Against everything that goes right in life, there always seems to be something can and will go wrong. It's the whole jing and yang theory, I guess. These past few day was no different in that respect. Things that could go wrong did go wrong, the things that could go right did go right. Although not everything at the BotCon 2004 at the Conference Cennter in Pasadena, California, went as smoothly as I would have hoped, the things that did go right went terrific!
I guess it all started on friday, June 18th for me. Got up at 5.30 in the morning to leave the country that I call my home, the Netherlands, at 8 in the morning. I arrived at Schiphol Airport around 7. Not everything went that smoothly with new electronic systems they used to check people in, so that took a while. Along with my dad, who brought me there, one of my best friends (Lorenzo) was also there to see me off. He especially took the day off for me. I wished my other best friend (Daniel/Hot-Soft) was there also, but I know that in his current domestic situation, it is impossible for him to leave his home for any extended period of time. But he did call me before I went away. Also my third pal (Hans/Theratron) called me, who was also unable to see me off. So, in spirit, everyone I truely care for was there.
As I went through the costoms, there was a little odd feeling in my gut seeing Lorenzo left behind. When the news arrived last year that this BotCon was supposed to be the last BotCon ever, we originally planned on going there together. Lorenzo isn't really a Transformers-fan. Actually, he isn't a fan at all. But we've enjoyed each other's company in each other's ventures, so we were both certain that we would both enjoy this show. That is what a friendship of nearly 20 years gives you. Also, this BotCon was to be held on June 19th 2004. That is my 30th Birthday! Nothing would have made me happier if he was here with me to celebrate that with, apart from maybe my other friends also being there. But shortly after we started to plan this trip, a bit of news of a different, but positive side arrived his side. His wife was to have their first child, which was born last month. (Tristan Reiley Walther was born on may 17th)
Yes, I was a bit saddend by the fact that he wouldn't come along. But I would never dream of asking him to deprive him of being there for his wife and new son. So I tried to look for someone else to go with me. I found this in the shape of a guy who is part of a dutch Transformers Mailing service. He responded to my call for Dutch fans going to the BotCon, in an attempt to share costs and such. Through a few E-mails we agreed that he would take care of everything. But then about a month before the BotCon, I got an E-mail back from him that he decided NOT to go to the BotCon, but to the OTTFC later this year, because a few others were going there too. But I NEVER WANTED TO GO TO THE OTTFC!!! The whole idea for going to this BotCon is because it's the last one, the voice actors of some of my favorite characters (Peter Cullen [Optimus Prime/Ironhide] and Dan Gilvezan [Bumblebee]) are here and not at the OTTFC and more importaintly...I WANT TO GO TO THIS FOR MY BIRTHDAY and it's NOT my birthday in August!
So suddenly I was left with going to the BotCon all by myself. That was not exactly how I planned on spending my 30th Birthday away from home, but I wanted to go to the BOTCON! I made a few phonecalls and everything to get things in order. The Hotel deal with the Sheridan Hotel by that time had sold out all the rooms. I asked if someone might have cancelled a room or if someone may have been willing to share one. But the rude person on the other line said she would not be bothered for that and plainly hang up on me! So I extended my search and ended up at the Super 8 Motel.
Being so close to the date, trying to get a plane ticket wasn't easy either. Originally I wanted a direct line from Amsterdam to LA. But the cheapest one that we (the travel agent and myself) could find was a single for E1250 -- *gulp!* Just going to LA and nothing else for that price? My hopes were quickly sinking. But we broadend our search more and found a route through Paris, France, including travel insurance and the complete (just flight) package for E820 -- I was smiling again. The trip was finally looking like it was going to happen again!
Time that first seemed to go so slow, then far to fast, seemed to go far to slow again. I couldn't wait to finally take to the air and finally land in the US of A for the first time in my life. The last two weeks before going, there was a constant smile on my face. It was finally going to happen. On my list of what to do before I am 30 there were just a few more wishes on there. Travel by plane, go to America, meet original cast members... They were all to be fulfilled before my birthday was over. That was my final thought before boarding the plane destined to go to Paris. I was totally ready for this! Nothing could ruin my fun... Or so I thought.
