Getting There is Half the Fun by Scarlet
As someone who has traveled to anime cons for over 15 years, I hardly do the road trip option. I'm accustomed to flying if the trip is over 300 miles from the starting point. This year, because of circumstances beyond our control, we ended up taking a last minute Greyhound down to Baltimore. This was a red eye trip down; we left South Station at 10PM in the evening. We first stopped over in New York's Port Authority Station. Long story short, we hope to never again spend more than five minutes in that cesspool. At 3AM it felt like a homeless people slumber party in the terminal. Luckily, we were able to board our bus down to Maryland and arrive earlier than anticipated. We got into town at 7AM the next day and took a $10 cab ride to our designated hotel.

A quick thank you to people who have offered to drive us down from Boston after we had booked our bus tickets. Had it not been for Greyhound's non-refund policy, we would have taken up on the offer.

Registration and Line Con by Scarlet
Even on the trip down to Baltimore, I was getting inquiries about Line Con: East Coast edition. On Thursday, there was a delay in getting badges printed out. This caused some people to wait 3-5 hours in line. This was all due to Internet failure at the convention center. Doors closed at 10PM on Thursday; it upsetted attendees who were waiting outside for their badge. However, people were still encouraged to line up the next day to pick up their badges. According to closing ceremonies, staffers were up until 4AM fixing the problem. After Thursday, people had no problems picking up their badges at registration. Talk of perhaps mailing out badges prior to Otakon 2015 is being considered.

Otakon Photo Studio by Scarlet
Many cons have a photo studio where you can get some professional grade shots of your cosplay taken. While most cosplayers like to arrange professional photoshoots prior to the con, this might not be the case for other cosplayers. Otakon has a photo studio cosplayers can utilize to get some memorable shots of their cosplays. We went here to get some shots of our Meowstic cosplays. We were given a wait time of 30 minutes before a photographer could see us. While there was a wait, it was also nice talking to other cosplayers while waiting our turn. Once we saw our assigned photographer, we were given a choice of backgrounds. The photographer also gave us some posing suggestions. You were also given a reveal session where you can see all of your photos. You can pick and choose and what you like to keep. Photos could be digitally purchased after the shoot. It was about $25 for three photos and a 4GB Otakon souvenier thumb drive.

Moon Prism Poptarts by Scarlet
Otakon typically accepts about 150 fan panels from attendees interested in being a part of the programming. Moon Prism Poptarts was accepted. We weren't quite sure what the attendance for a Friday early afternoon would come to. However, we nearly filled up Panels 5 at the Hilton! The panel covered how Sailor Moon became localized in North American in the 90s. A majority of the audience were introduced to Sailor Moon during the Toonami era. A handful of people in the audience were familiar with the strawberry poptarts procott where the title of the panel got it's namesake. We were operating this panel after coming in at 7AM! However, the audience seemed to get a great kick out of it. We wanted to aim for more audience participation. To kill time before the panel started, we asked people in the audience what Sailor Moon meant to them.

Thank you to everyone coming out for Moon Prism Poptarts! We're happy to see the resurgence of the Sailor Moon fandom!

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