ckd | Fourth Street Fantasy Convention (2009)

This isn't so much a con report as a collection of random reactions, but I'll post it anyway. (If nothing else, if I post it now I won't wind up waiting until after Readercon, which would be pretty silly.)

I had a great time. This was my first

4th_st_fantasy, and I was strongly reminded of

farthingparty; a small group, a single track of programming, and many of the same folks were there. St. Louis Park is no Montreal, but there was still good food nearby, and the con suite was well stocked.

A+++ would buy again. FSFC is now firmly part of my plans for the Boskone-Readercon Calendar Gap of 2010. I'll probably try harder to avoid connecting flights next year, though.

Space/Logistics/Facility/Food

Absolutely wonderful. The staff were really helpful and flexible, the rooms used for the consuite were right near programming (and the smoking consuite was just a few doors down), and everything was easy to get to. The challenges are admittedly less than those at a larger con (such as

arisia, where the staff are similarly helpful but the Hyatt has severe physical issues at that scale) but they were exceedingly well handled.

I was particularly impressed by the way dietary restrictions were taken care of by the hotel staff, both at the restaurant and during Sunday brunch. Hotel liaison

jenett deserves some real credit for this, including the wonderful brunch. (I'm lucky enough to not have any major dietary restrictions; that just meant I had all the wonderful options to choose from.) Little things done right included the hotel being able to give me a 1300 checkout instead of a 1200 so I could go to brunch without needing to deal with my bags and the banquet manager (really) coming out to where we were playing Dominion on Friday night to ask if we needed anything, and bringing us water.

Program

Somewhat writing-heavy, but in a good way even for my determinedly non-writing self. I enjoy listening to writers talk about how they write, possibly all the more because I have no reason to worry about how I'm doing it wrong just because I have a different approach.

I wasn't taking panel notes, and there are much better panel reports over on

4th_st_fantasy anyway. Go read them.

Travel

None of this is the con's fault, nor even the airline's fault...but urgh.

The flight out: my first flight was a bit late leaving BOS, and eventually arrived at MKE just as my MKE-MSP flight was scheduled to leave. As it was I lucked out and my MKE-MSP flight was delayed, so I didn't have any problems making the connection and got in to MSP later than planned but not terribly so. SuperShuttle to the hotel worked fine.

The return flight: urgh. It started out well: the shuttle driver called to ask if she could pick me up at the end of my 15 minute window instead of the beginning, so she could combine trips; the extra 15 minutes of consuite hang-out time was definitely a feature. After that, though, two more pickups and some traffic which meant we went most of the way to the airport on surface streets.

Once I got there (and found the YX desk, which had been helpfully concealed behind a giant TSA bag screening machine), I had to deal with kiosks that didn't work right[1] (they'd let me go all the way through to picking seats, then bombed out when I tried to pay for the upgrade), and then wait for the single agent working the line. Security moved pretty quickly, and then I proceeded to the far end of the terminal (it's always the last gate, isn't it?).

I then found out my MKE-BOS flight, and for that matter all the BOS flights, was delayed and since it was weather/ATC they wouldn't put me on another airline. (The obvious choice would have been NW's nonstop.) When I got to MKE at a bit after 1900, the 1640 flight to BOS was still boarding. I tried to get on, but as #12 on the standby list I had basically no chance and didn't make it.

That left me on the originally-scheduled-for-1945 flight which departed somewhere around 2215 and arrived at BOS at about 0130 local, late enough to miss the T and leaving me taking a cab home...along with all the other delayed people. (I spent 30 minutes in the cab line, and it's a good thing I didn't have to wait for bags first.) I wasn't home until 0215, and wound up having to be at work at 0800 because something got screwed up with my remote access token, so I couldn't even do the stuff I needed to do from home....

[1] Which I was professionally offended by, since this is now fairly closely related to what I do for a living.