FANIMAZING RACE!

[Ska_Kitti]

@Ruby: We were apprehensive in the first place, but since you voiced your opinion, we decided to changed it for others in the Swap Meet.

@ReakuBart: Yes, both team members please. The qualifying round begins at noon and we release participants to the event soon after.

@Twisted: :D Yaaaay, come and join up! I'm not sure what the turnout will be, so come prepared~

[xichisex]

I have a partner and I am SURE everyone would love to see Hinata running through the con. ;3

[Roguemagus]

I'd like to do this, but I have class during registration time. Next year!

[EJAY420]

I have a partner and I am SURE everyone would love to see Hinata running through the con. ;3

OMG girl, thats one helluva Hinata pic!

[xichisex]

I have a partner and I am SURE everyone would love to see Hinata running through the con. ;3

OMG girl, thats one helluva Hinata pic!

Thank you? xD This is my first time really going all out at Fanime. I've done two cosplays before, but no one had any idea who the hell I was and then my Misa one after that was kind of pulled together quickly with crap I found in my closet.

I think Hinata is going to be my favorite.

[abcbadcat]

I always thought Fanime needed something like this!

COUNT. ME. IN!!!

[Ska_Kitti]

Cosplaying is welcomed, but be aware that participants will be doing a lot of fast walking as running is not allowed and will be enforced. :D Teams will also be labeled by color too <3

[otakuya]

I'm in need of a partner!

[Xanreo]

I'm betting there'll be many people who will be scurrying for a partner.

I, for one, will be grabbing whomever is available within the vicinity.

[DrayneO]

Me and a friend will definitely try to qualify. Sounds like fun~

[Eiri66]

Count me in on this too!! >w< I've already got a partner in mind and it sounds like it'll be a blast!!

[baihooli]

Hey everyone, I'd just like to say that the Fanimazing Race was awesome. I was white team and ended up placing 4th place on day 2, behind yellow 1st, purple 2nd, and dark blue 3rd.

I do have a complaint though, and I'm not sure if this is the right place to put it, and yes I'm a little bitter about it. Please get Runners (employees that go with the teams) that actually care about doing the race, instead of just caring about getting community hours. Due to this, we went from first in the race to last on day 2 because of how much our Runner slowed us down. Here's a list:

1. When we're dashing to the next checkpoint, often times we lost our Runner, due to her looking off who knows where. When we find her, a minute later, she talks about how "You guys don't know how important I am. Don't ever lose me." And yet, when I look back while dashing to check if everyone is there, she yells "Don't look back, just keep going. Don't worry, we're right behind you!"
2. She's also very half assed about helping. Runner's arent supposed to give giveaway hints, but may give directions or other small little hints if we're completely lost. She'd refuse to give any hints more than something cryptic, then remind you of it and yell at you for not getting the hint 10 minutes later. She'd also keep pitching in ideas and bitch about it, if you don't follow it.
e.g. One part of the race, we had to get 10 proofs of visits from 10 restaurants, such as a card or a menu. The first thing she does, is tell us to separate, "because it'll be faster." Then proceeds to be strict on the rules, and not let us call each other for 10 minutes, before giving some leeway so we can find each other. She also kept telling us to get more menus/cards from extra restaurants, which was unneeded because the 10 we had, were for sure on the list of approved restaurants. We ended up waiting 10 minutes at the checkpoint for my teammate to sprint her way from across the convention, slowing us from 1st to 2nd by a lot.
3. She complains too much due to her not caring. At the last event, we had to find the Head of Gaming. When we couldnt find him for 10 minutes, we checked back with team yellow, and found that all the other teams had found him already. When our Runner hears this, she smugly said, "Oh, that sucks, because I've seen him twice already so far." When we leave off to find him again, she says "Wow, what great luck, I'm stuck with the slowest team. No offense, but you guys are pretty much in last place." She then bitches about how she can't leave because she needs those hours, and asks us if we're impressed she stuck with us for so long, even though she couldve left.

