Tampa Bay Comic Con 2018
Tampa Bay Comic Con is a huge convention put on every year by the same company that puts on Indiana Comic Con. This year they were back to the first weekend of August, so it was held over the weekend of August 3-5, 2018 in the Tampa Bay Convention Center in downtown Tampa, Florida. This put it back on the back-to-school tax holiday, so I was hoping that we would see a corresponding uptick in sales after last year's disappointing performance.
Because Florida is a two-day trip for us, we hit the road early on Tuesday. It didn't help that we were having an annoying spitting rain, which complicated the process of putting those last few personal belongings into the van. As we drove down to I-74, the rain grew steadily heavier, until there were times I had trouble seeing. On the Interstate, we saw several wrecks in the westbound lane which looked very much like someone had overdriven their visibility and gotten a nasty surprise. So much as we wanted to make good time, I kept our speed down to the point where I felt confident of my ability to maintain control.
Once we got south of Cincinnati, we left the worst rain behind. However, we had rain often enough that I wasn't able to use the cruise control very much. As a result, I arrived in Chattanooga with a very sore right leg from spending so much time pushing the accelerator.
Still, we were able to get to Chattanooga at a reasonable hour, and I got our personal belongings into the room. On the other hand, we noticed some policy changes that were less than pleasant, which left us seriously wondering whether it was time to consider finding new digs for the next time we went to Florida.
After supper, I got some ice and put it on my sore knees. It did seem to help them feel less sore, and it was fun to start work on the new story idea I'd gotten as I was driving through Tennessee.
On Wednesday we got up and had the hotel's complimentary breakfast. Then we put our belongings back in the van and hit the road for Georgia. At first it seemed like we were making pretty decent headway, and would probably would get to Tampa in good time. But then we ran into a monster backup around Atlanta, which put us behind. By the time we finally rolled into Temple Terrace and got to our hotel, it was almost dark.
In the process of getting our personal belongings out of the van, I ended up having a 12-pack of pop fall out. I looked all the cans over, but I didn't see any of them obviously leaking (unlike the incident at AnimeZAP in January, which was the result of my bulky glove causing the box to tear and the cans to spill on hard tarmac). Still, I was rather annoyed at the giant hassle of it.
Once we were settled in, we had supper. Then I made some more notes on the new novel idea, and realized that I had a lot of sections where I had absolutely no idea what was going to come next, and some of those places were critical points in the storyline.
On Thursday we got up and had breakfast. Then we took our personal belongings out to the van and got checked out of our hotel. Because it was too early to get checked in at the downtown hotel, we just hung out in the lobby for a while. While we were there, I got a phone call from the family member who was housesitting. A package had arrived for me, so I had him count the items and verify that everything was as ordered so I could mark it received on the trading platform. I also got a little writing done, since I knew there was no way we'd have any writing time in the evening.
Finally, we headed downtown to the Courtyard by Marriott where we'd always stayed. However, they were under new management and undergoing renovation, and things were in some disarray. They no longer were offering self-parking, but because the people at the valet parking stand recognized us as repeat guests, they decided to bend the rules and actually let us park our own van.
At least we were able to get our personal belongings in relatively quickly, since they had a room ready for us on the first floor. We got things settled in, and then headed down to the convention center.
In previous years, the convention center had been extremely strict about enforcing the times for load-in. However, this year the convention had done away with the two-wave load-in system, so everyone was scrambling to get loaded in at the same time, and we arrived to find an enormous line wrapping around the block. It took us nearly an hour just to get into the loading dock so we could start carrying things to our booth. Worse, we had a setup right at the back of the convention hall, which did make load-in easier, but did not bode well for customer traffic.
Worse, the arrangement of vehicles was somewhat disorganized, and they kept having me move the van to let other people out who'd been parked in front of me. That ate a lot of time I really needed for carrying stuff in, and gave me a lot of aggravation. By the time I finally got everything into the vendor hall and our van back to parking, a good chunk of the day had already slipped by. Then I walked back to the convention center in hopes of locating a branch of our bank, but they weren't going to be open on Saturday either. By the time I got to building structures, there really wasn't all that much time left to do stuff. I did get some of the t-shirts in their displays, but I was well behind where I really wanted to be.
By the time we got picked up by the shuttle bus, it was pouring rain, which did not help my spirits. We had supper, but I was so tired and dehydrated that it was hard for me to even eat. Then we had a momentary power outage that borked the WiFi, so we decided to just go ahead and go to bed.
On Friday we woke up and had our bagels for breakfast, then caught the first shuttle bus back to the convention center. In talking with the driver, we discovered some more changes the new management had made -- they no longer let him clock in early and check the fluids on the bus. Instead, he has to clock in right at seven and get the bus, which makes everything very tight.
We did get back to the convention center at a reasonable time, and we pushed to get stuff ready. However, we didn't get the memo that they'd moved the opening time to noon, so we got caught with stuff still unpacked. I had to scramble to carry a bunch of boxes inside our backspace and just leave them there, since customers were flowing in at a pretty good clip and it was more important to make sales than to unpack some of our more marginal merchandise. That meant we spent the rest of the day in catch-up mode, which probably hurt sales even if we were making some. I also heard that there was a big anime film festival in Orlando which may have hurt attendance, at least among otaku.
In the evening we got stuck on a very long shuttle bus trip that took us all the way out to some clubs and the airport, which meant it was almost an hour before we got back to the hotel. However, we were determined to fit at least some soaking time in the hot tub in before supper. I also made a few more notes on my novel, although a lot of it was starting to feel like just spinning my wheels.
