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If I finish it in time, I will be bringing my Battle Bunny Riven cosplay to Fanime! Excited to meet all of you~  :D

Hi Antonio,

I realize that it is now January 2011, but I'm shooting you an e-mail regarding a volunteer reimbursement that was never paid out.  Please keep an eye out for it!  Thanks :)

[Tony]

@Tony:
For a second there, I thought the internets were flipping out!  :D

@hentaifreak:
PyronIkari's response to your statement was very well said, and I wanted to add a few more things:  Having been to several Akihabara maid cafes, I can honestly say that Fanimaid Cafe's maids spent much more time overall and interacted a lot more with their goshujin-sama than maids do in "real" Japanese maid cafes.  At every crowded cafe I visited in Japan (and even the ones that didn't have a line out the door), the maids didn't spend more than a few minutes with the patrons with the exception of special guests/regulars.  My party was usually left to chat amongst ourselves, eat, and watch the show on stage.  I've even had one maid called away from my table mid-conversation never to return!  I'm not quite sure what standard it is you're holding the Fanimaids to exactly, but I think they went above and beyond the goal of providing an Akihabara-style maid cafe to con-goers.

As for the prices, as stated previously Fanimaid Cafe had no control over pricing, but it was actually cheaper than the rest of the con (sandwiches $4.50/ desserts $5, whereas I paid $6.50 for a little 6-pack of sushi rolls down the hall).  Also keep in mind that at an Akihabara maid cafe everything would have cost twice as much.  Imagine paying $8-9 for an ice cream parfait that only has one scoop of ice cream, while the bottom of your parfait cup is stuffed with corn flakes for filler.  Not to mention that many of those maid cafes have door fees of $3 to 5 just to get in.  @_@

I only did swap meet on Friday, and oh man, I made a real killing this year!  :D  I couldn't have done it without my awesome two friends who assisted me: I handled all transactions, while another friend handled all the money.  Then I had another friend standing with the crowd, looking like she was shopping, to keep an eye out for shoplifters + straighten the goods when needed.

It was really hectic but I sold pretty much everything I brought with me!

[love]

Stayed at the Hilton, and to start with a compliment: I just have to say that I love the renovations!  Everything seemed so spacious, clean, and very "oshare."  The new televisions are fantastic; I'm happy we could finally hook up a DVD player/video games.  And to top it all off, the bed was probably the most comfortable bed I have ever slept on... I had a hard time getting out of bed every morning because all I wanted to do was bury myself in those cool comfy comforters and sleep~

Unfortunately, although my room was worthy of a "Totally freaking awesome" rating, my experiences with the staff brought the quality of my stay down to just an "Eh, it was okay."

First, although I explained very clearly to the front desk upon checking in that my credit card could not be authorized beyond $200, the clerk authorized my VISA for $515 which completely exceeded my limit and left me with zero available credit.  Because it was a weekend, through Monday I suffered tons of stress because I didn't have a credit card handy for emergencies--not to mention that I worried about getting penalized by my card company for exceeding the credit limit.  As the last thing I want is for my APR to shoot up to 20 or 30%, I experienced a lot of distress throughout the entire weekend.  The front desk manager promised me on Saturday night that he would straighten everything out Monday morning, but when I finished up at the con and returned to the hotel Monday afternoon, nothing had been done.  The manager had not even left a memo for any of the staff, and I had to wait an hour while they tried to straighten everything out.  I filed a formal complaint against the girl who checked me in, but I was offered nothing for my inconvenience or my distress.  I expect way better service from a Hilton and have to say that I am sorely disappointed by this experience.

Second, in addition to the credit card problem, several of the front desk staff were--to put it politely--rather air-headed.  I wasn't asking difficult or complicated questions, I was only trying to find out the single day self-parking rate, yet the clerk kept quoting me the three-day Fanime parking rate.  We talked in circles for several minutes, until I realized that she had absolutely no clue what I was trying to ask her, so I ended up looking for one of the posted signs with the parking rates instead.

Third, housekeeping was erratic.  The convenience cards the maids provided so that you select what time you wanted them to clean was a great idea, but poorly executed.  One of my roommates overslept a bit and was still getting ready when housekeeping arrived.  She hurried to throw some clothes on so she could get out of their way...  Then she waited an hour and returned to the room to finish doing her hair and makeup, but it hadn't even been cleaned in her absence.  Why kick her out of the room then if you're not even going to clean it?  In addition, housekeeping forgot to provide a new time card for the next day.  I called the front desk before going to bed, and the clerk said that he would personally walk a card up to my floor and slip it under the door.  Well, he never did and the next morning the maids walked into the room while everyone was still sleeping.

