UK PonyCon report, part 2: Saturday – BaCon, ConCon, McCon

G1 Blue Belle and Minty joined us for breakfast

I'd like to say I woke up bright and early on the Saturday, but since I'd barely been to sleep that would be a lie. Despite my hype for the convention, I wasn't sure how well I'd keep going throughout a long day, and I'd done some semi-serious planning of where in the schedule I could nip back to the hotel and have a nap for an hour or two. (Spoiler alert: I didn't end up needing to.) Having prepared everything I needed, I went downstairs at 7.30 to meet Hawthorn in the hotel lobby.

We strolled to the Joseph Else Wetherspoons, enjoying the quiet atmosphere. The more I think about it, the more I think of Day!Nottingham and Night!Nottingham as two different cities, and it's fair to say that I like the former a good deal more. Anyway, we were joined at breakfast by Oilyvalves, which was nice. I pigged out on Spoons' large fried breakfast and just about managed to finish it! Also coffee. Then we walked all of 20 yards to the tram stop. This is the sort of city planning I can get behind.

As I mentioned last year, Nottingham's trams are great; the £1 short hop fare was very nice. Once off the tram, the brief walk to the venue brought us the good news that the queue was still fairly short. (It didn't stay that way!) It's always nice to meet friends in con queues, and Mike had also joined the "get there early" crowd. There was our usual teasing of the posh people who had VIP tickets, not least Worcester meet regular Somerset Cider, and again when piratical Zen and Ace turned up. :P

Home for the next two days

UK PonyCon seems to have registration down, and in fact we were allowed into the venue a little earlier than expected – although, reasonably enough, kept away from the vendor hall until the end of the VIP preview period. Most of us stood around, read our conbooks and chatted, and it quickly became clear that I hadn't been the only person with noise problems last night. There were people on the ninth floor of my hotel who'd been disturbed, and even some who weren't normally bothered by such things.

Once general admission began, most of us made for the stalls to get our bearings. Since my budget was fairly small this time, the likes of Sewpoke's beautiful plushies were beyond me, but I wasn't at all surprised to see several of them being treasured by others as the day and weekend wore on. I did, however, find a lovely little moulded sleeping Fluttershy, which I had to have. I also went to the con merch desk and came away with this year's T-shirt and the HQG1C Britannia seapony.

My first panel of the day was Mad Munchkin's. She requested not to be filmed, and although she was okay with still photos I felt it would be easier all round to keep my phone in my pocket. If you've ever been to a Mad Munchkin panel, you'll have the general idea: cheerily pointing out what a wide range of things can be considered creative acts, and talking a little bit about the way forward after G4. And, of course, the inevitable "Stay creative!" group yell. :P

Superb con banner by StewArt

This one's going to be long, so here's a page break. Click on it to see the rest!

Next it was off to the cinema room – thankfully much cooler than in 2018 – for "UK PonyCon Through the Years", presented by UKPC stalwarts Archer and Bexi. Archer, at least, has been to every single one of the 16 cons since the very first in 2004, which meant plenty of insight. It was actually very good: lots of nice little anecdotes. One former venue (sadly left professionally unnamed) had apparently contributed feedback to the effect that "We didn't expect so many ponies!" Yes, well...

There was a slight break in things I wanted to do at this point, and several others seemed to be in the same boat, so we headed for the refectory. This was a pleasant, airy room and a far cry from last year's café queues; this place had heaps of spare space. Indeed, it was quiet enough at times almost to feel like a break from the con itself. My big breakfast meant I confined my food intake to the requisite muffin. We ate and chatted and chatted and ate, with any new purchases propped up on the tables with us.

