MegaCon 2016 Day 1
Posted By Kathleen David on May 27, 2016
Traveling these days can be such a crapshoot. We have to deal with all sorts of things to get from point A to point B.
Recently there have been issues with security lines at airports. The head of the TSA was fired and Congress, I believe, is allowing airports to take their security private rather than use the current system. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would say the slow downs were created so that airports would turn to private security for their screening needs thus making money for donors to various political campaigns.
And it is sad that we are so grateful to not have to take off our shoes to walk through a scanner that scans our whole body.
Getting to the airport was a little more exciting that it should have been in terms of traffic. The HOV lane served us well for a while but it still was a lot of clock watching because we didn’t have seats assigned to us by Jet Blue so we had to get there early and there had been a warning on the local news about backups at the security lines.
We got there 2 hours and 5 minutes before our flight. We managed to get through security by a piece of luck in under 15 minutes. We got to the gate 1 hour and 45 minutes before departure and sat and were very happy we were there sitting.
The gate agent, Anthony, got us our seats that were not together but close although one of us was going to be sitting between two strangers. 20 minutes later he came and handed us new boarding passing that had us all in the same row so thank you very much Anthony.
The flight was uneventful which is the best thing you can say about a flight these days. I discovered that Jet Blue’s WiFi on the plane was sponsored by Amazon and my Prime membership gave me access to the music and video library on Amazon that I have access to as a member. I could use my apps on the iPad without a problem. So thank you to both companies for that.
We got off the plane and went to get our bags which was a bit of an adventure with some nail biting included of “did our luggage make it or not” which it did so everything was fine.
MegaCon itself has been just wonderful. The pick-up at the airport was in a sweet mini bus that was luxury top to bottom. Getting the badges was a little more of an adventure than it needed to be since the parking was on the other side of the building and that is a bloody big building. I had no needed to do my arm workout since I got to lug a 40 pound box of books over a mile to get to our table.
We are at table P7 in artist alley. The convention has been taking care of us very well. They are feeding us and we have a place to sit. The staff has been helpful or if they couldn’t help us, they found someone who could.
Peter met a lot of fans. Those in the know wished us a Happy Anniversary, which was nice. He signed a lot of books and made a lot of fans happy. I got to catch up with some old friends, which was very nice. Caroline had the run of the place and declared the dealers room one of the best she has seen. She likes that a lot of the booths have original work in them of all sorts rather than a million t-shirt and anime booths with the same thing. She is working on some drawings to sell over the weekend.
Today, thanks to some friends, I am finally going to see Hogsmead and Diagon Alley at Universal. I haven’t been to Universal since the day I got engaged which was a while ago. Caroline is very excited to see the new parts of the park she has not seen. We will then join up with Peter at the convention and are having dinner with the Murphys which is always a delight. Some where in there I have to get Caroline a bathing suit since she has outgrown her last ones. The Hilton here has one heck of a water park on property.
Peter will be at MegaCon all day doing what he came down here to do.
I am grateful to everyone who made our day a little easier.
