mortonfox: (rakket)
Last weekend, I headed off to Virginia Beach for FursonaCon. I keep coming back to this furry con because among the cons I attend, they have the most fun, easy-going vibe and they like to try different things instead of borrowing ideas from other furry cons. This is the kind of con where, alongside the more usual panels and workshops, there is a panel where someone tried to do a Bob Ross painting in MS Paint. (It was probably the most hilarious panel in the con.)

There were no fursuit games this time, although that's par for the course as this kind of event has been on its way out for a while. There was a short and sweet fursuit parade, which went from the main events ballroom through the dealers room and finally to the hotel lobby for the photo shoot. With 155 fursuiters in the parade, we really filled up the hotel lobby! After the fursuit parade, I participated in a music video shoot, choreographed by achookitty, to the tune of Honey, I'm Good. It was fun to do. We had a two-hour block in the schedule to rehearse and video record the dance but it was simple enough that we finished early.

And finally, because I like to bring something back from each con that I made myself, I went to the sewing panel and made a furball keychain. There was a problem with the projector so we did not have the instructional video during the panel but it still wasn't too difficult.
mortonfox: (create a fursona)
Only two weeks after FA United, I went on a trip again, this time to Virginia Beach for FursonaCon. With only 424 attendees, this is the smallest con I attended this year. However, they have friendly and enthusiastic vibes all around. In addition, there were a number of panels and workshops with audience participation, so you're not just listening to someone talk. I quite enjoyed those.

The fursuit games (called Gladiator Games to fit this year's Ancient Rome theme) at this convention are unique in that they are spread out over three days with each game being its own event. The downside was each game was an elimination round so once you're out, you can't play the remaining games. I would prefer if everyone got to play every game, the way it was done the previous year. I played the scavenger hunt round but was eliminated in the trivia-bowling round, more because of bad bowling than the trivia. However, the prize from the first round was what I picked up in the scavenger hunt, which was a poster from FursonaCon 2017. Pretty nifty piece of history, and it's nice that the con found a way to reuse those.

The Hatoful panel was a lot of fun. It was Thursday evening, so I went to that right after arriving at the hotel, checking in, and picking up my badge. Hatoful Boyfriend is an interactive visual novel with some choices along the way that affect the direction of the story. There were lots of characters in the dialog. The panelists took the main characters but everyone in the audience could jump in and voice the secondary characters. I did three voices, two of them snooty characters but I really got into it. Even after the panel, I caught myself casually doing one of those voices when I went out shopping later that night.

The STEM Furs Meet and Greet had some really good discussion too. I've worked in software development for a long time so I had plenty to share and everyone else had a lot of special expertise too, so the hour really flew by. Another fun event was "If I fits, I sits", where fursuiters could play around with large boxes and squeakers, like a bunch of cats. The Jackbox Party Night was hilarious too. Imagine a room full of people joking around and tapping choices on their smartphones. We played Murder Trivia and Quiplash. Then there was the Nerd Congress panel, where we debated and voted on a number of make-believe laws for the fandom. And last but not least, I also went to the drawing workshop that was run by one of the guests of honor. I haven't done any art in years but it's good to know I still have some base level of skill.

To summarize, FursonaCon was a small con but with more interesting things going on than one would expect for this size of con. There were a lot of energy and a good vibe going the whole weekend. I would definitely return the next year.
mortonfox: (chestnut halloween)
So this past weekend was my last furry convention of the year: FursonaCon at Holiday Inn in the Norfolk / Virginia Beach area. It's also the smallest one of the year, with only 297 attendees. (79 fursuiters in the fursuit parade) Funny thing is I think I enjoyed it the most of the four cons I attended this year. There wasn't much programming so that left plenty of time to relax, chat, and fursuit. The local furries are very hospitable. They didn't know me or where I was from ("Remind me again where Delaware is?" said one of them, probably half-jokingly.) but I was just short of dragged to a room party the first night of the con. Of course, with only a few hundred attendees, we didn't have the whole hotel to ourselves but the people from the two wedding parties we shared the hotel with were also very nice and wanted photos with all the fursuiters.

The fursuit games were run differently from other cons. Instead of having all the games as one long event, they split it into multiple short events, one game per event. I thought that was much less tiring. Plus, that meant each game had prizes. I didn't do so well in fursuit dodgeball, but my team won trophies in fursuit hockey. Because there weren't many fursuiters, the parade was short and quick and we got fish tags (for the Atlantis theme) at the end of it. One other benefit to a small con: there was never a wait at the photo room and so I got these wonderful lightstick photos.

Biggest downside though was the hotel. While some parts of the hotel were new and fairly up-to-date, my room wasn't. The faucet was loose. The power socket was loose. Lamp fixtures were rusty. The air conditioner was weak. Housekeeping on my floor lacked attention to detail. They forgot various items and even forgot to service my room the first day. Also there was a musty odor in the hotel corridors and some of the meeting rooms. On the plus side, my room had a refrigerator and microwave oven, which helped a lot because that meant I could buy some groceries and not have to contend with that ridiculous 12.6% restaurant tax in the Norfolk / Virginia Beach area.

What would the weekend be without GPS games? I found 6 geocaches on the trip. They were mostly very easy, even though two of them were rated 5 stars and one 3.5 stars. Surprisingly, the cache that took the most time to find was rated only 1 star. One of the 5-star caches was a pretend 5-star but aside from that, I'm not sure how difficulty ratings work any more. The star of the weekend though was Munzee. That area is packed with pins! On the evening of my arrival, I was up to 3,624 captures when I decided I'd better get back to the hotel! I got 290 more on Sunday evening and over a thousand more on the way home, but even then, it looks like I've barely scratched the surface.

The caches... )

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Morton Fox

May 2020

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