Yep, my Florida Showdown story. I have a ton of pictures, interesting tidbits, etc, so imo this should be a good read for everybody. So enjoy. ;) If you didn’t do so already, check out the website for some pictures of the events I am mentioning in this thread.
DAY 1 - THURSDAY
This will be a short section. :P I wake up at 4 am and leave at 5 am to catch my 6:50 am flight. I make a stop in Phoenix, and then a direct flight to Orlando and get in at around 6 pm. I take a Mears shuttle to the hotel. While in the hotel lobby, the Hilton, I see Zerowing and we chitchat for a minute or two while waiting to check into our rooms. As I check in and receive my room information, they hand me my hotel keys, which are specially designed keys for the Worlds competitors. There’s a picture of one in the upper portion of this image:
I am exhausted, so I just chill and get some food and sleep. Nothing too interesting about that. :P
DAY 2 - FRIDAY
I wake up and get a bite to eat. I then head down and try to find the area where I check in. There is a big hallway, with ballrooms etc on the left, with windows on the right. I get there, and there was a HUGE crowd. lol The entire area was swarming with TCG players, many from different countries. Some were for the last chance people trying to get an extra spot in the competition. I was like “oh fudge” when I saw the line because I definitely didn‘t want to wait in it. I took a look around, and then saw this table that was out of the way, and with like a 5 person line; I then thought “Ok, that must be the Showdown line”. It looked something like this:
You can see Chris, the winner of LA, on the right in the red shirt. The line extended to the left a bit.
The crowd looked like this for the TCG part early on, but then extended to the left and filled that space:
While in the main hallway, there were these banners hanging from the ceiling, like this:
There were several of these hanging around, and they all had different pokemon on them, as you can see. The Pokemon shown were:
Palkia
Electivire
Eevee + every evolution
Darkrai
Cresselia
Giratina
Absol
I took pictures of all of them, but I won’t post them all, it would be a chore to upload them etc. :P
I check in, and I get my nametag and a little coupon. I then go to a side area in one of the rooms, and pick up my goodie bag. =)
It contained:
(the special hotel key is in the above left corner. The booklet shown had different common sayings in many different languages in case we wanted to try and converse with others from different countries; very cool IMO, I even talked a little bit with a few Japanese players in Japanese :P)
The following two pictures are of the same shirt, just one is a close up of the front and one is the back.
The above right picture is the cards from different countries, most of the major ones. It says Worlds/video game thing they have next year will be held in San Diego, so I can’t wait for that. =)
After I put the stuff away in my room, I just kind of hang out with other people until around 4:00 pm, where they have a Showdown Icebreaker of sorts. I battle a few Japanese kids, though they are juniors. I almost lose to one of them due to Hydro Pump missing(I used my rain team because I didn’t want to giveaway my real competition teams). But I beat most of the people. I battled one senior kid(the KAAAAAAA guy, a bit more on that later), but he had Trick Room and I had a rain team, so I almost automatically lost.
I meet up with Bluecookies, Mysteryman, Zerowing, and the NYC winner, who also goes here but his name escapes me. Both were pretty cool and I met up with them afterwards and throughout the entire trip. JBomber was there as well and he was cool; he took some pictures you can see in his thread. Well anyways I stay there for almost 3 hours, just battling of talking with other people from Smogon. We were allowed to go up onto the big stage and battle with other people if we wanted to. I didn’t because the time ran out that Pokemon was allowed to have it open, but I probably would have if given the chance. I watch those matches as well.
I then leave, and go to the room and watch some of the Little League World Series. =)
DAY 1 - THURSDAY
This will be a short section. :P I wake up at 4 am and leave at 5 am to catch my 6:50 am flight. I make a stop in Phoenix, and then a direct flight to Orlando and get in at around 6 pm. I take a Mears shuttle to the hotel. While in the hotel lobby, the Hilton, I see Zerowing and we chitchat for a minute or two while waiting to check into our rooms. As I check in and receive my room information, they hand me my hotel keys, which are specially designed keys for the Worlds competitors. There’s a picture of one in the upper portion of this image:
I am exhausted, so I just chill and get some food and sleep. Nothing too interesting about that. :P
DAY 2 - FRIDAY
I wake up and get a bite to eat. I then head down and try to find the area where I check in. There is a big hallway, with ballrooms etc on the left, with windows on the right. I get there, and there was a HUGE crowd. lol The entire area was swarming with TCG players, many from different countries. Some were for the last chance people trying to get an extra spot in the competition. I was like “oh fudge” when I saw the line because I definitely didn‘t want to wait in it. I took a look around, and then saw this table that was out of the way, and with like a 5 person line; I then thought “Ok, that must be the Showdown line”. It looked something like this:
You can see Chris, the winner of LA, on the right in the red shirt. The line extended to the left a bit.
The crowd looked like this for the TCG part early on, but then extended to the left and filled that space:
While in the main hallway, there were these banners hanging from the ceiling, like this:
There were several of these hanging around, and they all had different pokemon on them, as you can see. The Pokemon shown were:
Palkia
Electivire
Eevee + every evolution
Darkrai
Cresselia
Giratina
Absol
I took pictures of all of them, but I won’t post them all, it would be a chore to upload them etc. :P
I check in, and I get my nametag and a little coupon. I then go to a side area in one of the rooms, and pick up my goodie bag. =)
It contained:
(the special hotel key is in the above left corner. The booklet shown had different common sayings in many different languages in case we wanted to try and converse with others from different countries; very cool IMO, I even talked a little bit with a few Japanese players in Japanese :P)
The following two pictures are of the same shirt, just one is a close up of the front and one is the back.
The above right picture is the cards from different countries, most of the major ones. It says Worlds/video game thing they have next year will be held in San Diego, so I can’t wait for that. =)
After I put the stuff away in my room, I just kind of hang out with other people until around 4:00 pm, where they have a Showdown Icebreaker of sorts. I battle a few Japanese kids, though they are juniors. I almost lose to one of them due to Hydro Pump missing(I used my rain team because I didn’t want to giveaway my real competition teams). But I beat most of the people. I battled one senior kid(the KAAAAAAA guy, a bit more on that later), but he had Trick Room and I had a rain team, so I almost automatically lost.
I meet up with Bluecookies, Mysteryman, Zerowing, and the NYC winner, who also goes here but his name escapes me. Both were pretty cool and I met up with them afterwards and throughout the entire trip. JBomber was there as well and he was cool; he took some pictures you can see in his thread. Well anyways I stay there for almost 3 hours, just battling of talking with other people from Smogon. We were allowed to go up onto the big stage and battle with other people if we wanted to. I didn’t because the time ran out that Pokemon was allowed to have it open, but I probably would have if given the chance. I watch those matches as well.
I then leave, and go to the room and watch some of the Little League World Series. =)