Sunday opened up with sleeping in, which I know it sounds like we did a lot but bear in mind we were up to the end of dances and sleeping is nice. But there wasn't anything to get up early for except ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunny_hugger dropping her sketchbook off at Artist Alley --- something she could do just by throwing on a kigurumi and going downstairs, a blessing of staying at a furry convention hotel --- and the inflatables meetup at 10 am that, oh, going to bed after 3 am I wasn't ready for.
So when we got up after noon we went to hospitality for a couple quick snacks (they'd be closing at 4 pm, before even Closing Ceremonies), and then another pass around the Dealers Den before going to the Theme Park Furs panel. This is usually held by the same person who was doing karaoke the night before and turns out he wasn't there. Substitue people whose names I didn't get were there and explained the original host had some emergency come up. So the panel, which usually is a bunch of this guy trying to pull up his on-ride videos (taken with GoPro glasses or something so it's not quite as reckless as you fear) instead turned into an open discussion mostly among the people who had worked at amusement parks. Mostly Cedar Point and Kings Island. I never had the chance to pipe in with my ancient and non-ride-operator experience at Great Adventure.
This did let us hear a bunch of fascinating gossip about little park stuff, mostly misbehaving riders. There was a hilarious one of the ride operator seeing security confronting people he'd called them for, over having their phones on the ride; the rider tried insisting there wasn't any rule about not taking the phone out on the ride and the security guy wordlessly marched over to the sign and pointed to that rule there in print. Like a movie. Then there was someone who, they claimed, somehow squirmed their way out of the restraints of a coaster stopped on the lift hill and walked down saying just, he gotta go to the bathroom, bye. You can understand while also wishing you had video of him doing it.
Also the most fascinating bit of trivia: Millennium Force is never turned off! Or at leaste not before a couple years ago when they redid the whole control system. I wasn't clear whether the new control system has the same problem, which is that fully bringing it online takes over eight hours. As a result, during the operating season, the ride is still left powered up and ready to go. They put it in a Ride Park configuration, where it's not just pressing one button to make it go, but if you needed to do a Clark Griswold and make something run, you could do it solo and pretty quickly. Wild. Up to this point I just assumed they always left the support lights on overnight because it makes a beautiful night sky. (Probably they do. I would imagine ride lighting and ride operations are different systems.)
That closed up with enough time for us to get a last visit in to Artists Alley (for bunny_hugger to pick up her sketchbook) and the Dealers Den (where I got the last possible copy of that convention history graphic novel), and then it was already Closing Ceremonies. We got in in time to see the last bits of the charity auction going and the preposterously large bids put in for funny convention badge numbers for next year, and had great seats to see the con board tell about how enormous the convention was and deliver the figures of nearly four thousand attendees, one thousand fursuiters parading, and the eighteen thousand or whatever raised for the charity, which we completely missed throughout the con. (It's a group matching service animals t children with sensory or other special needs.)
After all that we finally went to the North Market for a last meal --- they would be closed Monday, Memorial Day, when we could have used an exciting farewell lunch --- and I repeated my kielbasa sandwich while bunny_hugger tried something new. A Bahn Mi, I think, but if I have it wrong it doesn't matter. We were there right up to the brink of their closing; yes, they flickered the lights on us. But we also got an ice cream to close out the day and thought how much weight we'd gain over the trip. (We lost weight, maybe from having only one meal plus snacks and spending all day up and around doing things.)
We didn't get to the Dead Dog Dance until about a half-hour into it, which would disappoint us because the DJ was playing a mix heavier into 90s dance music that we sort of know how to move to --- bunny_hugger does, at least, and I could recognize the cadence of songs in way that I can't for EDM --- and we really enjoyed it. bunny_hugger would be offended to see online somewhere comments criticizing the DJ for going ten minutes over his scheduled time. We imagined that the dance probably started ten minutes late --- we've seen these dances start as much as a half-hour past schedule --- but maybe these new arrivals don't know how things used to be. The DJ after that was a bit heavier on the EDM, but still had enough of older style music that we what was going on and were happy for it. The second DJ continued his set to about twenty minutes past the hour when things should have closed.
And then ... that was it, the last scheduled event for Anthrohio 2026. There were a good number of people still hanging around, though, the convention having enough mass now that the lobby and hallways could have crowds even without anything happening. That is a benefit of the con being ten times the size it ever was back at the old Holiday Inn Worthington, granted. Also somewhere around here we realized they had not held a Cake Decorating Contest, the last event that was uniquely and distinctly Morphicon. I hope it's because whoever was supposed to organize it couldn't this year, and that it'll return. It's always hard losing any tradition, but that's the sort of thing to make us wonder what we're at the convention for. The audio people also didn't play Toto's 'Africa' as chaser.
Yet, it was a great time. An exhausting time. A stimulating time. A time when we got to see most everyone we hoped to, unlike the cursed Motor City Furry Con where we missed everybody. Maybe we do have room for an enormous convention in our lives.
But we are hoping to see if Michigan Anthro Weekend this October is the sort of small cozy event we used to go to Morphicon/Anthrohio for.
And now, some more Merry-Go-Round pictures plus the revelation of what something new has been added to the place ...
Here's a more interesting pan centered on the sea serpent carvings the Merry-Go-Round Museum made in-house.
Carousel horse with a dragon of fire and electricity on its shield.
And then say, why is a skeleton sitting in some kind of ride wearing a Halloweekend 2004 crew t-shirt?
It's because, dear reader, the Merry-Go-Round Museum is now also a Cedar Point History Museum, with such things as this partial boat from the recently-removed Snake River Falls shoot-the-chutes. The skeletons are just flavor.
They had the Blue Streak height ride sign last year, and the roller coaster simulator that's usually turned off even longer than that, but 2025 saw a huge expansion in the old park stuff.
They also had up front a comic poem in tribute to a retiring park employee.
Trivia: Women living with a male partner do on average five more hours of housework per week than single women do. Men living with female partners do an average half-hour more. Source: Seriously Curious: The Facts and Figures that Turn Our World Upside-Down, Editor Tom Standage.
Currently Reading: The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, Roland Allen.
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Date: 2026-06-07 04:23 am (UTC)