A-X was a mixed bag for me.  I just went for two
days.  I arrived early Friday morning and left
Saturday afternoon.  The lines on Friday morning
for registration and to get tickets for the music
video contest were very short, which was a
pleasant change from last year.  Then, came the
line to get into the exhibit hall, which was
tremendously long.  They were gating people going
in unlike last year..not sure why...possibly for
occupancy limits?  Once we got in, Baakay and I
went on a romp through the room, spending money.
Besides helping her to spend her money, I bought
a few things myself, including cels of Sakura,
Kanna and the Digi Charat characters.  My
anime 
figure collection.

I was a bit disappointed to not see different cels
at the show...most of the cels were available
online with a few exceptions.

At that point, we took a break for lunch.  Came
back, waited through the line to get back in, then
went by the Pioneer booth where Crispin Freeman
was doing a signing.  Baakay is a big Zelgadis
fangirl, so she's a fan of Crispin's also.  I
tried to get her to have her picture taken with
him, but she ran like the chicken she is, so just
got a picture of Crispin alone.

By the time we got through the line and went back
to a few booths, it was time to go to the Yoko
Ishida concert.  This was definitely the highlight
of the con for me.  She has a great voice and put
on an amazing show.  Won me over as a fan :)

Supper break, then we went to the music video
contest which was a complete disaster.  It was
supposed to start seating at 7 and start at 8.
They finally let us in to start seating at 9 and
the mood was pretty ugly at that point due to
the frustration of waiting so long.  Not helping
was the fact that several of the staff members 
were very rude, pushing and shoving people if
they didn't move as they liked...ask Baakay about
that if you want more details.  But, despite them,
everyone got in and got seated.  

Here, I'll break in the story sequence to rant 
about the tickets..they give out tickets first 
thing in the morning so that if you come by, you 
have guaranteed seating..otherwise, if you don't 
have a ticket, you have to wait till all the
ticket holders are seated, then you get the
leftovers.  Sounds good in principle, right?
However, they mix up the tickets so that it's
not that the first comers get the first rows.
In our case, we were up in the nose bleed section,
the next to the last row in the theatre, even
through we came through the line for tickets
midway...so, people without tickets were getting
better seats.  We gave up our seats and went and
found better seats.

And then, sat there...and sat there..and sat
there.  They had no entertainment at all going
for an hour and people were getting antsy after
the two hours of waiting outside and the hour
waiting inside.  People started throwing airplanes
and one person did a bit too good of a job and
threw one that stuck in the screen.  The guy in
charge came out and yelled at the audience saying
how it was an expensive screen and now it was
pierced..which didn't help the mood.  Finally, at
10, they announced that due to technical
difficulties, the music video contest couldn't be
held that night and would be rescheduled for 8 am
Saturday morning as that was the only time the
theatre was open.  The mood was not good at all
as people left that night.

Baakay and I debated whether to attend the next
morning or not.  On one hand, we'd been looking
forward to this all year since last year's had
been a blast.  On the other hand, it meant giving
up doing other things and the experience was
already tainted by bad feelings.  In the end, we
decided to go.  Got there the next morning at 8
and the theatre was about 1/4 full or so...a lot
less people than the night before.  They still
were working on things and it didn't get started
until 9.  At least they'd learned their lesson
from the night before and had preview clips
playing to keep the audience entertained and not
making paper airplanes.

Once they got started, they still had problems.
There were no bumpers between videos..instead they
had a live host, which wasn't a big problem except
when the time came for the voting, they didn't
have refresher clips to play, so a lot of the time
it was hard to remember what was what.  One video
didn't get to be played at all, another had
rendering problems and played poorly, two more
were played later since they weren't working
properly when their turn came up and several
times, the wrong video was played.  There were
several great videos, but the experience was a
big letdown due to all the technical problems...
and since it was 7 hours (3 hours the night
before and 4 hours that morning) of only a day
and a half, it brought the level of my whole con
experience down.

After that, Yoko Ishida and the Para-Para Girls
were doing a signing at the Pioneer booth.  We
went back to the exhibit hall, I bought a Para-
Para Girls cd boxset from the Pioneer music booth
and got in line early to wait..which was a good
thing as people ended up being turned away.  But
I got it signed by them all and a picture of
Yoko :)

After that, I did a run through the exhibit hall
to pick up a few things for friends and family,
then had to grab lunch and hop on the plane.

Unfortunately, due to the time constraints and
the music video contest screw-up's, I didn't have
time to go to any panels like last year, so missed
out on all that fun.

Anyways, that's my rant.  Sorry you asked yet? :)

Here's one of the cels that I did get: