Theme: Wonderland
Location: Hilton Metropole
Here it is, my Confuzzled 2015 report!
As always, this report is mostly written for myself, to be read again in many years and refresh my memories of this amazing convention! If you are really bored though, feel free to read it yourself!
I made my way to the airport in the morning after spending a nice night at Shay's place (Thanks again for hosting me), at the airport I met up with Henrieke and retrieved my luggage from the luggage storage I put it in yesterday, very handy!
It turned out that both Forfaox and Trax were on the same plane as us, and by coincidence Trax was sitting behind us, so by politely asking Henrieke, I and Trax were sitting next to each other and had a nice chat for the very short duration of the flight!
At the airport Washu and another staffer were already waiting for us and escorted us to the Hilton, which offered a complementary shuttle service. Since the Hilton is almost next to the airport, the trip only took a few minutes. Thanks to Washu we were in our room in no time, turns out we had a suite which was like a normal room but had an attached second room with a couple of chairs, a couch and a giant TV! We unpacked and Washu returned after a bit with our GoH goodie bag, which included all the Sponsor gifts and some candy! The T-Shirts turned out awesome! :)
After unpacking our stuff we went down to the lobby to get a pizza at around 3:30, which tasted really amazing as I didn't have time to eat much that day yet. Then we checked out the hotel and the surroundings a bit. Around the hotel was a little forest and a lake, and around that was a giant convention center which was pretty deserted at this time as there was no convention going on there.
Later we had dinner with Washu and Jeff Minter, the other GoH.
We had breakfast downstairs at the big breakfast buffet with Washu, Jeff Minter and the rest of the GoH team! The buffet at the Hilton can keep up with the fancy EF one. After that, Henrieke had to attend the opening ceremony rehearsal and I wandered around the hotel a bit in the meanwhile. When Henrieke was done, we set up our table in the Dealers Den. Sadly my Gameboy printer setup didn't work (thanks to a stupid bug in the RXTX library I used), but after around 1.5 hours of fiddling it finally worked! We had a table next to Mag, which was pretty nice as we didn't know too many people in the Dealers Den. I also met Neo there who had a table near to ours. The opening ceremony started with a Video of Alice following a rabbit through a forest, going down the rabbit whole and somehow ending up at a tea party on the stage in front of us! MattLion presented facts about the con in a very unique fashion and introduced Henrieke and Jeff Minter to the crowd.
Henrieke and Jeff Minter had a "Meet the Guests of Honour" panel later where they answered questions from the attendees and I got to know a bit about Jeff Minter!
Since we had a ridiculously big room and that night there were no events yet, we invited a couple of friends and nice people we just met to our room! In the end it was Mag, Jym, Daz, Shaggi, Hazel, Faruku and later Zot joined as well. Since Dominos had 50% off, we ended up ordering some Pizza and hung out until late.
We found out that we could have really fancy breakfast in the executive lounge at the top floor, so we made use of that! Pinky was also there, so we sat with her.
We didn't have too much time though as we had to be in the Dealers Den in time for opening. I got my GameBoy Printer to run, but sadly it proved to be wildly unpopular, making me wish I spend the week before the con on something different than that.
I took some commissions from Keenora and Avalon however! We had to leave our table early since Henrieke held her drawing panel at 17:00 which was pretty well received.
After the panel, I went to the steam sauna and the pool with Mag, which was nice but couldn't compare to some of the fun times we had at the Maritim (needs more Tabbie!). I made it just in time for the beginning of the PawPet Show, which was pretty nice and very different from the ones at EF.
Due to scheduling, the PawPet Show, SilverFoxWolf's cheese dance and the Eurovision Song Contest overlapped, too bad! When the PawPet Show ended, Henrieke and I went to Autumn's Eurovision room party in a huge party suite on the 5th floor. I met Jym, Hazel and also Tirrel - who showed up at the con for a day - there. Hanging out with with these guys is pretty much always a good time! Despite people being not too loud and there being no music, apart from the TV airing the song contest, we got noise complaints that later turned out to be by some guy from the Dire Straits who stayed under that room. In a deal with the hotel, the party was moved to an empty panel room and continued.
Sadly after about 20 minutes, all the oxygen in the room was used up.
Henrieke was staying in the Artist Alley and I decided to finally get Baseball out a bit, mostly in the lobby. I didn't suit too long and hung out a bit more in the lobby and met Kohaku, a nice guy from Japan! I also had some quality time with Jym, Tirrel and Christmas Cat before hitting bed.
Henrieke and I spent most of the morning in the Dealers Den, but things went a bit slow.
I wandered off to check out the art show a bit, then got Baseball down and suited a bit in the lobby. Baseball encountered some kids who were scared at first, but then really got into it! It was magical! Baseball went back to the room to pick up his giant pencil and then drew something for the kids and even got 2 drawings in return! Later Baseball sat at Mags table and did some art commissions with the giant pencil which were well received. After a few of those, Mag, Henrieke and I went to Frankensuits, which was even faster and chaotic than expected. The suits were also.. definitely something. We had some pizza at the bar with Tirrel, Mag, Zot, Jessica and Foxamoore, then I got Baseball down again to do more commissions, pretty much until the Dealers Den closed. After that we packed up our table and moved everything to our room.