I travelled pretty light. With my last few free days from work, I was only able to go to the BotCon and then leave the monday after that. So I stored my bags in the overhead compartments on the plane, strapped myself in and was ready to go! Yep! ready to go. Any second I would leave my beloved Amsterdam for new locations... That was... If the plane started to move! I kept looking at my watch. I was correct. The plane should left already! Okay, this was my first time in a plane... Well, a working one anyways! (For an acting job I played a plane-passenger a few years back in a broken up section of a plane, for a dutch soap)... Than the voice of the pilot scratched over the speakers. Appearently someone tried to smuggle a rather large stash of drugs on board and this caused a hold up loading and preparing the plane. I counted the minutes and seconds of the extra time. This just couldn't get any worse! I was wrong...
After more than 20 minutes we finally took off! The trip between Amsterdam Paris was supposed to take about 45 minutes. Everything went smoothly and we actually only took about 35 minutes to land in Paris. FINALLY! Your first thought is RUN! Get as fast as possible to your next plane! But... The airport was going through mainantence. This meant that the planes could not land on their regular landing strips and boarding posts. So the planes just parked somewhere near the landing/take-off strips. We had to take a bus to get to the actual airport. Imagine a whole plane load of people with all their luggage trying to get into one bus! Not only took it like forever, it was near unbearable to be stuffed in there. I was not enjoying this. But dared not to say that things just couldn't get worse now. Thankfully I didn't,... because things did get worse...
We finally all reached Charles de Gaulle Airport. You would think that in all this confusion with the workings on the airport there would be people to lead you to where you should be. But we were dropped off at the enterance and were left there to find our own way! Trying to find your way in this huge complex where most instruction were in a foreign language (French) was not easy. Trying to ask directions when no one appears to be able to speak a decend word of English did not help one bit! I finally did find my way to the check-in. But of course there just had to be this older german couple in front of me. They too had their trouble in getting to their destination in this place. It soon appeared they now had missed their flight. That is not something you like to hear, I know (at least I do now). But now they were starting to make a whole scene about it. They were bothering the guy doing the checking-in about it, that he had to call for back-up to deal with them. I was the next person in line, but they were making such a big scene about it, that I could not be helped. In any other situation it may have been funny to see german and french people try to speak the same language and get on the same page, but I was still in a hurry. And I was quickly getting irritated myself. It took longer and longer to deal with the gemans. After security finally lead them away it was another 30 to 35 minutes later!
Finally I was moving again. But then I had to get through the costoms. In Amsterdam that went pretty quickly. Just a look and the rest was mostly done by x-ray and Metal detection. Here in France they opened up every piece of carry on luggage I had. They not only opened up my my stuff, they took everything out and slammed them to the table and then left me to put everything back, like I wasn't in a hurry already! Quickly, I packed everything up again and ran to the gate I had to be at! "Sorry, sir... But the bus to your flight just left 5 minutes ago!" AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!
So back to the main hall again and get a later flight. After standing in line for two hours, I explained my situation. The first flight with any openings wouldn't be until 7 O'Clock I was told. It was just after 12 by now. Now, it may have been my first time flying, but thankfully I wasn't born yesterday! I demanded that they guy looked for cancellations on the next flight! Initially he tried to object, but he did look and I was able to go with the flight an hour or so later! Finally! Things started to go my way again. If everything went as planned now, I would check-in, drop my baggage, and then get to the Conference center and take part in the voice acting audition for the day after that!