Aside from the seriously BAD credit card error, which I am still pissed off about, my complaints about the staff may seem minor at a glance.  However, when experienced all together, it just felt like the entire Hilton staff was totally inept and that they were making my stay unnecessarily difficult.  The only capable person I interacted with all weekend was the bellboy, who not only did his job expediently and courteously, but also recommended a parking lot across the street that only cost $7/day.  :)

I understand that it was a busy weekend, but I have stayed at the Hilton during past Fanime Cons and never encountered such a consistently poor degree of service.

Yay, it finally loaded, phew!  I was really worrying for a while there...

Is there going to be a cut-off number for the list?

Is the list full/server down because I have not been able to get onto the reg site all night  ???  I'll try my roommate's computer as well in case it's just my PC acting up or something...

This is the Bunny Haruhi cosplayer, and I wanted to give my heartfelt thanks to the good Samaritan who found my purse and turned it over to Fanime staff.

It was a black-and-white patterned bag containing my con badge, wallet, check book, driver's license, soul, etc!  I was in the arcade at the time and had left it with a friend who wasn't too careful with keeping an eye on it.  I took off for a chat with a buddy, and when I returned to the video games, my watcher-friend had disappeared and my stuff was nowhere in sight!  @_@  If I hadn't gotten my purse back, I do think that I would have suffered a severe heart attack...

So thank you to whomever you are!  <3  You have my everlasting love and appreciation.  If anyone has any info on who the nice person was, please PM me so that I can give proper thanks.

To the mods, I placed the thread here so that it would have the highest chance of being seen by the intended person, but please feel free to move this to the proper forum if necessary.

Hm. Do consider, though, that we'll be expecting plenty of underage people at the Ball, and having alcohol there would be, to say the least, frowned upon by the con center, San Jose, and California (not to mention everyone who has access to internet news if it gets too big-scale).
It'd save a lot of hassle if it was just kept to 'sober' drinks.

I agree completely.  Fanime is a family convention, and there are a lot of underage people running around.

I should have mentioned in my above post that while I think drinking and ballroom dancing don't necessarily not go hand-in-hand, I definitely think this should be an alcohol free event.

Too many underaged kids for adult beverages.  Of course that doesn't mean you can't have a couple before coming down to the dance...

Although if you ask me ball room dancing and drinking probably don't go well together.  Better to wait for the rave, that's what I'll be doing...

Are you kidding?  High society has to get itself hammered to find the least bit of enjoyment in these things.


Uh... just kidding.  ^^;  It's 6AM, and I've gotten two hours of sleep last night and about 4-5 hours of sleep per night for the past two weeks.

But in all seriousness, maybe it's just the bodice rippers that I read, but my impression was that alcohol and ballroom are not exclusive of each other.

Sorry, no, just one box. Max Size should be about the size of Comic Book Long Box.

If you have two people splitting a spot, can there be one per person?

I don't understand how we ended up with so much adult material.  It's not mine, I swear! XD

Sorry, only one box per space. This is so that it's easy for our staff to do our rounds and check on what's going on.

This is better than previous years where NO hentai stuff was allowed ^^;;

Ah, I see.  I guess I'll PM you about our situation then, as I don't want to bother anyone with the mountain of graphic manga sitting in my dorm hallway.

Sorry, no, just one box. Max Size should be about the size of Comic Book Long Box.

If you have two people splitting a spot, can there be one per person?

I don't understand how we ended up with so much adult material.  It's not mine, I swear! XD

05/19/07:
Also, any mature items must be contained to one clearly-marked closed box. Please see the rules for specifics. We reserve the right to prohibit any items.

Just checking, but are we allowed to bring more than one box of mature items?  We'll have all the items covered, but I just want to make sure that we can bring everything we intend.

No American DVDs allowed [re: above post]?  Not even sci-fi related?  Because I've got a Buffy box set I've been trying to get rid of, and if the majority of our merchandise is anime related, is having a few American items allowed at all?

