TL;DR: I'm going to my regularly scheduled convention during Memorial Day weekend, and I genuinely forgot that planning everything out ahead of time is pretty much mandatory.
I've been procrastinating a bit and didn't buy the pass until a few days ago, but because of that, I have to juggle some things because while I am not personally cosplaying, which I'll get to later in this post as to why, I still need to generally plan out everything I want to do that weekend: when it comes to parties, hanging out with friends, going to panels, all that sort of stuff.
I already know I want autographs from three people, so I need to bring cash and a notebook to get those autographs, but I need to figure out if I want to get them all on the same day or different days. I also need to figure out what panels are worth doing on specific days, what events I want to go to, overall conventions have something for everyone, and there's so much for me that I need to figure out what I want to do so I don't get overwhelmed.
Back to not cosplaying, it's because my plan was to go as this Obito, and I can't get the contacts in time so I don't want to cosplay an incomplete character. There's just a lot for me to do for the next two weeks in terms of scheduling things out with friends and whatnot, that I actually have to time manage at the convention to make sure I get everything I want out of it.
Forget about conventions, I don't know where you're going and I won't ask you to doxx yourself or anything for obvious reasons. I feel like more and more these days if you ever go even to a mid-size city you have to treat it like a camping trip to the point maybe you need a literal tent in case you get stranded so I do know where you're coming from but it's a matter of keeping organised.
It's like this with the basics and I've bitched about Birmingham after going to one of Count Dankula's live events there. Have you got water? Did you bring a spare battery pack or even two because modern phones are energy vampires and you could fuck yourself big time not having enough charge on hand. Do you understand the parking system if you know how to drive? Because good fucking luck if you're in a diversified area even seeing a member of staff or speaking to anybody that knows decent English which is a problem that's going to get worse. Have you prepared yourself for a high congestion environment? You may be limited in what you can do depending on the time of day it is and what the weather is like because if it's a nice sunny day you'll get swarmed by people and traffic.
The actual venue Count Dankula organised was nice, I should praise that, but it had to be fucking Birmingham, I feel sorry for the owner. Big rant but it's not just you don't worry. There's a million things you have to deal with now and it becomes more of a chore than is necessary. That's nothing to say of the potential security issues you're going to come across.
Not trying to frighten anybody off necessarily from even going to a city where these events usually are, but always have an escape plan.
This is my third time going to this one, which has been in the same place for the past 10 years, so I'm good on that end.
The worst part IMO is how insanely expensive most hotels and motels are, and Airbnb is often times even worse.