Monday, March 16, 2015

Animeland Wasabi Pt 2

Hello again~
   Continuing on from my last post, we all woke up for a bit of swimming before we headed back to the con. Jamie and Kim hadn't expected to return, so they didn't bring any extra frills along. Of course, the only solution was to raid my closet! Ariel wanted to cosplay as Lumpy Space Princess from Adventure Time for Saturday, so I made a lolita coordinate based off of Princess Bubblegum to go along with her. Once we were all dolled up, we hopped in the car to return to the hotel.

My PB Coordinate! I hope to get my hands on Miracle Candy if I do her again, but for now, Wonder Party works.

    Parking at the hotel this day was a nightmare. The hotel was pretty small, meaning that the parking lot was also. We ended up parking at a hotel next door and walking over, which we wouldn't have minded if it wasn't freezing cold! The halls of the hotel were packed more than the parking lot of course, and it was very hard to move around, with people who stopped in front of you constantly when you were trying to walk. We finally decided to squeeze our way back to the Dealer's Room for a little while since it was the biggest area of the convention. It was still crowded, but definitely less so than the halls. Inside, I ended up getting a Korilakkuma plush since I had been wanting one for a while. They had one from the Bathtime series that was super cute, so I couldn't help but cave! Sadly, it wasn't long after that it was time for Jamie and Kim to go home.

   After they had left, me and Ariel braved the hallways again to find something else to do. We stepped into the game room, but half the monitors/consoles were shut off. We moved on to the panel room, but there were no panels going. We tried to find Rock Band or Karaoke (another of our favorite con pastimes) but neither seemed to happen all weekend. Finally, we headed over to the Main Events hall, since the cosplay contest was supposed to be going on, but all we found were closed doors, packed halls, and a long line for an event that was supposed to have started a while earlier. We were a bit fed up, so we went to the registration table to see what was going on, and were greeted by one of the convention directors. 
   We had quite a lengthy conversation with her. She tried claiming that the panels and events were happening, but after sending a staff member to check them out and finding out they weren't, even she was upset. She thanked us for our feedback, claiming that no one else had alerted her of what was happening. And commented that next year, they'll definitely be moving to a larger convention, since they hadn't expected so many people to show up this year. And also will be sure to check for badges more often since it felt like you could get in to any of the rooms without one this year. She even offered us a partial refund, since we didn't get to do anything the few hours we were there on Saturday. Overall, she ended up being very kind about it, and thanked us for coming, even recognizing us from past years, and hoped to see us again. We left after that, since there still wasn't much going on, and since she gave us a partial refund, we didn't want to be rude by staying. We made a stop at Boba n' Crepes again, and make our way home to escape the cold.
   It wasn't the greatest convention ever, but I'll most likely be back again next year. I'll be interested to see if they improve. Two years ago, it was a blast, and I'm hopeful that they'll reach that level again. Thanks for sticking around and reading about my weekend, I hope to see you next time!

-Rae ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ

Friday, March 13, 2015

Animeland Wasabi 2015 Part 1

Hi guys!
   The weekend before last, I visited a local convention with a few friends and figured I would share my experience with you all! It's a bit of a novel, so I ended up splitting it into two posts. Animeland Wasabi is a convention that started 8 years ago at a hotel near the airport. It was notorious for having, well, problems. The first year, it was double booked with a cat convention at the same hotel, and another year, a wedding was happening at the same time, and all the attendees for the convention were forced to move aside so the bride could make her way down the hallway to her ceremony. Only a couple years ago, I waited in the pre-registration line for a good five hours because the hotel decided everyone needed to have a photo of themselves on their badge in order to walk around. Of course there have been other situations during the con as well, but for now, I'll stick to my experience for this year, and I promise it's not all bad!
   So at the end of last year, the convention got sued by Funimation for knowingly selling bootleg items in the Dealer's Room. No one even expected it to happen again this year, but a belated announcement proved us wrong. I've been attending this con since the very first one, even through all the disasters that have happened, so I decided to attend again. I enjoy having multiple conventions to visit, and having another excuse to visit friends that I only really see at them. ( I might add that I don't support selling bootleg items though.) I was also interested in seeing how they had recovered from the year before. I purchased weekend passes for my friend Ariel and I online, and we quickly put together some outfits to wear.

Lookin' pretty derp, but here's a coordinate shot.

   The weekend of the convention finally came, and we had made plans with Jamie and Kim for a girls' day on Friday, since that was the night of the formal ball, which was always my favorite part of Wasabi. We met up with Jamie at the hotel and got in line to pick up the tickets I had pre-ordered. They gave them to me without even asking for an ID, which I thought was a bit strange, but we were excited to check out the con, so I just sort of waved it off. We wandered around the hotel a bit, checking out what was going on, but the hotel was much smaller than previous years, so we ended up finding a quiet corner and playing a sort of animal alphabet game for what seemed like a couple hours. When we ran out of animal names, we finally got up and hit the Dealer's Room so I could find more Arpakasso for my collection. I managed to find a small mint one first, and a kitty keychain that was also made by Amuse. The next table we visited had these adorable tsum tsum shaped Arpakasso. They were from a new series, and the dealer had only brought one of each color to the con, so of course Jamie and I had to have them. I got the blue one, since it was a color I didn't have in my collection, and Jamie ended up getting the white one. I also got an Arpakasso pass case in an apple green color, so I'm relatively close to completing my rainbow of alpacas! Kim met up with us later in the afternoon, and when we headed back to the Dealer's Room for her to check the stuff out, she ended up buying the yellow tsum-pakasso (hehe) and we convinced Ariel to get the pink so we all had matching ones. After switching colors to match our outfits, we paraded around the con with alpacas in tote, which quite a few people found pretty adorable. It was a bunch of fun!
   Most of the rest of the day included browsing the Artist's Alley, taking selfies, belting out Disney songs, eating crepes, and gossiping until it was finally time for the formal to start. We met up with another friend who managed to sneak in without a badge, since they weren't checking for them anyway. I ended up teaching everyone to waltz during the formal, even though they played maybe ten songs on repeat, we still managed to have fun. We called it a night a little bit early and headed back to Ariel's and my apartment for a sleepover.
   Next time, I'll get around to posting about Saturday. It went downhill from there, so it'll but a little more ranty, but shorter in length. Thanks for reading!

-Rae ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Hello All!

   I started a blog on here a long time ago (Around 2011 I believe) but didn't update much, I was bad at coming up with topics and ideas to blog about. I'm back now, after deciding with a little help from a few friends! (Jamie and Kim) Hopefully this time around, my blogging goes a little more smoothly.
   I suppose a little introduction is in order. My name is Rae, and I'm a lolita located in Colorado. I've been into the fashion for about 10 years or so now. My style mostly revolves around sweet and hime substyles, though I dabble in others a bit as well. My favorite brand is Angelic Pretty, and it takes up the majority of my lolita wardrobe. I have a love for all things cute of course, and collect just about anything with alpacas and cats on it.
  A lot of my time is spent crafting things when I'm not at work or on the internet. I sew, make jewelry, make decoden, embroider, and even make props occasionally. I hope to incorporate some of my crafting stuff into my blog every once in a while, and possibly get around to making tutorials to share with you guys! I love creating things to go with my coordinates, and feel like it gives them an extra unique touch.
  I hope you guys can bear with me on my new blogging experience. And feel free to share your blogs with me as well! If you're interested in checking out my tumblr as well, you can find it here, though some of the things posted with cross over with my blog here. I look forward to posting again soon!

-Rae ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