After the race was over, I was a second away from socking her in the face. Sorry if I seem pissed or bitter, cuz I am pissed and bitter. I'm fine with not winning 1st place, I'm fine with even getting 10th place, but I'm not fine, if this is due to some bitch who insults us with petty passive aggressive comments and suggests half assed ideas.

Overall though, it was a fun race, I had mostly a great time, and I would really suggest it to others, so long as they dont get the luck I had with runners. I'm glad team yellow had won, because they had signed up with me and my partner, and we had been working together the entire time.

[irawratyou]

Sorry to hear that Team White. Yes, I do agree that the Fanimazing Race this year was an awesome event and it should be in next year's Fanime. Everyone did great and congratulations to the Yellow team for receiving 1st place! I am part of the Dark Blue team that finished 3rd overall. But I do have a share of frustrations with some of the things that happened during the race. I also have some suggestions to possibly make the next experience a more enjoyable one.

Runners
The runner my team had on the first day was awesome. No complaints about him. Second day, our runner was ok, but she seemed very disinterested about the race and had no idea what to do when we were lost in one leg of the race. I don't blame her since she had not slept nor ate much before the race, but to the staff who didn't want to do it and made my runner go, great job for not taking one for the team, yeah? Whoever is in charge, please note the personalities of your runners. Obviously someone who cares about nothing but themselves receiving community service hours like the one with Team White or someone who isn't at full energy like our runner shouldn't be runners at all. Maybe runners should be people who are upbeat and actually enjoy racing around the convention with their team. Should hand pick them during recruiting for staff members way before Fanime starts.

Staff at Checkpoints
We were told at the start of the race that staff members will be wearing orange the whole entire game to distinguish themselves from everyone else. It would be nice to know that they can also wear other colors too before the race, as staff members who were in the peet's coffee and civic auditorium locations wore brown and dark green sashes. I think we should also be informed that they'll try to blend into the setting, because some of them were hard to spot. Also, I think staff members should stay at the check points to provide us an indication whether we receive the next clue or we just got eliminated from the game. (See next topic) Walkie-talkies would be extremely helpful for you guys to communicate with each other simultaneously, compared to cell phones.

Clues
The clues were fine up until the part when we had to get 10 business cards or take-out menus of any combination from 10 food businesses in San Jose. It was cool to complete the task, but one fatal flaw was the clue didn't provide us a location of where to go when we have completed the task. My partner, my runner, and I were completely lost at the juncture of the game as we had no idea what was going on. So our runner gave us the hint to go back to the place where we received the task to receive our next clue, but no one was there... Completely lost, we thought we were eliminated from the game, so we went back to the tabletop gaming area to see the person in charge of the game was there and find out that we just finished 3rd place. 3rd place is indeed a great accomplishment and I was happy to hear that, but a mistake like this in the game that I had no control of is possibly the difference of receiving 1st place to 3rd place. I'm not too happy about that. I did believe my team had a fighting chance of getting first place if it wasn't for this huge error. (By the way, 1st place received a pair of 2012 Fanime weekend tickets. 2nd-4th place received how to draw manga materials.) Yes, it is in it's first year, but it would have also been nice to receive an apology about it cause I didn't hear any kind of apology when I was voicing my concerns after the race.

Qualifying Round
I think it would be more fair if everyone had started off the quiz at the same time. The people who received the quiz first had pretty much an advantage.

Days/Length of Event
I thought it was a little unfair for people who did not have the weekend pass because it was a two-day event and it wasn't announced until the top 10 spots were secured. I think it would be awesome to either inform everyone earlier about this information or to have the race take place only on one day. Also, having a suggestive time frame on how long the race last would be helpful so we can plan our day accordingly if we wanted to go to other events during the day.

Rules
It would also be nice if the rules were written up in a nice, concise fashion. The sheet of paper with rules that I saw did not provide enough information about the whole event.

It was a good trial run, but things could have been better. Hopefully the race would be smoother next year with more exciting challenges!
If anyone would like to hear how the game had planned out from beginning to end, I could type down the various clues and tasks we did for the entire game.

