MegaPlex 2007


‘Cannuck’ for Room-party :P


I'm not even sure where to start -- but I'll give it a whirl. The convention itself was a blast, I think that all of the organizers deserve a huge Kudos, and I for one will be back next year.



Things began on Thursday with massive weather delays out of Toronto and Chicago -- Pup, Jaf and myself were delayed for almost 5 hours mid-stream (where we met up with Theome). When we finally took off for Jacksonville, I experienced the most brutally turbulent flight I've had in almost 8 years of business travel. It was a 2 hour flight, but it was over some of the worst weather of the season (that was the day that the Tornadoes hit the high school and hospital in Alabama) – the ATC on United sounded like we were threading a needle with course corrections “for weather, at your discretion”

Then things got interesting.

Friday and Saturday were a blast – I love the smaller con atmosphere! And I love the different events that Megaplex set up (Murder Mystery, games shows, fursuit parade through Church ?

But Sunday takes the cake. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s done it before, but (like I’ve been doing for like 6 or 7 years now), I went to hang my fursuit up to dry on the fire sprinkler on the wall – the entire-room heard a ‘POP’, a fire-alarm and then TORRENTS of water shot out as the sprinkler exploded with such ferocity that not only was the ceiling literally blown apart, but the mattresses on the beds were shot across the room. Within 5 minutes, we were all standing in about 2 or 3 inches of water.

Shocked, dumb-founded, Slush, Eric, Pup, Jafra, and Ferian took about a minute to realize that we needed to get our things out of the room ASAP. We scrambled to toss everything into the hall – it was quite the psychology test, things were thrown out in the following order:

Fursuit heads, suits

Bags and loose items

Laptops, cell-phones and wallets

The fact that we all grabbed our fursuits first, and not our wallets or laptops (which I’ll get to in a moment) was beyond hilarious.

So the room was completely destroyed – and that’s quite the understatement. The room next-door (un-occupied) was flooded as was the hotel’s kitchen below. After long conversations with the hotel management, we were moved into a new room, they helped clean our clothing.

Thanks to Pup and Domino for the use of the con-fans, we were able to dry out our fursuits – EVERYTHING WAS DRENCHED.

My laptop was drenched as was my blackberry – both were alright after being disassembled and allowed to dry. Slush and Eric weren’t so lucky. Slush’s laptop, camera and DS were destroyed, as was Eric’s DS – I’ll make this up to you both.

So where do things sit? The hotel insurance is trying to get me to cover the damages (including loss of room rental during repairs), I of course am trying to work out something through insurance – early estimates are between $15k and $20k US. I think the fact that something I know lots of us all do caused incredible destruction completely boggles my mind. The ferocity and quantity of water that shot out of that “Sprinkler” was completely unexpected – it literally only took a few minutes before the entire hotel room was our own private pool.

What I learned most from all of this is that I’ve been missing some of the most obvious things around me. I recently made a post “People suck. That’s all.” I’m taking that back – it wasn’t even a few minutes after this catastrophe that it became obvious how wrong that sentiment was. Yes, if the insurance doesn’t go well this is going to cost me a small fortune and yes that’s more brutal than I would have imagined. But the way that even strangers, folks I had only met at the convention stepped-in for no reason, and for no gain to help us all out brings me to tears.

I apologize if I'm missing folks:
DukeFox rushed in to help resurrect destroyed electronics – I can’t thank you enough for your help and I wll do anything I can to repay you for your help (I don't know your LJ username offhand - I'm looking for it now!)

aceswild, you were an incredible friend throughout all of this – I’ve never felt more supported and I appreciate it more than I can possible express.

Domino and Pup you guys are fantastic, kuddlepup (you do one hell of a con-programming job), Yappy, Herbie – I’ve known you guys for a quite a while now, and you’ve always been excellent friends. Lace, you're always awesome to hang around (and thanks for being there on Sun) and Wayah, it was awesome to finally meet you!

My room mates, Eric, Pup, Jafra, and to Slush – I want to again apologize from the bottom of my heart for all of the damage that this caused. It was a careless accident and I will make this up to each of you.

To the countless, and I do mean that – group of folks at this convention this year are the warmest and more genuine folks I’ve had the pleasure of being around. Folks don’t know what they missed this year – Megaplex was simply fantastic … and how about those room parties?

On a lighter-note – I know some room parties have been quite the mess for the house-keeping, but how many conventions can claim parties with $20,000 in damage? :D

(I laugh because I can’t think of any other way to deal with this ... I certainly don’t want to make this seem as though I’m not taking this seriously, because obviously this whole incident is going to end up costing me a small fortune once the damaged items are replaced and the hotel is squared-away)