On Saturday I was so tired that it took me nearly two minutes before I could persuade my body to move when the alarm went off. And then I got yelled at for "wasting" those two minutes, as if I did it deliberately.
Getting to the convention center provided a new challenge, since this time the cops had a bunch of the streets closed off. The shuttle bus driver finally had to drop us off at the Marriott Waterfront, which meant we had to walk the rest of the way to the convention center. This was not good for my husband, who has bone on bone in one knee and is scheduled for a total knee replacement later this year. But with no accommodations for disabilities, we had no choice but trudge the whole distance.
I spent the whole setup period getting signs up, and unpacking the boxes of figurines that we'd just had to stash in our backspace the day before. However, our sales remained stubbornly slow and small. By the end of the day, my feet were killing me because I'd stood in one place so long waiting for customers to show up. It's so much easier to handle when I'm constantly moving from one person to the next.
At least this time we got a fairly straight shot to the hotel, once the shuttle bus driver was finally able to get down to us. Because of that lost time, we were uncertain whether to take the time for the hot tub, but we were both so sore that we decided it was worth it.
Afterward we had supper, and then I did some stuff on the Internet. I also did a little writing, but the poor showing on sales was leaving me despairing of the ability to do any meaningful restocking before our next two conventions.
On Sunday we packed our belongings and got them into our van so we could check out of our downtown hotel room. Fortunately the hotel is still being pretty laid back about letting us stay parked until we're ready to load our merchandise out of the convention center. However, the management change, combined with the ever-increasing prices, has left us feeling more and more that we need to start looking for new digs here as well.
When it was time to head down to the convention center, we were surprised to see the Residence Inn shuttle bus. It seems there'd been an accident the previous night, sometime after we were taken back to the hotel, and the Courtyard shuttle bus was out of commission. At least we weren't left scrambling to find transportation, and were still able to get to the convention center before the dealers' room opened. However, all the delays meant that we didn't get any time at all to look around the dealers' room and see who else was there.
When the doors opened, things started so slow that I was literally falling asleep sitting up. But around noon sales finally started picking up, to the point I was actually sad to have to start packing the figurines. I had made the decision by that time that we needed to clearance and eliminate a lot of our Western figurines, especially the fairies and angels, because they're simply selling so poorly that they're not worth the space they're taking up, or the time it requires to unpack and repack them. At least get what we put into them before they become more of a liability than they already are. On the other hand, we did have a lady come back and buy three dragons that I'd already packed, and I was able to find them for her based upon her description of them.
A young couple helped us break down and carry everything out, which was very helpful as rain started moving into the area. When I called to get picked up by the shuttle bus and taken back to the hotel to retrieve the van, I discovered that the other shuttle bus had also broken down and they had no way to retrieve me. So I ended up walking all the way back to the parking lot, by which time the rain was spitting on the windshield. It just kept getting worse the longer we worked at carrying out, which made it very interesting to make sure nothing was left on the ground to get wet or ruined. I'd worried our helpers might leave while I was retrieving the van, but both of them stayed to the end and worked very hard, even if they didn't always know our procedures or recognize what we meant when we talked about certain types of boxes.
Once we were completely loaded, we were able to make good time back out to Temple Terrace and the other hotel. We were tired enough that we missed the exit and had to go around, but once we got there, we checked in with little trouble. As I was getting our personal possessions out of our van, I noticed with some amusement that there was a pond nearby and the frogs sounded as if they were singing, "Banksy, Banksy, Banksy."
We had supper and I even had enough time to scribble a l little on a story before we turned in for the night. We were both so tired and sore that it was hard to get to sleep.
On Monday we got up and had the hotel's complimentary breakfast. Then we hauled our stuff back out to the van and began the trip north. We were both dog tired, and we decided to stay and eat lunch in the parking lot of the Gainesville branch of our bank after making the deposit. Even that respite wasn't enough, and by the time we got to the first rest stop in Georgia, we decided to just shut down and rest for a while. Although it was hot and humid, I still fell asleep.
Then we forged on through Atlanta and up to Chattanooga. By the time we reached the Tennessee state line, I was getting really droopy, and I was shaking with weariness as we went to check in. Then I had to force myself through the process of hauling our personal belongings into the room, although I was horribly stiff and sore from the lengthy drive.
I did manage to scribble a few more sentences on my novel, and put in an order for some merchandise we'd need for our next two conventions. Then we turned in for the night and tried to grab enough sleep that we could make it the rest of the way north.
On Tuesday we had a real struggle to get moving to have breakfast and get our belongings back out to the van. There simply weren't enough hours for us to get the sleep we really needed, but we needed to be home by a reasonable hour, since we'd promised to return the consignment merchandise to our consignor so he could take it to his next event.
At first it seemed like the Monster energy drinks were keeping me awake enough to be a safe driver. But the further north we went, the harder it became. Passing Knoxville wasn't that difficult, but by the time we reached Lexington, I was starting to drift in and out. We decided to just stop at the rest stop just north of town and shut down for a while.
This time I couldn't seem to fall asleep, although the rest did seem to do me some good. I was able to stay alert when we ran into a storm while going around Cincinnati, with some times that I could barely see in front of me for the rain coming down. It was almost as bad as some of the rain when we went down there.
At least it ended by the time we reached the rest stop on I-74. We paused briefly, then headed back to Indianapolis, where we dropped off merchandise at our consignor's place before continuing home. I was struggling again to stay awake as we drove those last few miles, and I was very glad to pull into the driveway and shut down. Then I carried in our essential belongings and just sort of collapsed and took a nap.
Copyright 2019 by Leigh Kimmel
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Last updated June 21, 2019.