The table actually reminded me of the big one we use for Worcester meets, and when at one point someone said we ought to play Chase the Ace, in my tired state I thought they were being serious. I had some cards and actually got as far as preparing to deal before I twigged, and if I'm honest I was mildly disappointed for about three minutes that it didn't happen. I now have a slight ambition to play CtA at a con for real – maybe next year! (Ace-the-person would really need to be present, though. :P )

Cosplayers gonna cosplay

Anyway, next up was the cosplay contest, where I continued my long and undistinguished record of failing to say hello to people I knew online but had never met. I'd be terrible at judging cosplay, but there was certainly a very impressive Trixie fursuiter and a very amusing Fluttershy/Angel couple. Another break in my timetable followed, so it was off to see the world the karaoke room! Every time I go to a convention, My Little Karaoke seems to be set up in a slightly different way, so I held my breath...

This time around, there was a rather weird setup with three microphones, which for all I know is standard for other cons but isn't for UKPC. I'm not sure people were really all that keen on it, and a simpler setup was used for the Sunday session. The technical side was well sorted, though, with (at last!) both speakers and scoring working at the same time. Oilyvalves and I duetted on "Lotta Little Things" – we did okay, but it would have been better if I hadn't forgotten which lines were mine (Celestia's) and which his (Luna's) a couple of times!

I didn't stay at the karaoke as long as sometimes, because I'd got wind that the showing of My Little Pony: The Movie (the 2017 one!) wasn't going to be in the cinema room as we'd all thought, but in the much smaller one next door. Most of us thought that was a strange decision and liable to end up with people failing to get in, so we decided to start queueing early. As it turned out, we were wrong, which illustrated why they were the ones running the convention and we weren't.

"Smiles!"

I gather that I should stress that we did not pay to see this film. Okay, in a way we did, in that we weren't getting in without a con ticket – but the actual showing cost nothing. These sorts of things matter when you're negotiating with Lionsgate, I imagine. Anyway, although the lack of raked seating was a pain, it was a good experience overall: the room's sound system was excellent and people didn't sing and cheer along, barring a round of applause at the end.

We now had to decide what to do about food. (Yes, I know I say this a lot. Anyone who's been to a con will understand!) Although UKPC's catering had gone up several gears since 2018, they still didn't offer any food beyond vending machines in the evening, so we dashed into town and found a McDonald's (as well as a few other con-goers such as Team Idris). Surprisingly perhaps, not everyone ordered a Big Mac. I have no imagination, so I did.

Back to the con we went! Happily, the venue staff hadn't decided in the meantime that these strange pony people were trouble, so they let us in. Steely Hooves was coming to the end of her set, and Re:Make (né Acoustic Brony) were on their way. This was the main event for me, and I was delighted they played "I'll Fly Higher", my favourite AB song. They also gave us "Honesty", "Loyalty", a couple of canon songs and several originals/covers. It was a good set.

The evening bar menu. I confined myself to a single Scootaloo

PrinceWhateverer was next, but the Pub Quiz was calling. "The Hay Team" was our name this time around, though we still squeezed in Custard as a question answer. And Batman. In the end we came equal fourth with the excellent total of 42 points. Though it would have been higher had people actually believed my (correct!) statement that the Furbobs lived in Furbobia. ;) Oh, and someone accidentally knocked a bottle of Peroni over my Flutterplush. It wasn't a big deal and she's fine. :)

The final event of the night was the Cartoon Riff, which is simply a bunch of terrible cartoons that we can all laugh and cringe and cringily laugh and laughingly cringe at. This time, we got a couple of 2000s MLP computer games, a couple of things I can barely remember – and about three different versions of Scooby-Doo. One of which was full of real-life WWE wrestlers, something which always makes me feel out of place as I barely even know who John Cena is. :P

And then it was 11 pm and time to go back to the hotel. I was out on my feet by this time, and frankly quite surprised that I hadn't needed to have that nap or to avail myself of the venue's Quiet Room. Still, I was pleased to have stuck it out to the end of the day. The streets were quietish, but a huge number of people were queueing to get into nearby clubs and I hoped that wouldn't be a problem later. It wasn't: I was so tired I would probably have slept through a volcano. I don't think I did.

Re:Make doing their thing. Loudly