DLCC Rooftop Closure

The David L. Lawrence Convention Center has been forced to commence renovation of the building’s roof earlier than was planned.  It was found that the water leaks, which you may have noticed last year, have done far more damage than was originally believed. Please accept their apologies, and ours, but the rooftop will not be available for Anthrocon 2019.


Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Does this include the 3rd floor terrace overlooking the parade?  

A: Yes, unfortunately, it does.

Q: What about that big crane we've seen?  

A: The crane is going to be parked at the entrance to the water feature, which unfortunately will also not be accessible.  We checked, and it is not practical to remove the crane for the duration of our convention. The Riverfront plaza will be available via the stairs or ramp at Fort Dusquene boulevard.

Q: Will the Fursuit Parade be affected?

A: We do not anticipate any disruption to the Parade.

Q: Will construction be ongoing during the convention?  

A: No. Work will stop on Wednesday, July 3rd, and will not start again until Monday, July 8th.

Q: Why did they decide to do it now?  

A: They did not decide.  Preliminary work that was done to prepare for planned renovations to the roof revealed extensive water damage that had gone undetected.  It was necessary to begin repairs immediately in order to complete the renovations before Winter sets in.

Q: What's involved with the renovations?  

A: You'll see.  You're going to love it!

Q: Can we go on the roof at all?  

A: No, sadly.  The entire roof is considered an active construction site and there can be no unauthorized people up there.

Q: What about the fireworks?  

A: You can still view the fireworks from the riverfront, or from along Fort Duquesne Blvd, or even from your hotel room windows if they happen to face PNC Park.


Anthrocon Tonight Auditions are Open

Photo Credit: Barton Fox

The Programming Team is proud to announce a change to Anthrocon Tonight, formerly the Masquerade. In previous years we have held auditions on Saturday morning, but we are now doing auditions online only. Just fill out this form and let us know what you want to do for Anthrocon Tonight 2019.

The Anthrocon Tonight audition form can be found here. 

Anthrocon 2019 May Update!

Photo Credit

Hey everyone! We’ve been doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes lately, and wanted to share some news!

Dance Competition Signups

Dance competition signups are now open! Head over to the signup form to get started. Signups are online ONLY—there will be no signups at the convention itself. Please make sure that you read and understand the Dance Competition rules.

Hotel Update

At this time, all hotels except for the Renaissance are full! So we added an 11th hotel: The Pittsburgh Marriott City Center! Be sure to book your room at this link! Note that a one-night deposit is required at the time of room reservation. If there are any questions, Visit Pittsburgh Housing will be more than happy to assist! Their email address is [email protected].

Do you need a ride from the airport to your hotel? Use group code GJXMA with Supershuttle and get 10% off!

Hotel Shuttle Changes

Last year we had two shuttles, but we did not feel it was enough to keep up with the load. So this year we will be running four shuttles to and from the hotels and convention center. Schedules and maps will be posted closer to the convention.

Pre-Registration

Did you pre-register for Anthrocon yet? Pre-registration closes at 11:59 PM EST on June 16th, 2019. If you want to skip the long lines at the convention, go here to pre-register now!

An additional note: if you buy a Supersponsorship and do so in pre-registration, that gets you a ticket to our wonderful Luncheon on Saturday with the Guests of Honor.

Programming Schedules

If you submitted a panel and it was approved, you should have gotten an email stating so, along with a link to the tentative schedule. If you have any questions about your panel, please email [email protected] immediately! Requests for changes and modifications are not handled via email. Please follow the procedure outlined in the email you received.

Art Show

So far 136 artists have reserved space in the Art Show! There are a few panels left in both the General and Mature galleries, and some General Gallery table space, but all the Mature Gallery table space has been taken. Artists can still reserve space at https://www.anthrocon.org/artshow/artist-info on a first-come, first-served basis!

That’s all we have for now, be sure to check back for more updates closer to the con, or join us on Twitter or Facebook!

Anthrocon 2019 DJ Submissions are open!

Photo Credit: Protocollie

Hi everyone! I'm Veyote, and I'm pleased to announce that Anthrocon 2019 DJ submissions are now open!

Protocollie and I are now a joint team, and our mission is to make the nightly dances at AC bigger and better than they've ever been. Every night, AC’s AV team & tech crew dims the lights in the Spirit of Pittsburgh Ballroom, and some of the fandom’s greatest DJs hit the stage. If you think you're up for it, read on!

We strive ourselves on booking as many popular and requested genres as possible. While the usual mainstays like house, dubstep, future bass and other EDM genres are expected to fill the later slots, we want to try to make as many people happy and cater the dances to everyone.

Having said this, we are in particular need of HIP-HOP & POP DJs. These two genres are heavily requested from us, and we have not been able to fill slots with them as we’d like to. Not because we don't like them, but we do not get submissions for them!

For the submissions themselves, please keep them to around 60 minutes long, and please submit what style you plan on playing if selected! The last day to submit your audition will be Sunday May 19th, with selections going out by the first week of June. You've got plenty of time to pull something new together if you'd like, but don't delay too much! We can't wait to hear what you've got.

