(Thanks for your help Midnite
)
I arrived at the hotel on Thurs. afternoon and hooked up with my roommate. We went over to the Fulton St. Mall - OMG! Talk about an experience. There was everything from PIMP wear to cheezy bric-a-brac and a lot of things in between! It was fun and we had quite a few laughs.
Fri. went on the boat trip along with approx. 275 other DS fans (we had our own boat) and the tour guide, Mike(?) was the best! Learned a lot of the history of this great city.
I loved the music videos and would have bought them if I had known that they were available. I got my Karlen fix with the Karlenzine IV book and 1970 PT Concordance and lots of other reading materials. I planned on spending and by gawd I did!
So excited to learn that this is not the last fest by any means. Marcy Robbins(sp) told us that Summer 2004 will be a 2 day event and they are kicking around ideas as to what format it will be and the greatest news of all: Summer 2005 they're going back to the 3 day event!!!
Now for the best part. The radio skit was the highlight of the fest for myself and for what seemed like several thousand others. I heard the attendance numbers were in the range of 2500 to 3000. OMG it was huge and I think everyone attended the radio skit. At the end we were introduced to Jamison Selby (David's son) who wrote the play. Nancy Barrett is a remarkable actress and if they ever do a remake for TV or a movie,
Please-Please let Nancy head up Collinwood. I was impressed with the performance of Roger Davis who usually gets a bad rap from everyone on the board. All of the actors were very good with some of them being superlative. As someone said earlier the DVD/VHS would be made available. Someone told me Mon. a.m. that the cast had stayed over to record the play. The play definitely left some loose ends for another play to be written.
I don't know if he does autographs or not but Roger Davis walks through the rooms waving and saying 'hi' to everyone and making the fans feel special. He does add a definite 'spark' to the festivities. Karlen also makes himself available for pictures. He's definitely very popular with the fans.
Rumors were flying around that 3 hotels ended up being booked and sold out. And that they were not prepared for the human onslaught of fans showing up. At one point they asked the audience how many very first-timers and half of the people there had their hands up. It was remarkable as I think that they got most of their core group of fest attendees to come and by some miracle have also attracted a like number of new fans. Several people I talked with who were first timers said that they were definitely coming back again.
Sun. night the banquet had about 69 tables with about 12 people per table - approx. 800 for that. I was at table 50 and couldn't hear all of what Jim Pierson or KLS were talking about but I did catch from KLS that this is definitely not the end of the festivals which drew a huge response from everyone there. They are talking about doing the fest on some sort of a cruise or going out into the country but they definitely want to make some changes. It will be interesting to see who is going to win the power struggle to wrest control of the planning.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend the Tarrytown tour on Mon. as I had to return to Chicago. When I left for the airport there were 3 buses parked out in front so it looks like they were taking a big crowd up there. I know of several people desperately trying to get tickets but alas they were sold out.
I would say this is the most fun I've had at the fests and believe me I've enjoyed all of them so far. But, for some reason this one was special. Perhaps because I was afraid that it would be the last one and I think the organizers worked hard at making an awful lot of people's dreams come true.