Hacker's 'Official Transformers Collector's Convention' (AKA BotCon) 

Report

Day 1, Friday Morning

That's right, the day started early Friday morning. I was woken up around six a.m. so I could finish packing for the day. Well, I was ready to go at seven, but my dad worked the graveyard shift so we got onto the road about nine in the morning. I drove for about three hours and a half before lack of food and sleep caught up to me. My mom took over the driving at one in the afternoon (My time) and promptly got caught in the Chicago traffic jams...

At 3:30, we made it to the hotel, a very BIG hotel mind you. I preregistered for BotCon, deserted my family and went exploring around the hotel. On the second floor was group of people staring at the floor. I meet Melissa driving around her Transmetal Tarry.  She used tape to stick a ZipZap car to Tarry, that's all. Everyone was like, you are so freaking brilliant. She also had a custom made Rampage, everyone thought it was a factory repaint. So she and I get along really well, she tells me which site she's from and stuff and I tell her I'm hovering around Sapph's site and The Realm of Insanity. that was a conversation we had! 

I also found out that she too had registered for the dinner so we tagged along with each other till time for the food and meeting of David Kaye. 

I had my camera with me the entire night so I had a little fun with her toys. We acted out "Bad Spark" and had Rampage trying to tear Tarry apart. There was one guy walking around with an outfit on and called himself the "Rouge Viper" I got a picture of him trying to stomp Tarry, trying to make up with Tarry, and Tarry taking his revenge on Mister Viper man. Someone also dropped some pretzels on the floor, which I took advantage of and Tarry can be seen eating pretzels and a toy autobot car.

Finally time to get ready for the dinner, at six-thirty people were lining up and I took the advantage and took a photo of the loong line, the full dining room too. We were served dinner around eightish and at nineish, this announcer dude, introduced Gregg(Grimlock), Gary(Optimus), and of course David(Megatron). 

Then the dinner ended and I ran to get photos with all the voice actors and to have a chat with David. It was really funny when Melissa and myself got to talk to him one-on-one. She had a recorder with her so we asked David to say something spontaneous in Megatron's voice. He thinks for a moment before he says, "Alright, is that thing ready?"
We hand him the recorder in which he says, "Where the devil have I left my panties?" (ASA Melissa sends this
in, I'm sure Sapph will put it, along with the RubberDucky Song (also sung by Megatron), up on the site for all to hear. We're walking down this hallway with David, cracking up and listening to the recording over, when a woman
comes up behind us and asks David if she could have an interview with him and us. He gently pushes us down
the hallway to the staircase saying in his normal voice, "No! My clients and myself have nothing to say!"

After that we went up to the first level floor to wait in line for our hotel exclusives, we decided the line was too long, so we waited and showed David the Moterized Tarry! He thought it was great, and we made some small talk. 

End Day One, 11:45pm


Day Two, Saturday Morning

The convention started at eight, so I planned ahead and set the alarm for 6:30. I got up showered and got dressed and prepared to leave the room. My dad wanted to have breakfast with me when he saw I was leaving, so again I had to wait while he dressed and stuff. 

7:30, I hopped into the line for the dealer room that would open at eight. Met a really cool guy by the name of Jarred and we both talked on about BW and stuff like that until it was eight. A little announcer dude walked by shouting it would be another half hour before the room opened, talk about unhappy. The line was soo huge and everyone was so tired of waiting, they all booed the announcer guy, who promptly ran off, back into the dealer room.

Finally they open the room and this place is huge!!  It had everything and Transformer fan could want! I
spotted my fave character in a box and promptly purchased my first Depth Charge toy. Closely after that, I bought a Transmetal Megatron. Rampage, Depth Charge, Tarry, and Megatron. You can imagine I had a field day with my camera...

I was soon browsing in the huge assortment of t-shirts, when Melissa found me. We went walking around together and bought some more items, I got some Decepticon stickers of various sizes, and one was even small enough I put it on Megatron's head and it looked like he was respecting his ancestors! I also found a great hand drawn pic of Megatron in his Transmetal form, firing a shot from his tail at the viewer. Behind him, faded, was a pic of the original Megatron's eyes. And in green lettering it said, "Evil Lives On..." I of course bought the pic! Soon after that, Melissa followed me to my autograph session, where I had David sign a picture of the toy Transmetal Megatron (two of them side-by-side) Only one of them had black lettering across the top. It was Megatron's new quote. I got him to sign that one as Megatron!! and the other David Kaye. I also meet Dawn and Lady D. at this time, they had wandered in to the Art Contest room and I was like, If that's not Dawn, then may I be cursed for life. It was nice to meet the both of them!

After that I stashed everything in my hotel room and ran to the dealer room where they were having a voice
mimicking contest. the judges? None other than, Gregg, David, and Gary! I entered to show off my Waspinator
voice and while I was waiting, I snapped a pic of Gary and David getting ready. Gary saw me getting read and
made a face, but David was too busy talking to someone else. 
You should have seen the reaction I got when I said Waspinator's famous quote. Gary almost fell out of
his chair laughing and say "THAT'S WASPINATOR ALRIGHT!" David was laughing loudly and Gregg was
smirking. The entire crowd was like whoa!

Sadly, I didn't win, but the reaction was more than enough for me! As soon as the contest was over Gary
said to David and Gregg, "Alright gang, we've gotta run like demons if we're going to make it to the autograph session. (there were different times for different autographing sessions)  After that I stayed behind and bought a Decepticon symbol on a t-shirt and one for my car. After that I had to run off for dinner in the city and I came back just in time to catch the end of the Script reading by all the actors. 

It was ok cause Melissa recorded the entire thing for me and I listened to it while we were waiting for the
AllSpark party on level 2. We meet some more people with walkie-talkies who were also listening to the
recording and letting their friends (who were in line way away) listen also. They didn't believe that we got David K. to say his new quote, (Melissa made stickers with the quote on them and we were currently wearing them) so we had to play the tape for that.  Everyone around us started laughing so hard, it was soo funny.

When we got into the AllSpark panel they were giving out raffle tickets for free and they had all these Transformer prizes. They get to the second prize and the person's number they called didn't show up, so they drew another on, 305303. Guess who's number that was. Yup, it was mine, so thanks to the twist of luck, I am now the proud owner of a huge Galvatron action figure. So ends the best weekend of my life!

End Day Two.

After that, I woke up early the next morning to leave BotCon. I was unhappy because at this convention, everyone understood my ramblings about Transformers and stuff like that. I hate reality....

I made the best of leaving, and took a picture of the outside of the hotel, The Hyatt. It was awesome, I'd use other words, but this report wouldn't be able to hold that many. It was just great, I hope all of you get the chance to go cause it's something you'll never forget.

Sounds from the convention:

(You might need Windows Media Player.  If they don't work, right click the link and select 'save target as'.)

Click the thumbnails to see the full version!

Autographs!

Many thanks to Hacker for her fantastic report!!

Disclaimer:

Beast Wars belongs to Hasbro and Kenner and Mainframe and Alliance.  I am just a fan dedicating a website to the TV series they created.  I hold no rights over their characters.  All characters belong to them, except the ones I created. The ones I made are copyrighted to me!  This website and all my own created images belong to me.  Also, I own no rights to the pictures you see on this website except for the ones I created myself.  All Beast Wars images are from various websites that I have collected over the years.  All written content belongs to either me or the authors listed at this site. Should there be a problem, please e-mail me at sapphire15@starplace.com This is a personal website and nothing is being used to make money etc. Thank you.