[Kiara]

Hey everyone, Team Purple here! I actually had a great time with the event. We were in 1st place during the first day, but ended up 2nd at the end. The competition was very enjoyable, and... to be honest, I really don't have any complaints. So, here's some of the things I think went really well this year! And I've got a few responses to what other people have said too.

RUNNERS:
We had great runners, actually. The first day, our runner was actually someone who'd never been to a convention before. So, we ended up having a lot of fun just watching him explore the con as we ran around. xD He kept up with us, didn't complain, and he was pretty chill the entire time. The second day, we had a good runner too. I ended up joining back in the race an hour after it started (I'll explain below), but from what I could tell, our runner was cool with just running after us as we ran around the city collecting business cards. He did get stopped for a couple pictures, but he ended up catching up after. I think that would be my one note then: Have runners who aren't cosplaying. It's a bit of a pain to have to keep looking back to make sure your runner can catch up with you after having gotten stopped for photos. But really, we liked our runners.

CHECKPOINTS:
I actually think it was really cool how some of the people we had to find DIDN'T have orange sashes. It made the game much more complicated and difficult, but what's a reward if you didn't have to earn it by doing difficult tasks? When we couldn't find the Peet's coffee guy, we ended up going upstairs, seeing someone else with an orange sash, and asking him if the guy had gone missing. We got told that maybe his sash wasn't orange, so we kept looking. So, I learned throughout the entire game that if you find someone in an orange sash next to the checkpoint/challenge, they could possibly offer a little hint.

DAY/LENGTH OF RACE:
I liked how it was spread across two days, but I do agree that all the information should have been given out BEFORE the prelim round started. I'd been reading the forums, so I knew the rules. But I could tell a lot of the people who qualified were then unhappy when the time/rules were elaborated upon. Also, times NEED to be put out beforehand. On the online schedule, the race wasn't supposed to start until later on saturday. Because it ended up getting moved down to noon, I had to miss the first hour of the race due to being on a panel. I think that pretty much was what lost us our almost constant 1st place lead.

PRELIMS:
Have everyone start at once! I was one of the first to start, but I like fair races, so I do think everyone should have been given the paper at the same time. That's something that can be fixed next year.

RULES:
I like the idea of having written out rules. Somewhere along the line, it was mentioned we could text each other, but because we weren't sure, we asked our runner to find out for us. He didn't even have the contact numbers of anyone coordinating the event. We didn't text, because we weren't completely sure what the final verdict on that ended up being. But written out rules would make the entire event SO much easier.

HELPFULNESS:
I really have to thank the staff for putting up with our team this year. During the prelims, my partner was still standing in line for her badge, so I was allowed to do the prelim quiz myself. That put me at a bit of a disadvantage, but I still was the 3rd/4th (Can't remember) person to finish. So, thank you for letting me do it while my partner was in line. Also, I had a panel from 12pm-1pm on Saturday, so I'm greatful the staff let my partner have a replacement partner for the first hour of the race that day. I kind of regret not being there, as I feel we could have kept our lead and won, but then again, I had committed myself to a panel way in advance.

ARTIST ALLEY:
Gotta say... this was the BEST part of the entire event. Neither me or my partner can draw (We like stick figures!) and I had to re-draw a second character after the first one did not pass. But it was a really fun challenge, and I LOVE how we were able to decide which team would get stuck at the artist alley and not move on. That was like, the best part of the race. (Sorry green team, you were the first team there that we saw. xD)

[Ska_Kitti]

Oh hi guys~

I knew there would be some difficulties running this event for the first year, so I appreciate the criticism and feedback. There was myself creating clues and events, while Sam was double-checking and including much-needed feedback and anything additional to fill in gaps. I would like to let everyone know that a lot of planning goes into an event such as the race, and I have been planning it for quite some time; over a year. I had been stressed the entire time for obvious reasons, so I do apologize if things were not up to par with certain standards you all may have had. I would like to thank those who participated and we will likely bring this event back next year!