The rest of the night I spent in the Artist Lounge with Henrieke, Shaggi, Daz, Mag, Jym and Rachez who got lots of giftart for her new character Shitwing. I got my GameBoy printer running again and printed some stickers to use up the rest of the paper.
Daz, Mag and I decided to do some parkour in the hallways which proved to be quite fun.
Henrieke was really tired today, so I went to get breakfast alone and brought some back to the room for her. We stayed on the room for a bit, then went to hold our last panel, the fursuit construction roundtable, at 11:30 together with Deezlberries. Many people showed up, Deezlberries brought some interesting stuff to show, but mostly Henrieke and I talked about how we make suits! Loui and Mystifur also showed up, both amazing costume creators!
Afterwards we had a nice chat with interested people and I also got to chat a bit with EpsHam who gave us some Japanese candy! Henrieke went to the fursuit photo shoot to get some nice photos of Kiki, after that we went to check out the charity bunny room where they had some cute bunnies people could stare at.
At the closing ceremony we felt a bit awkward as we had reserved seats in a room where almost everyone else had to sit on the floor. Jeff Minter and Henrieke said a few words about how they liked the con and the theme for next year was announced. Also a nice video that was produced at the con was shown.
Afterwards we had a club sandwich in the lobby with Sly, Deezlberries, Twinkie and some other guys. I also met atPaw again, an Australian I met at a party in Sydney back in 2008, so long ago! Since the fursuit photoshoot was going to end soon I got Baseball downstairs to get some nice photos at the amazing setup that EzWolf created. Baseball roamed around the lobby for a bit longer until 18:00, when we met up with Pinky, Jeff Minter, Giles, the Germans and Foxamoore to take Taxis to a Restaurant in Birmingham. We felt a bit under-dressed there, but the food was really tasty and we got a chance to chat a bit with Jeff Minter and Giles, who are super nice. I also don't meet people often who are animal nerds and know about things like Coma Light by Oxyron and how amazing it is. Henrieke drew them a Goat and I drew them a Goat with a jet-pack, then we shared a pretty tasty burger, enjoyed a nice view over Birmingham and went back to the hotel.
We sat in the lobby for a bit and Henrieke disappeared only for Brok to appear and collect money for charity.
I went to the dance with Mag for a bit and had a good time on the stage with Pinky while Cheetah was DJing. The rest of the night we spent in the Artist Lounge where I drew an amazing comic together with Jym.
Henrieke found another Zoo nerd and they talked until the very end. Back in the lobby, before going to bed we also ran into Kuro, which resulted in even more Zoo discussion!
After last night we decided to sleep a bit longer, yet still not miss the breakfast. So I got up at 9:30 and did 2 trips to the executive lounge to get us some foods, then went back to bed and slept until 11, then had our - by now cold - breakfast and watched some weird british kids shows until noon. There were still plenty of people in the lobby when we went downstairs, so we ended up in a big art jam with Mag, Hazel, Shaggi, Daz, NeonPossum, Pyro any many others.
I did some art trades and got adorable drawings! Mag had to leave soon already sadly, he looked pretty sad! :[
Later Hazel got to suit a bit, the result was the tiniest Baseball you've ever seen!
I got really sleepy at some point, so Daz, Henrieke and I decided to take a walk around the hotel a bit, pretty much the first time we've been outside apart from the trip to Birmingham.
Afterwards we had - once again - pizza (I think I won't feel like eating pizza for the next months). Jym joined us at some point and before he left I drew a comic about him and McRibs as a token of appreciation.
It became late very fast and to my surprise the dance floor was - just like the bar - full of people. Lots of cheesy music there. I decided to get Baseball out for a bit, he had some fun at the bar and on the dance floor all the way until the end of the dance! After Baseball went back to he room we still hung out for a while in the lobby and drew a quick drawing to cheer up Trax, who missed out on the whole day because he was feeling very sick. At around 2:30 we went to drop by Rizzo's room party where we encountered Emejn out of suit, a rare sight at this con! Also I had a nice chat with Durandal about building costumes! Past 3:00 we finally went to bed after packing a bit.
We got up at 9:30 and went straight to breakfast, sadly nobody to sit with was there but we didn't really have much time anyway. Back in the room we packed for an hour and met up with Washu at checkout. Seriously Washu did such a nice job at everything, we were really spoiled at this convention! We went to the airport with Trax and Pony at 11:30, even though Birmingham has a small airport things took a while so we were a bit stressed at the end, but it all worked out. On the plane we also met Kuma, Garrodor, Capeh and a couple of other people who attended CFz, so the con was still going on! :)
In Amsterdam it was time to say good bye to everyone, Henrieke was lucky enough to be able to ride with Kuma and Garrodor and I had lunch with Trax and Capeh before parting ways and taking my flight to Vienna.
That was it, my con report of this wonderful convention! I consider myself extremely lucky for the opportunity to be there and left with lots of amazing memories, some new friends, some PCD and luckily no con-crud! Thanks go to everyone who made this con possible, to the people who invited us and to everyone I got to spend some quality time with! :)
We got asked lots of times whether we'd be back next year, sadly the answer is we don't know. There was a reason we've never been to CFz before, and it wasn't because we didn't want to, we knew from many friends that CFz is an absolutely amazing and outstanding convention! If we can make it, we'll be there, but we can't promise anything!