Colossalcon was fantastic.
I feel like a goof, taking so long to write these entries when I had such a great time, but the past few months have been ridiculously busy, both as far as con prep goes, and real life. I think I explained this in passing in the very belated Anime North post. I’ll try to go into it in further detail later, but first, I’ve got three conventions to write about here.
So, Colossalcon.
I feel like most of the summer’s con plans can be summed up with, “a last minute decision.” As mentioned in the Anime North post, I spent the Saturday of Anime North making plans for Colossalcon. We established rides, hotels, and costume plans. All I had to do was bring shoes, shorts, and a shirt for Team Skull, and the rest was taken care of. Everything was good to go!
And then in the two days after AN and before Colossal, we found out that we were to be joined in our adventure by Jackie! And so more planning happened. I spent the Wednesday before Colossal (also known as “the day I was leaving” oops) shopping for cosplay supplies, and then very hastily prepping my Team Skull shirt and packing while waiting for Toast to come pick me up to spend the night at her place. (And then, still packing while she watched, since I thought I had more time that I did.)
We began our road trip Thursday morning, after I’d stayed up making sure our Team Skull hats and scarves were good to go. You could say I did the…grunt work…
Fortunately, I’m not a driver, so my level of exhaustion was irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. The trip itself was mostly uneventful, aside from a stop at Burger King where I purchased the Red Lion (a la Voltron), and a Froot Loops milkshake. In theory, this was not so terrible an idea, until we remember that Froot Loops get soggy.
As we approached the hotel, we pulled on our Team Skull hats and turned up the theme song, rolling into the parking lot like a bunch of hooligans. Worth it. We stayed in grunt mode for check-in, while we shopped at the Wal-Mart, and while getting dinner at Sonic. Everywhere we went, shouts of “TEAM SKULLLLLL!” followed. Amazing.
On Friday, Jackie and I did our Adventure Zone twins, Lup and Taako. We had a minor crisis when the elf ears I wanted to wear were just inexplicably missing, despite everyone seeing me put them in my bag. Fortunately, I had my backup ears just in case. And then, while walking from the car to the convention centre, crisis struck again and my shoe literally broke. I was the walking epitome of a hot mess, and I ended up buying some leather sandals from the gift shop.
We had a blast being these perfect trash twins, and took selfies with so many other Adventure Zone cosplayers. This fandom is so good, and everyone was just so positive. It’s so interesting to me that Adventure Zone cosplayers are so recognizable despite it being an audio medium with very few canon appearance details. We stopped by the Voltron shoot to watch that, and I lamented not bringing Pidge.
After a long day we headed back to our hotel to change into civvies, and then went to Steak and Shake for dinner, which was wonderful and perfect. I had a chocolate-covered strawberry shake, and I could not describe the bliss.
We had some horribly optimistic plan that at some point on Saturday, we’d all end up in Team Skull grunts, so Toast and I started the day in those. Jackie really wanted to wear her Zelda (which is absolutely gorgeous), and had an evening shoot planned, while Trish had photo shoot plans in her Rikku. I’m not sure when we were all supposed to Skull Grunt, but we had fun anyway.
Unfortunately, we started the day with me and Jackie missing the shuttle, with the next one not coming for half an hour. We tried calling for a cab, but it would be at least 20 minutes before it arrived so…we walked.
Do not recommend.
After arriving at the con, we spent a good long while trying to cool down and also manage our faces so we didn’t look like we just walked for about half an hour in costume, and then met back up with our other roomies to help with photo things.
We headed over to the outdoor pools to hang out until Jackie’s shoot, and I changed into my super-secret bikini costume, which was the same as my Team Skull costume but with my bikini top instead of my Team Skull top. It was a really nice day for lounging pool side, and it was probably one of my highlights of the con.
Once our day ended at the Kalahari, we headed back to our hotel to take advantage of our mostly empty waterpark. We went on the slides many times, despite one part of the stairs smelling distinctly like pee. Other than that, it was super great, and I’m glad we got some slide time in. We had dinner at Applebee’s, which I’d never been to before. The food was really cheap? It was weird.
We spent the night in our hotel room playing card games; a chill ending to the con.
Sunday morning we went to Joanne’s before hitting the road, taking advantage of those sweet sweet deals that we can’t get back in Canada. I bought so much fleece. We went through the Steak and Shake drive-through, taking our delicious mixed milk beverages to go, and made our way back to Canada.
Overall, an excellent weekend, made so by the wonderful people I spent it with. I’m not sure I would go again if I weren’t staying at the Kalahari though. My previous two trips were both there, and I guess I was spoiled by being where it was happening. Maui Sands was good, and quiet, but…the convenience of being on-site is hard to pass up.
Shout outs of course to Jackie, Toast, and Trish for being the most wonderful people.