Anime Central 2002

We felt like old pros going back to ACen our second time. But, there was still much to learn. It was the first time we stayed at the hotel for the weekend, a new hotel for the con to be held in, and the first time many of us had cosplayed at a con. But, this time we knew about the con suite. ;) This year the con was held earlier than the typical mid-May weekend, perhaps the hotel move had something to do with it, but I don't know. Many college students complained about it being held on a mid-April weekend, but it made me quite happy. My wedding was coming up at the end of June and it was much easier to take a weekend off more than 2 months before the "Big Day" than just over a month beforehand.

Friday

The girls went down to Rosemont, since the con had relocated to the Hyatt O'Hare, about mid-morning. But, there was still a bit of a line for pre-reg when we got there. (I guess last year must have been a fluke.) We took in various con activities before meeting up the boys later in the day. We also managed to check into our hotel room, but because we didn't do so as soon as we were allowed, ended up getting our room with a single king bed instead of 2 doubles. -.-'

Saturday

On Saturday, most of our group was cosplaying. I went as Miz Mishtal from El-Hazard The Wanderers; Tara went as Rune Venus and Elon as Fujisawa, also from El-Hazard. Kelli went as Ryo, main character from the series Princess Nine. As it turned out, Hillary Haag, the voice actress of Ryo, was at the con and we arrived early at her morning panel so we sat close enough for her to notice Kel's costume. ^.^ We also went to the panel Crispin Freeman was part of [insert fangirl squealing here] and later went to his autograph session. I had him sign an Utena artbook and Kelli had him sign a piece of fanart she drew with her favorite characters he voiced on it.

Sunday

The last day of the con was pretty laid back for our group. We got a bit of sleep in, trying to catch up from the previous nights (yup, we're old). We also saw some of the music video contest replay. Then we checked out of our hotel room and took off just a bit early.

The girls arrive at the Hyatt	Juri cosplayer at the SKU fan panel	Big O cosplayers	Grinning El-Hazard girls	Candid of the El-Hazard group	Hillary Haag stood for most of her panel
A large piece of paper was set out to draw on	Kelli's drawing on the paper	Cosplay girls of Saturday morning	The El-Hazard group	A tired Fujisawa crashes in the hotel room	Crispin and Jessica's panel
Kel's Crispin signed fanart	Our ACen '02 group	Cute Cardcaptor Sakura cosplayer

All photos on this page taken by Beth and Kelli.

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