I had a great time at the Friends of the 1991 weekend in Norwalk, Connecticut. I'm no Prof. Stokes but here is my account of the weekend.
There was a bus trip to Essex on Friday. The town of Essex was used to represent Collinsport in the early episodes. The Griswold Inn is a quaint New England restaurant with great food at a reasonable price. You can indeed stay overnight there, if you so desire.
The Evans cottage is nearby. It's a private residence and, in the past, the owners were less than thrilled about having DS types descend on them. The surviving owner has had a big change of heart. She came outside and happily answered questions and posed for pictures.
The event itself took place at the Double tree hotel on the Norwalk/Darien line. It was wonderful to have the body of the event take place in air conditioning. (I don't care who's sponsoring it. Having an event in the stable at Lyndhurst is very second rate).
All of the announced guests showed up and seemed to enjoy themselves.
Beverly Hayes, who played early werewolf victim Donna Friedlander, had never been to any kind of fan event and was genuinely flattered that fans remembered her character. She said that they had to use some rather creative staging for her stalking sequence, as the werewolf was out sick.
Joanne Dorian played a small role as a nurse in one of the last episodes of the NBC revival. But she also played another role in the series. She read the part of Julia Hoffman in two of the auditions for Barnabas. One was Ben Cross. The other was Michael Stroke.
Christine Domaniecki talked about winning the Miss American Vampire contest in 1970. She made the costume herself, spending $4.00 on the material. She was thrilled to appear on DS as a barmaid in 1840. She spoke about how nice John Karlen was to her. But she didn't hit it off well with Joan Bennett. ("You're in my chair. Get out of it.") Christine became a professional makeup artist and especially enjoys working on horror films.
Donna Wandrey and Sharon Smyth Lentz are always fun. Donna is still active in theatre and was genuinely touched when several fans made a special trip to see her perform in North Carolina. Sharon has done a couple of independent horror films. They were asked about the Big Finish audiodramas. Sharon said that she would love to do one but she hasn't as yet been asked. Donna said that she would only be able to do one if it was a union job.
Jim Fyfe is now a history teacher. For the most part, he doesn't act any more, though he did a couple of things in Bulgaria that ended up on the Sci Fi channel. He was doing another project when he was cast as Willie Loomis and wasn't able to get to the shoot immediately. His first encounter with DC went like this: I waited a week for you. You'd better Be good.
In short, this was a small event, similar to the early days of the festivals in Newark. There was plenty of time to interact with the actors and to socialize with other fans