So I waited in the mail hall for a while until we were picked up by the bus. Okay, so I was dreading to go through this again. A whole group of people again stuffed in one tiny bus. But going throught that a while earlier, you think you are prepared for anything. How wrong you can be. So we were stuffing the clowns back into the volkswagen, or at least that's what it felt like. And the bus started to drive off. I was just glad that this time I was able to sit. As far as I could see we were all just minding our own business (or maybe trying to figure out if we were so close that we might be able to sue one another), when suddenly the bus was shaken by a hard bang! The whole bus shook! Looking towards the side of the bus we saw another bus. That one had driven right into our bus!!! A normal person would have allowed the other bus to back way first, if not to check up on the damage. Not to mention to see if anyone got hurt. But what did our busdriver do? After stalling after the hit, he just resumed driving on like nothing had happened!!! A horrible shreeking sound echoes though our bus, as the other bus was still lodged into the side of our bus. The bus shook some more and the shreeking sound continued. We were moving forward again, but the other bus was now causing even more damage! I sat at the very end of the bus, but soon I was nearly face to face with the other driver. Then the people standing were launched forward some, after our bus finally had dislodged from the other bus. When I looked back at the other bus behind us, you could see the front of the other bus totally imprinted. Infront of it on the ground lay many pieces of glass from either bus and it was littered with pieces of metal from the side of our bus. Halfway on our journey, the driver finally stopped a moment and looked and the damage before heading forward again. Luckilly, other then the busses, no one got hurt in this incident.
The flight went pretty smoothly! I arrived around 6 O'Clock local time in Los Angeles! One Taxi and I would arrive 30 minutes later, go to the center 10 minutes away and I would be Home free! But first... the costums... If the french costums were bad, I have heard enough stories about how stricked everything is in the USA after 9-11! I feared the worst! I stood in line, and feared the worse. "Where are you from, sir? Returning to the States?". "No I'm from The Netherlands! This is my first time in America". The guy thought I was american he said... Now that's either saying my english is good, or most american's english is bad! Anyways, as they were checking my stuff, he asked what I was doing in LA. Transformers Convention in Pasadena, I said proudly. "TRANSFORMERS?!?! You mean Optimus Prime and Megatron and such? I loved that stuff as a kid! they're still around?" Suddenly the whole check-in went quickly and within 10 minutes (including a little pitstop, I had flown straight from france!) I was outside and caught my first glimse of LA!
Looking at my watch, the first thought I had was "If I make this quickly, I can make the audition yet!" I quickly got a cab and was on my way you Pasadena! This is going to be great! this is going to be great! This is going to be... Hey! Why aren't we moving?!" One hell of a major traffic jam was going on. I asked the driver what was going on. I took me while, but when I finally understood that the guy (who obviously wasn't a native to the area) had no idea what was going on, but he had never seen a traffic jam that bad! I didn't mind a few minutes of that. But after an hour, we were still in the jam! Finally after a while the guy said that the jam had cleared. Not that it made my mood any better. I knew the Audition ended about 15 minutes earlier, I still had to get to my Motel room, and by the end of the trip I was out some 80 dollars for a trip that should have lasted 30 minutes and should have only cost me about 30 to 40 dollars at most. At 7.30 at night I had arrived at the front desk. A little more than 24 hours later, since I started my journey in Amsterdam...
I knew that my chances of going to the audition, which was only for pre-registered people, of which I was one. So I started to ask around at the motel. I soon found a local freelance reported by the name of Jed. He was reporting on what he thought was the BotCon that day. It soon appeared he had gotten himself tickets to the Transformers awards show. He didn't know that much about Transformers, so we soon got to talking and I started to fill some blanks for him. He was going to try and get into the BotCon behind the scenes stuff, as an official reporter. He would try his best to get me a press entry aswell for helping him the way I did (while half falling asleep).
