the party. The party... Was pretty dead. We went fairly late as well and it was still dead. So instead I just got very very drunk at the bar after saying I wouldn't drink much that night, oops. Vodka is bad.

Saturday
I had to be up so early because of the Gemu's Got Talent thing! I went dressed as Miki from iDOLMster. I was running 5-10minutes late, and there were still barely any one there. There really was no reason for me to rush... Rehearsal ran smoothly though however I noticed they told us to meet at 4.30pm, however I later looked at the schedule and it said the show started at 4pm. Huge error for them but I'm glad I took notice at least, most people in the show realised too as we seemed to all be there on time!

That day I got to meet Tomska, he signed my conbadge! He was so friendly to talk to! There wasn't much I wanted to do and most people were still in bed in the morning, I went to the dealers room(s) but there wasn't much I wanted, it was quite small and there was a lack of an artist alley. I later met up with Chris, a friend that was just loserconning for the day, and we sat around a table with one of his friends and played a card game called Gloom. It involved creative story telling, something which left me mind-blanking a lot especially as I felt very very ill still. Nevertheless it was a fun game.
This very same day I also witnessed hotel staff trying to open one of the broken lifts with a crowbar. I found this slightly amusing but also worried for the people inside.

Later I performed in Gemu's Got Talent which I was rather nervous about when they told us how it was going to be run. But later calmed down when the cosplay co-ordinator let me watch the MC pre-show and it relaxed me a lot.

Afterwards did another shoot with Special-Pleb as Luka from Vocaloid and then we went back to our hotel to change, went to Nandos with Reiss and hit the party! Once again... It was dead... So we got very drunk again. Except this time I was already really tired so I was a sleepy drunk.

Sunday
So so glad we dropped out the masquerade, I needed the lie in! We went to town briefly to go shopping for Reiss, bought his dolla dolla outfit which was a bit of a running joke later that evening. Then went back to Gemu. I went dressed as Noel from Blazblue, I was suppose to have Charlie as Litchi from the same series but she was feeling rather ill still so spent most of the day time in the hotel room.

I needed to go to ops to ask a question, there was a queue for the lift so I thought "Feck it I'll take the stairs" and thus I realised that with a big bag of stuff, this was a bit of a trek. I was then told that a place I needed to get to was at the restaurant area, i.e. 10 floors below, so I mournfully trekked back down the 10 flights of stairs I had only just climbed up. I spent most of the day gaming if I'm honest, but I thought "NEVER AGAIN" to climbing those stairs, so I patiently waited for the lift this time. We contemplated going to the masquerade but it was running really late again and so we just stayed at the bar and then I went back to the hotel, after stopping by Tesco quickly to pick up some water for her - thought she might appreciate cold water, and then we just got ready, went to Subway for dinner and hit Gemu.

Strangely enough, not that many people seemed to be around yet. But we found Phalor on comfy sofas and basically hung around there for ages and people came and went. Eventually after getting a few more drinks down we braved the party despite it being dead and danced the night away. There were some questionable music choices but I suppose it was the last night and we had to party it away.

Conclusion
Overall I had an amazing weekend. I had great company and I find any convention can be amazing with the right people. The convention itself had potential but it could do with a better hotel, more events and better organisation. I know a Fuyucon some years ago was also held at the same hotel and you'd think they changed to a different location for a reason? I don't go to a lot of events any way, but most of the ones that I could have maybe be interested in were all early in the morning or clashed! However I thought it was a good move they basically over compensated for all their big events time wise. They allowed 2hrs for all the big events like the opening ceremony, masquerade, etc and it only lasted an hour max, so I guess it wasn't late for another event and they had a lot of leighway in starting. There were also a lot of handy empty time slots for lunch and dinner which was pretty well planned, although I think it just ended up that way because of the lack of events.

Would I go again? Depends. Apparently the next event was going to be next July (which they apparently got wrong) but with Kitacon back next year, it's unlikely I will go to Gemu again. I love the concept of a gaming convention but there are better cons out there and I didn't like the hotel, though they did say they would change the hotel. If they hold Gemu at a time where they're lacking in events, like around September-November time (I'd gladly skip out on MCM Expo for a convention) then I'd consider going. Otherwise no, you probably won't see me there next year. Unless I have that much spare cash on me and there's good company going again.