CLAMP Campus Adventures

Yesterday I set in motion the first phases in my summer vacation. Carl and I are going to Vienna, Prague, and Budapest. We’ll leave on June 27 (Friday) and return on July 6 (Sunday). I’m very excited. I’ve already started to read the Lonely Planet Books for Vienna and Prague. We’re going to be staying at the Crowne Plaza in both Prague and Vienna. Pretty exciting, huh?

Tonight Carl’s working, so I have a nice, quiet evening at home doing nothing at all. Tomorrow I have a dentist appointment and a lessons learned meeting for Anime Boston. We’re going to go over what went right and what didn’t go so right at the convention a couple of weeks ago. There will also be an election by the board of directors of the New England Anime Society for the Convention Chairman for 2004 and then the division heads from 2003 will be electing the new division heads for 2004. After that, we start planning. We have to begin marketing next year’s convention. In case you missed it, Anime Boston 2004 will be April 9 - 11, 2003 in the Boston Park Plaza. Even though we were too big for the hotel (see previous post) this year, we’ve already signed the contract for next year. Another point showing how unprepared we were for the immense turnout! Honestly, if you look at other first year conventions, even in other major cities, none of them get a nearly 4000 person turnout in their first year! Anime Boston was the largest first year convention ever in the United States and it’s now the 7th largest convention anywhere (according to PatrickD’s research, anyhow). Next year, the dealer’s room will be bigger, and across the street from the hotel, in an old armory called “The Castle”. It’s even got a moat. The hotel room rate was set at a nifty, low rate of $129/night. You should be able to call the Boston Park Plaza and get the ‘Anime Boston’ rate now. I did hear that someone had a problem with that and I directed her to email the Convention Chairman about that. The only advice I can give based on last year’s hotel attrition and attendence is to a) get your room reservation in as soon as possible and b) pre-register for the convention as soon as it’s up on the Anime Boston website. I don’t know what the attendence cap will be (since we need to decide who’s running the convention before making those sorts of decisions), but I do know there will be one and there’s a high potential it will get filled in pre-registration. Just a note for those who didn’t pre-register last year, when we started pre-registration it was at $25 for an entire weekend pass for a very long time. A Saturday only pass was $20. People who held out to get a one day pass and save $5 and who happened to arrive after noon on Saturday really lost out. The same for people who figured on buying a Saturday ($20) and Sunday ($15) pass for $35 and save $5. It’s just something I thought I should mention. Showing up at the door in 2004 is NOT a good idea, especially if you’re traveling distance to come to the convention. It’s sort of the equivalent of trying to pay at the door for a Billy Joel concert. It’s going to sell out. Heck, I even get my movie tickets for movies I know will sell out because it’s their first week in advance. I did it for X2 which I’m seeing on Saturday night. It just made sense to me.