ApollyCon 2022 Recap: Day Three

Wow. I'm really milking these ApollyCon recap posts. It's been two months since the event ended, and I'm still trying to explain what I did. Yeesh. Well, I'm almost done. Just one more day to go after this one. Then, I have to recap my Disneyland experience... maybe. I haven't decided on that one yet. But anywho, day three of ApollyCon actually allowed us to sleep in for a bit. Hurrah! But sadly, we had more walking ahead of us. Boo.

The first half of day three was really just my friend and I being tourists. We went to a doughnut shop called District Doughnut, and we ate half of each doughnut we got. So three full doughnuts overall. We had a lovely sugar rush. I believe we got a blueberry, key lime pie, Nutella, strawberry, creme brulee, and an orange one. I liked the Nutella doughnut best. But really, all of them were good except the filling in the orange and creme brulee was too much.

After breakfast, we went to the National Mall area for the first time to visit the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. We stayed there for quite a while to look at some taxidermied animals, some replica or real dinosaur fossils (some were real and some were copied), and other cool things. But honestly, I'm not a huge museum person, especially when the museum was getting more and more crowded the longer we stayed. So, we headed out a couple of hours later to visit my friend's favorite restaurant, Halal Guys. And it was fine. It reminded me of a Chipotle or a Subway. Nothing too fancy, which is always nice.

And now, we finally get to more actual ApollyCon stuff. The last major event of the convention was the After Party. This was the event everyone was supposed to wear their pajamas to, but a lot of people didn't, simply because it's difficult to wear pajamas for those who don't stay at the hotel and need to use public transit later. The After Party wasn't a big deal. I think the line for it was the worse part. It got pretty chaotic and at one point, a group of us at the front were worried they'd make us move after we'd already been sitting on the couches hanging out for a very long time. (Not technically in line, but still in line, if you know what I mean.) Jennifer stopped by for a bit to say thank you and such. She looked pretty tired, like the rest of us. Haha. But people still danced to the dj's music and tried to make the most of a weird event. There wasn't a bar or anything due to reasons Jennifer explained later. (It was the hotel's fault.) I don't drink, but it just seemed like a dud of an event.

I'm going to back up a bit and talk about what happened when we first came into the After Party, though. There were just a few tables set up in a giant empty room. The volunteers handed the first 100ish people swag bags. (We each got one. Though I can't even remember what was in them now. Mostly just extra ApollyCon swag and random author items. I think a lot of the stuff pictured above is what came in the bag, though I could be wrong.) And then we nabbed some stickers off the tables. (Not all the stickers, just a couple, because we weren't monsters.)
 

 

  Then, all the sudden, there was a mad rush around us to get to one of the tables that was pushed against the wall. Apparently, somebody had found a box of Bookish Box special editions under the table and like twenty people were crawling all over each other to nab one. Or, in some cases, more than one. Yep, there was a girl who walked away with a whole stack of special editions. And the kicker was, apparently the books weren't even for the attendees. They were left under the table to either give to volunteers later or for Bookish Box to do something with later. I can't remember the whole story. Oops. Maybe they shouldn't have left a box of books unsupervised with a crowd of bored book fans. But anyway, we didn't know any of this info at the time, so one of the people who I was standing with managed to grab a few and all of us passed them out to each other. I originally had Gild by Raven Kennedy, but since it's book three in a series, I gave it to someone else and kept A Deal with an Elf King instead. I feel bad about having it now, but, like I said, at the time, we had no idea they weren't freebies. Nobody was there to say no, and a lot of us didn't even see who grabbed them out from under the table.

After that mad book scramble, my friend and I got in a raffle sign-up line. Thankfully, my friend asked the volunteer if we had to stay in order to receive our prize so we knew we couldn't leave until after the drawing. So, we just hung out and shuffle danced until most people had left and only a small crowd was on the dance floor, with a few others sporadically standing around the room. Then, names were drawn for prizes. However, since a ton of people had left by then, it took a while for winners to actually be called. Eventually, though, my friend ended up winning a set of all four FBAA Bookish Box special editions. (She'd already bought them, so it wasn't something new, but she does plan to sell the set later and make back some of the money she spent at ApollyCon. Haha.)

Then, the last major event of ApollyCon was over and we took the bus back to our AirBnB. But, while the last major event was done for most attendees, we were lucky enough to get tickets to the JLA panel the next day. Amazingly, unlike a lot of attendees, we got one more day of ApollyCon. And hopefully, I can get that recap up in a timely manner... So stay tuned for the ApollyCon Day Five Recap!