I got up the next morning, ready for the BotCon breakfast. I soon learned that Jed was unable to attend the breakfast and wouldn't arrive until later that day, which also meant he was not able to get me in as fellow news reporter. Not that that really mattered to much, as I was still planning of making my report for Seibertron one way or the other. I had checked my stuff the night before, and it appeared those damned french guys broke my camera stand I was planning on useing for my pictures and movies to shoot during the different sessions. A small ring was completely broken in have which loosend my handle on the stand. With a bit scotsh tape I tried to fix it and was ready to go to the BotCon
Arriving there, the atmosphere was high with all the other Transfans out there. Finally some real grub since eating the airline food the day before! I met up with a few other fans who were complaining about being stuck in traffic and having to have to drive up for 3 or 4 hours, who of course were quickly stiffled after my story of my 24 hour journey! Soon the first announcement was made about this year's exclusives. An Actiomaster G2-coloured Stunticon Breakdown was it. The model was made from the UK exclusive's Sideswipe body with a newly sculpted head. Our hopes that some of the guests of the BotCon would be present would be answered were not really fulfilled. Although amoung us Paul Davids (Writer/Producer for most of the original episodes) was present there. We finished our plate and waited for the BotCon to really start off.
Although there was a very good vibe going on, and this was my first Transformers convention (not counting the dutch ones) I got the destinct impression that this convention had a far lower turn out that previous years, based on pictures and the reports found on the Rhino DVD boxes. But that really didn't spoil any of our fun. A couple of people were dressed up as transformers, there were alot of laughs between us fans and Dreamwave-star The Don, Don Figueroa got things already going by making quick drawings for people on request, eventhough his real appearance was supposed to be until the next day.
The games tables were pretty deserted, apart from the trivia table which was simply over-booked! Filled with many questions some simple, some hard, some too simple, some too hard. But most importaintly those who did participate had a blast of a time. I took this time to download the pictures I had taken so far to my laptop. Or at least I wanted to. I has just discovered that those French costoms had not only broken my camera stand. My link cable from my camera to my laptop was broken. The connector was completely bent from went they slammed my stuff on the table. This meant my plan to record all the sessions (55 minutes recording space on one 256mb card) had fallen through. I now had to be very selective about what I was going to shoot and record.
Dan Gilvezan
The problem did arise when his session was over, and he was going to do his signing. The guys at BotCon had him 'perform' from 11 'till 12 and then immediately have him sign autographs in the next room. Two hours I stood in line before I could let him sign my program-book. In all not that bad, but meanwhile they had the next panel about Japanese Transformers and Japanese conventions and so on by Fumihiko Akiyama going on back in the panel room! I would have liked to learn more about the Japanese stuff, but I missed that whole show, eventhough people who did see it assured me I didn't miss anything. Still... Anyways it took me over two hours to get my autographs and my picture with the voice of Bumblebee.
The long line at the Autograph stand not only made me miss the Japanese panel, but also most of Wally Burr's voice acting session. I was already pissed enough that I had missed my chance to get up there and eventually get a chance to be up there with Peter Cullen and Michael McConnohie in the BotCon reading later that day. I've enjoyed the bit of acting I've done on Dutch TV in the past. So I REALLY wanted to be part of this one. But now I was missing out on Wally Burr's directing session with the 15 quarter-finalists. Only half way through in the session did I get to get in on it. Having been directed by a few bad directors myself in the past, it was a real joy seeing this man getting hands-on into this session. Really giving valid pointers to these people doing their impressions and readings. A real joy to watch. Even Michael McConnohie sat in the audience to see the show!
I really would have liked to have been up there. I'm sure my limited use of english speech in my daily life would have prevented me from ending up as finalist, but just to have been given the chance... Eventually the finalists went from 15 people to 6 (3 male, 3 female) to only 2. A real funny guy by the name of Tim Finn who has a perfect BotCon attendance record of having been at one every year in the past 10 years. Opposite him was a young woman by the name Emerald who decided to dress-up as RiD's TAI. Later that day they would join this years BotCon Reading.
Bob Prupis and Alison Segebarth
I'm glad I did it that way. At the end of the Hasbro session, I got them to sign my Program-book and went over to the next room. The signing was still going on, but the line had just gotten real short. So I just closed the line. Several minutes later I had Michael McConnohie and Wally Burr sign my book too. So I started to introduce myself and tell them why I liked Transformers still after 20 years. One thing led to another, and soon I was in an entire dialogue with both guys talking about Transformer! Talking about how the Series could probably still hold it's own on TV today, how well written most season 2 episodes were, why it was such a joy for them working on it back then, why Transformers still held a warm place in their hearts! I was having a honest to Primus actual conversation with these two gentleman! At one point, one of the BotCon staff had to kick me out of the room, because McConnohie and Burr were actually supposed to work on the lines with the Voice Acting winners for the session later that day! When I got outside of the autograph room people had already starting to line up for the Peter Cullen session. I looked on my watch and was surprised to discover I had been talking to the two Transformers greats for almost 15 minutes!!!
