NDK 2014

Wow.

What a crazy weekend.

It started rough because the Marriott hotel where NDK is held seriously overbooked. Like, are you new here? The reservations fill up the day they open, why would they do that? People desperately try to obtain those rooms and I know that the vast majority of them are NOT going to cancel. These are highly coveted spaces. And if this was the first year NDK was this big, we could forgive them. It's not. This hotel is always filled to capacity during NDK. So their egregious error sent many people (my party included) to other hotels. Of course, the three in the immediate area (which are all within walking distance) are already full of all the people who could not get into the Marriott in the first place.

The place they sent us to was NOT within walking distance, which irked all of us. It was also more expensive (not by a ton, but enough). And to top it all off, the Marriott originally wanted to do NOTHING to help us out. We FINALLY got them to fax over the official "walking" papers. Walking is what it is called when one hotel sends you to another hotel and is usually attached to a special rate and arrangement between the hotels. We didn't know that until later. So we got the first night at our original rate and could get our second night at the new hotel rate (we were at the Double Tree, which is a Hilton hotel). They were very nice and helpful, but understandably their hands were tied. They needed the Marriott paper work so they could make sure they got their money and could do little for us until the papers were faxed. Also, they gave us cookies, which certainly helped matters.

Later, they apparently came to an arrangement with the Marriott to offer the second night to us at a cheaper rate, which we liked. And when we checked out, it turned out that the Marriott covered our first night altogether. Nice to know that they came through in some way. Of course, we went back and complained, and then another person in our room went and complained, so maybe they were just tired of hearing from our room...

Anyway, we were off to a rocky start, but we got settled and changed and hung out with our friends. The rest of the evening was casual. Of course I wore my Nausicaa costume. But I don't have a picture from this year because I am lame... But here is one from last year! And yes, I brought my plushie Ohmu.

Saturday we began around 9-10. We had breakfast and mimosas (because that is our tradition). We went to a panel by Cupcake Cosplay about hoop skirts and dresses, and that was pretty neat.

I wore my Lady Fourth Doctor costume. Again, I didn't get any new pictures except this one with the TARDIS and the following selfie I took after my hair had lost most of it's friz.

I feel awkward about taking and posting selfies, but I love my Doctor costume...

And here are some other random pictures I took:

Amie and Cat as characters from Kill la Kill

Pixel style Miyazaki balcony!

Miss Frizzle and Captain Marvel (I believe). And yes, that is Night Vale on Miss Frizzle's skirt. Totally awesome.

I think these characters are from Final Fantasy? We LOVE their light-up staffs!!

Hiccup, Toothless, and Valka (I'm pretty sure). Cute!

Some of our friends joined us down there. We did lots of wandering and went back to Cat and Drew and Ben's room for late lunch, beer, and a couple rounds of Tsuro, which was very entertaining.

Looks like a disaster waiting to happen.

We ended up back at NDK later and wandered/sat around to watch people. People-watching is one of our favorite NDK past-times.

Later a bunch of us went back to the room I shared with Amie and Kai and had some coffee, snacks, and drinks (this makes us sound like crazy party-ers/alcoholics, but I promise we aren't. This is just part of NDK tradition now-a-days...). Then some of our friends left to go to late night panels and karaoke (which I never make it to because it starts at midnight and I am too tired to stay up so late).

The next morning we all had to check out of our hotels. So we all had to get into our Sailor Disney costumes and check out. Of course, there were normal people staying at our hotel, so we got several weird looks. That's OK. I worked hard on this costume and I wore it with pride!

Here are a couple of pictures. We also invested in a professional photo shoot. We will have those pictures in a few weeks or so. I will probably post some of those when we get them back, as well as info about our photographer (who was very cool).

Selfie!

Not the best photo location, but here is our group! So fun!

After the photo shoot, everyone dispersed. It had been a long, full day! Thanks for reading and I will post about the photo shoot when we get the pictures!