Can we have friends watch our space?  Six hours, even if we don't stay the entire time, is still a long time; I'd like to take an hour's break for dinner and whatnot.

Also, can we bring food into the swap meet?

Thanks for fielding all our questions. I'm really excited!  :3

Just thought of another one.  Would you be able to get Nodame Cantabile for DS, and if so, what would the price be?  The BF showed some interest in it and enjoyed a demo he tried, so I thought I might pick it up for him.

Will you be charging tax at your booth?  And what forms of payment do you accept?

[Edit]

Thanks for the update!  I just wanted to point out that when you put a parenthesis after an eight, it becomes a 8), heh.  For a second, I thought that I had missed the pre-reg, but then I realized that the list couldn't possibly have been posted on the 1st since this is a new announcement.

Edit  Looks like you noticed, too!

Sorry if this was asked already; I briefly looked over the thread but didn't see it:

Do you think you would be able to get the Ouendan sequel (DS), Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2, in time for Fanime?  It comes out the 17th of this month, so I know that's kind of cutting it close, but I can only hope!

*flails*  In '05, my friends and I were some of the people in the front-to-middle section of the line, and we just got completely shifted around in the jumble.  We never even got in to the swamp meet, even though we waited three hours in line.  It sucked so bad that we got discouraged from doing it again last year.  (--;

But we're thinking about giving it another go this year since we have a lot of stuff to sell.

Don't know if anyone mentioned this one yet, but I'd loved to see Typing of the Dead at Fanime.  I blow so much money on that game...  T_T

Check your email, I've replied to this.

E-mail received and replied to in turn.  To everyone else: we've got some great staff here at Fanime, guys... ^_^  I'm so glad the issue was resolved.

Thanks again!

[only members in a group account with ten or more members will receive the group bonus]

I've been meaning to say something about this sooner, but I had to give myself a little bit of time to approach the situation reasonably and objectively. I have always been very happy with the Fanime registration process and staff. I know that you guys work very hard and have to deal with a lot, and I know that there is only so much you can do within certain guidelines... However, I would like to say that I am rather miffed by the following that was recently added to the Registration info page:

Note: Group rewards are still to be determined. Only groups that initially register with 10 or more will receive these rewards.

And this, which has been added to the account sign-up page:

Your group does not qualify for group perks. (Adding more members will NOT qualify your group.)

These conditions were not listed on the first post of the Group Registration sticky, which was updated on October 24th, and still isn't (http://forums.fanime.com/viewtopic.php?p=96877&highlight=#96877).  After having read that post,  I registered my group on October 31 prior to revisiting the forum boards. Since I didn't have the information for all our studio members at the time, I only registered six people during that session. Because it had the option to add new members later on (and registration had not been updated to include any of the information quoted above), I thought I could add the other members later on by the deadline.  Well, after registering I browsed the forums and saw the following post:

AHHH! Ok, some more corrections.

- Registration accounts can have as many people as possible, but only members in a group account with ten or more members will receive the group bonus.
- Group registration will definately be open this week. If you would like, email me (milton at fanime . com) with the subject "Fanime Group Notification" without the quotes (emails without that exact subject might not be added to the mailing list and as such, won't get the emails) and I'll email you when it goes up. Going against what I said earlier, there will be no extention for the discount. Originally, group registration was scheduled to open next month, but I've been able to work out something and allow a week at the old rate. So please don't kill me angry-mob style at the convention.

I got really upset since our group, which does have more than ten people, missed out on the group bonus because of a technicality. The part that bothers me is that none of the requirements for group perks were listed on the registration page itself, so I don't understand how we can be retroactively held accountable for some corrections you made after the fact.  We purchased registration under certain terms, but now we have to deal with terms that weren't listed at the time that we were charged.

I would feel a lot better if you could please explain to us why the initial-group-of-ten stipulation is necessary in the first place. Is there a logistical reason that we can't add on people later?

Additionally, I'd like to know if there's anything that can be done to fix this situation on either party's side. I understand that there are no refunds, but would it be possible for me to start a new account and re-register everyone (at the current price, of course) along with the rest of our members and have you credit the existing payment to those accounts instead? You guys have always been really helpful in the past, so I hope that some sort of arrangement can be reached.

I've posted this to the boards because I wasn't sure whether you would see my post or my e-mail first.  I've also sent CC of this e-mail to Tony since he would know when he updated the website to include the group rewards requirements.