Yeah I was really surprised by the lines. I thought they would have been bigger. Don't get me wrong, thursday night was a mad house unless you were in the 6pm line which I was. When I walked out the entire hall was filled to the brim with the other times. All in all We walked in at 6pm and were completely done by 7pm with pick up and add-ons. The following morning was a breeze also.

 

If I can tell that some things are tagged while others aren't, I'm likely to give you the benefit of the doubt.  

 

I got into the customization class this year so. . . .

BESTEST BOTCON EVA. . . .

 

Lucky mofo. I saw someone posted on the trading board in the lobby their Sideswipe for $700.

 

a friend of mine was in the class and signed him and his son up and only made one of them and sold the other (nonused) for $425

 

Well, I actually meant all of Orlando. I drove down and didn't stay at Disney so I wasn't restrained to a small area while I was there. I won't say anything about central Florida in general, just Orlando specifically. And my gripes with the roads weren't so much with going around things (though you would think a major city, particularly a tourist hub, would have more major highways running through it), the biggest problem was that almost everything required a U-turn or you had to travel down a road with endless lights. Five miles takes about 20 minutes.

 

I'm a lil sad i missed out this year, considering the awsome time i had last year, specially meeting so many cool people, llamatron, Roboticplanet, Squirrelcar aka Bryan, Cobra Zartan and his girly, Sol Fury aka the britsh butcher   and even bumped elbows with Vangelus.

And as for haggeling, i got the best start ever at it when i went to Gen1fan and Megamus's parts party   i haggled my ass off, and got the best deals that whole week. Had an absolute blast in pasadena, so i'm really looking forward to next year.

And without a doubt, (specially considering last years set wasn't all that) the best part of botcon for me was making all new friends. Meeting Stayinginthebox and his family made the long lines really enjoyable, and i even got him to check out a little know website called tfw.

Like most people here have said, you get outta botcon what you put in, and hopefully i'll see some of you in Cali next June  

 

That's just it, man.

I got to hang out with some awesome people and that was the best part of the whole con.

 

What about the hot dogs outside the dealer room? Those had to be the nastiest tasting hot dogs ever. Then when they hit my stomach it was like a kick to the nuts.

 

This x100000...and the dealer room was lacking. When people have no prices and then break out a toyguide to determine what they want for it is just sad. $125 for a roadbuster magnus..no thanks.

 

Yeah, just in case any dealers are hearing this that don't know yet - put prices on your toys, geez.

 

Everything at my booth was priced!

Mainly because I've also been irritated by the absence of prices at previous Botcons.  

 

Haha, you sound awesome. I keep hearing great things about your booth, and I'm sad I missed it. Especially after Megamus told me about alot of the G2 shit he bought from you that I need hehe.

 

While we did have prices on most of our items, I will comment on why it is such a problem.

Basicly they give us 6 hours to set up our booths before they open the doors. Most toy conventions give you an entire day prior to the doors opening to get your stuff set up PLUS time the next morning/afternoon before they open the doors. The 6 hours we get at Botcon is not much time to unload your vehicle, arrange tables, build shelves, unpack your items and get them priced.

Further, most of the dealers are either online sellers (where you don't need prices on the items) or part time sellers and don't have a ton of free time prior to the show to price everything. I understand from a customers perspective why it is frustrating, which is why we tried to have as much priced as possible, but time constraints imposed by this particular show promoter definitely play a part at this convention. For whatever reason, he refuses to let us in the day before the show opens other then for 1 hour to unload whatever we can from our trucks/vehicles. We had another 6 large boxes of toys that we never even had an opportunity to get out to sell. There was just not enough prep time.

 

The most common phrase at the convention was "How much is the_____(insert TF name here)?" My son at one point asked me if I was going to stop asking that question and buy something.

 

Why not "What a great location for Botcon! I could find a hotel only 2 miles from the host location for only $38 a night."?

 

Apparently the cheap cost of the hotel room was far out weighted by the negative experience they had with the rest of the city of Orlando and apparently Florida in general.

 

Damn. With such a glowing review, I wished I'd have had some of those. 

 

Seconded on the setup time. We really could use at least a few more hours on Thursday to get things put together. If nothing else, a 3-4 hour window on Thursday would provide enough time to get the booth and any shelving/display equipment up and ready to go. That would allow us on Friday to simply come in and begin putting out and preparing our actual merchandise for sale.