Month: April 2012

We are back from C2E2!

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C2E2, Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo, made its third appearance on the Chicago scene this past weekend, April 13th – April 15th at McCormick Place.

Having been to GenCon last summer, a HUGE event with over 130,000 visitors, and Wizard World’s Mid-Ohio Comic Con, a way, way smaller event, we were curious to see how C2E2 would compare to those. I must say, it compared very well! I think, as fun and as huge as GenCon was, this convention was better. It definitely topped the Mid-Ohio Con (which we have taken off our list of conventions to attend).

One of the best parts of this con for us was that I had been able to book a room at the Hyatt, which is attached to the convention center. No more driving around, looking for parking spots and paying out the nose to park for a few hours! We were able to run back to the room (ok, more accurately we were able to send Jay back to the room for us!) anytime we needed to. The hotel was beautiful, the staff super great. BIG time disappointment was the internet situation! After taking a ton of pictures we were anxious to start uploading them to our site (and facebook), but with an average speed of 36kbps (yes, that is less than dial up speed!) there was no way that was going to happen.

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Saturday night a storm rolled through and took out their DISH tv as well. Sheesh! This is 2012 and you are the HYATT for goodness sakes! GET CABLE! As a super-geeky-techy family this was like living in the dark ages, in a cave, without sustenance. I think Jay was having internet withdrawal symptoms as he kept wandering around muttering about pings and upload/download speeds. It didn’t help that our 3G/4G phone connection was more like -1G all weekend. But…..I digress!

Friday, we had to wait for Courtney to get out of school before heading to Chicago. The drive was uneventful until we saw this

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Holy cow! I have seen wind farms before, but this was HUGE! Hundreds of wind turbines, in every direction, quite literally as far as the eye could see. What an amazing sight. We even woke Courtney up to witness it. On the way home it was kind of spooky, since it was dark we could see the lights on top of the turbines.  About 99% of them were blinking in perfect unison all along the horizon. Quite a sight. I kept waiting to hear the music from Close Encounters, signaling an eminent alien arrival.

By the time we got checked in, and got Pyramid Head dressed, it was after 7pm and pretty much everything was closing down for the night. That was a bit disappointing since GenCon is a 24 hour a day convention, but we have come to discover that is not the norm at these things. So we just kind of sauntered around, taking pictures and getting the lay of the land, oh yeah, and getting lost! We thought it was a pretty simple layout, but having gone up on one series of escalators, and down on another, we got lost! Turns out there are half floors. Glad we discovered that when the place was empty, instead of Saturday when it was packed!

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C2E2

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For all those we handed out cards to over the past few days, and promised you would see yourself on our sites in picture and/or video form, we apologize for the delay. The internet speed in our hotel room at the Hyatt Regency, even after 3 complaints to the desk and 3 calls to their technical support, PLUS an attempt to use their “premium” business service to upload stuff, we still were not able to hold a speed other than 26kbps. Yes, that is HALF of the old dial up speed. (oh and now, because it is raining and they have DISH, yes , seriously DISH! , the tv is out)
Stay tuned and please check back. As soon as we get home we will have everything uploaded. Feel free to comment on photos, or tag pics on facebook when they’re up!