I soon joined the line for the Cullen panel and prepared for the final panel session of the day. The line grew and grew and it was obvious people wanted to see this. Meanwhile I had met up with Jed again. Thankfully he said he may have been able to get a similar connection cable back at the motel! This was great. I didn't know if it was going to be the actual right cable but took a gamble, and planned to now fill my memory card to the brink with the Peter Cullen session. With all I had shot that day, I was still able to shoot near half an hour. So I did just that.
Peter Cullen arrived a little late, but just late enough. All people present really enjoyed the showing. His panel was filled with little facts about himself and Optimus Prime and more. Like that he based Optimus Prime on his older brothers one of which was no longer with us, so Optimus Prime always was special to him. That he started out on the Sonny and Cher show in the 60's. And that he DID NOT voice ANY of the Transformers commercials like for ActionMasters and G2.
After that session the fun started with the BotCon reading which featured Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime, Michael McConnohie as Tracks and Cosmos and Wally Burr (who directed the session) as Kremzeek! Emerald played the part Nightracer (the 95 G2 female exclusive) and Tim played the part of Apax. This ending the first part of the BotCon.
There were some problems in the day, but overal the first day of the BotCon was a real succes. At least it was in my book. Looking at the schedule of the next day it was clear to me that the second day would not be able to beat out the first. Then again, rumors of a sighting of Don Murphy being on the premise did continue to buzz around the Pasadena Center. So who would know what to expect....
The next day pretty much started as planned. The doors opened at 9.00 and the people started to stream in slowly. At first I thought there were less people that the day before. I was soon helped out of that misconception. At 10.00 Peter Cullen was going to do his Autograph session. I had planned to have him sign a couple of things, not just for me, but also for my buddy Theratron. But the day before I was told we were only allowed to buy only 2 tickets per person. Even my logic that I was doing this for my pal also did not help. I only got two red tickets. But somewhere between then and now it was decided that they would raffle off a 20th Anni. Prime signed by Peter Cullen. The stubs were to be your lottery-ticket. Okay I can live with that. But when I arrived at the hall to the signing room, there was already an unbelievable long line waiting for an autograph. Personally I would think that Pre-registered people should have gone first before those who just decided to drop by. But the people who just bought a ticket were sporting a bracelet of sorts were all in the front of the line, while most of us who paid extra already to be a pre-reg members were standing ALL the way in the back. Then, as I was making some pictures of this line for my Seibertron report I soon saw that these people also had a whole string of read tickets!!! Some had 6 or 7 of them!!! I was only allowed 2! And thus had to use one stub for my pal and one for myself!!! I tried to get more after I noticed this, but they had now run out of tickets.
Okay, so now I was somewhere near the rear of the line and only had 2 tickets. 4 hours!!! It took me over 4 hours to finally get to Peter Cullen. Of course long before that it was obvious that the line was not really speeding along. So a new rule was added along the way. The people who were first in line had taken up so much time signing their whole load of stuff, sharing stories and taking their pictures with Cullen that time was soon running out, as he actually had other obligations. So it was decided to speed up that session by limiting the small talks, and have them take your picture to put on their site on a later date. To say that we were getting pissed is an understatement! The pre-regs amoung those still waiting had spend good money for this! And still things did not really appear to be speeding along. The Cartoon writers panel feat. Paul Davids, Flint Dille, David Wise, Bryce Malek and Wally Burr had already long started, and we were still waiting in line to have our moment with someone some of use have been waiting 20 years to meet!
