Botcon '97 *Friday's* Journal
Friday, July 18......... Me, my girlfriend Melanie, and my mother arrived at the Greyhound station at 9:15 so that we would have enough time to relax and check luggage. The bus arrived (surprisingly) at 10:10 when it was scheduled. We boarded the bus after leaving the luggage and had to all sit separately because it was packed. The bus left at 10:20 and we made pretty good time to the first stop at Buffalo (aside from a 20 min hold-up through Pennsylvania Construction...what else is new?). After reboarding the bus at Buffalo, we arrived 20 minutes earlier than expected at Rochester's Greyhound terminal. The shuttle from the Four Points Hotel picked us up and brought us to the place where we were to spend the next three nights.
We then went up to our room which was #920. It was cool because the key was actually a card you pushed through a slot. When the green light appeared, the door unlocked. Kind of like in a movie! The room was nice and my mom liked the personal coffee maker.
Since the dinner didn't start until 8:30, we decided to go out and look around. We checked out the Riverside Convention Center where Botcon '97 was being held. It's a very nice looking building. We then proceeded through Midtown Plaza a couple blocks down the road. It was a small mall. However, all we were interested was food since we hadn't eaten all day. We stumbled upon a Burger King inside this mall and dashed in. The clock struck 4:00 PM as I sat down to my Whopper with cheese!! After eating we checked out a couple cute hamsters at the pet store and proceeded back to the hotel. Unfortunately, there wasn't much else to do around this part of Rochester......so the hotel is where we basically stayed.
I haven't been feeling well the last few days and wanted to take a nap. We all slept for about an hour or so. I had a tough time though since I was so excited about everything. At about 7:00 PM we all started to get ready for the dinner celebration!!
Although the dinner started at 9:00 PM, we arrived at the convention hall around 8:15 PM. Which was a good thing since the line behind us formed pretty quick. At 8:30 we made it to the registration desk, gave them our sheets, and I (since I reserved a dinner seat before Melanie or mom) got my dinner exclusive. It was in a plain white box and I was wondering what could be inside. We were one of the first ones in so we sat at the very front table later to find out that it was reserved. So.....we moved to the very table behind. In came a couple people I met in line: Louis and George. They sat with us along with a few others. However, I didn't chat much as I ripped open the dinner exclusive. Inside was a hand painted "decoy" Wheeljack. Also inside the white box was a stand/plaque (with Botcon '97 on it) and a laminated storyboard cutout of the Constructicons. Very neat and unique exclusive!!! The conversations and stuff at the table was well worth the $50 dinner price. Not to mention the wonderful exclusive. Plus.....my chicken dinner was awesome!!
Good points of the dinner: great company and conversations about Transformers, great exclusive, great food, and neat demonstration and unveiling of the Botcon '97 exclusive merchandise (figure, C.D., T-shirt). They did a quick summary and showed us what the stuff looks like which we could pick up Saturday morning.
Bad points of the dinner: This was the first time I heard that Frank Welker couldn't make it, there were no extra exclusive presentations as promised (wasn't their fault though....last minute cancellations), and it ended a bit earlier than planned because of the missing presentation.
All in all though....the dinner was worth the $50. It definitely started Botcon '97 out very well!! We left the dinner and took a short walk before returning to the room. After logging into my journal, I went to bed at midnight getting ready for the festivities Saturday morning!!