You may ask, ``Austin, isn't mid-February like two or three months too early to talk about Motor City Furry Con, much less attend it?'' And you would ordinarily be right. However, furry conventions are the last part of the United States economy that are actually growing, and MCFC has reached the point where it's nearly as big as Midwest FurFest was around 2012 when we stopped attending. It reached the point where the Eagle Crest Or Whatever hotel complex in Ypsilanti could not really fit it, and they had to go looking for a larger venue.
That search for a larger venue, in southeast Michigan, leads to pretty near exactly one venue, Detroit's Renaissance Center. And so, moving is what they did. The costs could be, besides everything being more expensive, that at least the first year they had to take ``whatever weekend Ren Cen is willing to give you'' rather than ``a weekend we like''. In future years, with good behavior, they might get back to their early-spring weekend.
But this year it would have to be Valentine's Day weekend, which I think went into one of the things that made me angry on Saturday. Also, incidentally, the weekend of ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger's parents' birthdays, which meant we had to miss, particularly, her mother having a milestone birthday. We hope to make up for that this weekend.
The good side of the move is abundant more space, and space to expand, since the Ren Cen has about seventy floors and since General Motors moved out over eight hours before the con they need stuff to fill the place. There were actually significant other groups at the hotel this same weekend, so there's space for furries to crowd people out. Been ages since MCFC faced that option.
But for now? One of the very irritating constraints is that the hotel was only willing to give the con one floor for event space, which squeezed their panel space down to the point that almost no small events could happen. bunnyhugger's Rabbits-and-Rodents and my Raccoons-and-Family gettogether panels were rejected, rejected!, which is hard to fathom. Well, the Raccoons was probably easy given they did make space for a Trash Animals meetup and there'd be considerable overlap. But there wasn't anything close to Rabbits-and-Rodents on the shrunken event schedule.
Which brings out insult to injury: a couple weeks before the convention, the hotel agreed to give them two floors for event space, so there was suddenly room for way more panels, well after all the panelists had been told no. I don't know how they went looking for people to fill things out but however they did it, they didn't get to us. And the convention would be short of panel events we wanted to get to. As the hat disaster unfolded, that was probably for the best since Saturday we were not in a mood for anything, but a con with too much space feels flimsy.
And despite this space, the convention would not have a fursuit parade, the first time MCFC has missed one. But the convention-specific space on the third and fourth floors didn't have space, they judged, for one. The first floor had plenty of space, but it's also a part of the Ren Cen that prohibits full-face coverings. Even if that could be waived, there's no getting all the suiters down to the first floor except by overloaded elevators and dangerously narrow escalators. Also we never figured how to take escalators from the third floor down to the first (the second floor is a partial floor leading to the Detroit People Mover).
Over time we started to get a handle on where everything was and even got comfortable with the two floors of the event space where the con happened. This could be a comfortable new home for the convention, as long as it isn't hat weather.
So sometime next year, most like, the Renaissance Center is going to be closing for major renovations. Rumors are for things as dramatic as tearing down two of its five towers and chopping a bunch of hotel space out --- the center is an all-hotel-room tower --- for condos instead. Depending on the timing it may be that MCFC will be kicked out of the Ren Cen for 2027, possibly 2028. The old home in Ypsilanti, which they could return to if they shrink the con, is also slated to be demolished for some kind of foundation problems. So the convention might end up anywhere or nowhere, for all that.
Let's take time for more focus on the carousel at Six Flags America, which I imagine is going wherever good fiberglass goes when it expires.
Giraffes aren't unheard-of on carousels but they also really stand out when they are there.
Looking to the inner rows you get eccentric choices like a purple horse or a green tiger.
And now to some control-panel shots. These are, I assume, standardized recordings of loading and unloading announcements and announcements for the case of a weather delay or the ride being shut for other reasons.
And here's the gadgets to count rides and, probably, passengers. I assume this is since the operator came on since it was past 2 pm at this point and there's no way it only rode three times that late in the day.
The main control panel. See? It was like 2:40 pm.
And here's the whole control center together.
Trivia: As teams withdrew from the 1932 Lake Placid Winter Olympics, Sweden and other nations proposed postponing the Games until economic conditions improved, as they could not finance their athletes. Canada, France, and Sweden complained that the Americans were not providing a high enough exchange rate to let them fund full teams. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle. Herbert Hoover did exempt foreign participants from the usual passport and visa fees, so don't say he did nothing to alleviate the Depression, okay?
Currently Reading: The Red Planet: A Natural History of Mars, Simon Morden.
