This is really more of the same but:

pros:

The hotel staff treated us very well. Really the best I can remember at a con. I ended up spending a lot of time in Zephyr Saturday night and thought that the staff there were really working hard to make things good for us.

The snack bar was a fabulous idea.

I really enjoyed just hanging out on the balconies watching the con go by on Saturday night. I didn't feel like I had to go to an over-crowded (to my taste) party to feel festive :-)

I went to at least one vendor in dealers row that I don't think I have visited before. Yeah for new stuff to look at!

cons:

I've attended all but I think 2 years to Arisia and this is the first time I haven't gone to the art show and the first time I didn't go to the dealers room. I tried waiting about 40 minutes to get on one at around 2:00 on Saturday before giving up. I figured if it didn't look like a long wait I'd try again before the weekend ended..but that never happened. Even if all of the elevators had been working I don't think it would have been much better. I still had a good time, but I felt bad for the vendors and artists! (Not that I can think of a good alternative at this hotel).

TWICE I saw groups of people who couldn't all get on the elevator at once so the remaining members of the group just rode the elevator for oh 20 minutes or so until everyone could get on together. Im all for sticking together but if only 12 or 18 people can be on the elevators at any one time maybe folks could join up back together OUTSIDE the elevator.

I didn't go to a single panel this year. Very little caught my interest that I hadn't already done in past years.

I felt VERY lucky to be sleeping on the 6th floor come Sunday when I realized that if went very slow we could hoof it down the stairs with all of our baggage to check out. I have a bad back and normally this is something I would have never considered, but it was the only way I could think of to check out at 11:30 and still make our 1:00 brunch reservations a few minutes away in Cambridge.

I did miss the fun of having boston at our doorstep. Probably this is in part because Boston feels like a little vacation where Cambridge feels like well..work..to me.

(since I have more words of cons than pros..I'll sum up by saying I did have a good time and thanks to the all-volenteer cast who work so hard to make this happen!)