I arrived at Long Beach at around 8PM… just about time when pre-registration closed

orz

I won’t go into details why, but let’s just say I was ready to go since this morning. Oh well. I guess that means I’ll have to wake up early tomorrow.

Long Beach looks better than I remembered. Out by the ocean, lots of restaurants and bars and whatnot to support a decent nightlife, a nice cool breeze. What isn’t so great, though, is the hotel situation. To be frank, Long Beach doesn’t seem to have the actual CAPABILITY to host something as large as an Anime Expo. Trying to reserve a room six months in advance was nothing less than hell. Not mailing out my badge until June 25th is bad. Even if they had printing problems because of the lack of a sponsor, that just shows that they didn’t handle an even more important thing — finding a sponsor for them — with enough proper care and attention as they should have. I mean, I don’t think someone like Geneon or ADV or Viz or Newtype would be that hard to sign up for a certain type of advertising. And people love the lanyards.

It’s already hard enough to get people to come together and meet. Thank you, SPJA, for making things more complicated. Because, you know, having a year in advance every year, you’d hope the process would get better each year.

So,  that’s how this ends up. Tomorrow… I plan to go for registration. I’ll probably miss the opening ceremonies. The first thing I want to do, though, is head into the exhibit hall and grab some of the rarer items that are around. Also chat up with some of the store owners that I always see each year. Then, while people attend the SKIN concert, I’ll be patiently waiting for tickets to the AMVs. After I secure them, the Galaxy Angel panel is next. Wheeeee. Followed by the Hirano, Chihara, & Goto Focus Panel (the three principal female seiyuu for Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu), and then rushing to a presentation about Afterworld.

Then, from 6:30PM onward, it’s AMVs and the waiting for the AMVs. Hopefully, the guy won’t put his laptop on a cart, then accidentally drop it, completely destroying it and the AMVs on it, further delaying the AMV Contest. Ugh. I’ll probably bring a muffin with me tomorrow.