But finally after standing in line since 10 O'Clock I finally got to meet a little past 2 in the afternoon. I got him to sign my book and the card for my pal Theratron. First I gave him the card with a screen grab on it with Bumblebee, Ironhide and Optimus Prime, taken from the end of Heavy Metal War. There was however one tiny little problem. When I let Dav Gilvezan sign it I SPECIFICALLY said it was to be sign by both him and Peter Cullen. But we all know Dan Gilvezan. He had autographed his name on the card so big that there was no place left on it for Peter Cullen to sign it. So he had no choice to sign his name over the picture itself, but there was something else. Gilvezan had signed it To Hans (that's Theratron's name) ROLL OUT!!! On seeing this Cullen said in his Optimus Prime voice "I need to have a little chat with mr. Gilvezan!". So while looking for a good place to sign it, Peter Cullen casually asked me where I came from. "Amsterdam, The Netherlands, sir!". Before signing the man looked up and got all quiet. "I came here to see you on my birthday, which was yesterday. This is the best present I can imagine". He got all quiet! And then simply said "Welcome to America, pal! Thank you!". The guys of the BotCon started to note to still speed things along, but Cullen was gracious enough for me to take his time anyways! He signed Theratron's card and signed my book "Thank-You, Raymond T. Peter Cullen". That really was worth my stay there.
I picked up my things and quickly made my way back to the panel room to see if I could catch anything of the writers panel. I walked in and the first thing I heard was "Thank you very much for all your questions! You were a beautiful audience! We enjoyed this". There was a thought going through me at that time, but I think it's better not to repeat that thought out loud. Thankfully, because I was late getting into that session I got pretty far ahead in line for their autograph session.
Dreamwave panel: Don Figueroa, Brad Mick, Pat Lee, Adam Patyk, and Joe Ng
After this we all got back to the Convention hall where the Dreamwave crew would sign their autographs. Where I could finally fill my Program-book! Then I just did a final walk of the place, thinking that this would be it. Before the BotCon crew would give their own panel session. I walked up to the BotCon Table where Wally Burr and his colleague and assistent for the BotCon Tadao started to unpack some boxes near the silent auction table. I had seen what the action had, and that was pretty cool with animation cels of the series, parts of scripts and so on. But what I saw coming out of the boxes really had me drooling! Production sketches, comparison sheets, character biographies, and much more appeared before my eyes! This was part of what in the business if called 'the bible'! The back information to draw information and inspiration from for a series! And in this case season two of Transformers. Aside from that storyboards appeared from Jem and GI Joe (which included a notice that Hasbro did not want the Zarana lake scene to have her appear (partially) nude in the movie!). There was some announcement that the BotCon panel had started, but I really couldn't be bothered with that at that time! I was drooling too much!
Here I got to talking with Wally Burr again, about all that stuff and other things, like my own attempt to fill my own Database of Transformers stuff that I lovingly call 'The Vault'. And why you wouldn't soon catch him at a OTTFC. (Last year he asked the people of the OTTFC if he could join one of their panels. It would have been his first of such an event. But he was told by them they did not want him, because they feared he would not be a drawing power with the fans! Oh-Kay...) And we talked about working in the business and about acting. I told them my misfortune of having missed the try-out on friday, and what my views of acting are. The greatest thing I could ever hear was Wally Burr answering on that to me with "I would have liked to have seen you participate in the voice acting audition. Oh, I'm sure he meant it in a more general sense than anything else. But for me, to hear that being said by the director of Transformers just made my BotCon experiance complete.
Now I sit home remembering my 4 day adventure that was the BotCon 2004. And alot of stuff just went wrong. Not the way I wanted it to go. There are so many things I could get angry again for what happened and how. But if you were to tell me I could go back, but still have to go through similar trials to get some of the things to go right, I would do it in a heartbeat. This BotCon has turn into an experiance I would want to trade for anything in the world. The bad may have gone real bad,... But the good was just the best!
Would want to go to another American convention. I would want to go, but living half a globe away, I don't think I could afford doing this too often. But if I could, would I want to? You bet I would!
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