Here’s the form! https://veyote.typeform.com/to/gu7VmS

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to or DM @AnthroconDances on Twitter. We can't wait to hear what you've got.

-@Veyote & @Protocollie

Your Anthrocon Dance Team



Anthrocon Charity Bucket Brigade Sign-Ups Now Open!

pearl-parrot-rescue.png

Fursuiters who would like to participate directly in the fundraising for PEARL Parrot Rescue at Anthrocon may now register for 1-hour Bucket Brigade time slots.

To receive the sign-up link, contact [email protected] with (1) your contact information and (2) the attendee/fursuit badge name you will be wearing when you participate.

Registration is open to those with presentable full fursuits and complete costumes (partial + outfit), with exceptions for special cases. Participation involves accompaniment by a charity representative. Forty-eight time slots available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Full rules available on registration form.

Charity Auction/Raffle Donations Needed For 2019 Fundraising!

pearl-parrot-rescue.png

As you may have heard, Anthrocon's selected charity this year is PEARL Parrot Rescue. While cash donations made at the convention are great, the plurality of funds are raised via donations of artwork and merchandise to our Charity Auction and Raffle. We're looking for popular items and unique craftwork that will make people say, "I want that!"

Here are some examples of donations that went big in past years...

Great examples from prior raffles:

  • Crafts based on hot trends ("Toothless" Build-A-Bear plus - $381)

  • Popular media (Sherlock Hound DVD set - $147)

  • Art bought at prior convention art shows ("Wrath" art by Terrie Smith - $83)

  • Giant, brand new plush of popular animals or characters (Border collie plush - $129)

  • Merchandise based on popular fiction (Dr. Who's sonic screwdriver - $158)

  • Gift cards (Amazon $100 gift card - $305).

Great examples from prior auctions:

  • Fursuit costumes and commissions (Griffon fursuit head - $460)

  • Rare convention memorabilia (Full set of all AC t-shirts since 1997 - $200)

  • Professional sculpture (Softsculp poseable gryphon - $350)

  • Unique opportunities (A speaking part in audio version of Diane Duane's "The Last Meow" - $500)

  • Dorsai fursuit tags (Tag #1000 - $1600)

  • Contemporary culture ("Zootropolis" movie poster - $300)

If you have an item you believe would be appropriate and would like to donate, please contact charity(at)anthrocon.org!

Helpful links:

* Donations are distributed between the Raffle and Auction based on available space, time, and perceived and past value.

Hotel Opening: Anthrocon 2019 Report

Yesterday, we opened general hotel reservations, and that resulted in a huge rush of members booking hotel rooms. 1,000 rooms were booked in the first 15 minutes! This was completely expected, and we kept track of how things played out on social media, and also took a survey of members who booked hotel rooms to see how things went. In this post, we’re going to share what we learned based on those survey results and Twitter activity.

Hotel Bookings

First, did people who booked a hotel room get the hotel that they wanted?

Did you get the hotel you wanted?

For nearly 70% of you, the answer is yes. This makes us happy, but we would like to see the number higher—ideally 100% of our attendees would get a room in the hotel of their choice. This is something we continue to work on each year by adding new hotels and getting bigger room blocks in existing hotels.

Now, what hotels did people book their rooms in?

Which hotel did you book?

One of these things is not like the other, and that would be the AC Hotel. It was recently constructed and this is their first year as a partner hotel for us. It was the 4th to sell out (at 11 minutes after hotels opened) and accounted for 8.3% of all bookings yesterday. At 0.2 miles from the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, we think it will be a fine addition to our list of partner hotels for Anthrocon 2019, and hope that our attendees will enjoy staying there.

Next, where did people get the booking link from? We published the link in a few different places at Noon, so that people could get the link from the place that was most convenient for them. Here’s how that played out:

Where did you get the hotel link?

This is actually very significant, because we did not think that nearly as many of you got the link from the website as you did. But it turns out that the technique of “refresh the hotel page at Noon” was the most common one. The good news here is that the combination of CloudFlare’s front end and SquareSpace’s back end were able to handle the load. We monitor our website with NodePing, and saw 100% uptime yesterday. That’s great news, and we will continue to announce the link on the website first in coming years.

This is what traffic to our website looked like over the past month:

2019-hotel-website-visits.png

The spike on January 8th is when we announced our first two Guests. And that big spike on February 1st is of course when we opened hotel reservations. (The exclamation points are SquareSpace’s way of letting us know that traffic was unusually high that day.)

Twitter Activity

Since before last year’s convention, we have been pulling every tweet which mentions “Anthrocon” from Twitter’s API, then performing sentiment analysis on those tweets. This lets us see what people are talking about, and how happy (or unhappy) they are.

And this is what sentiment looked like on Twitter for February 1st:

2019-hotel-tweet-sentiment.png

There was of course a huge spike of tweets starting at Noon,which then dropped off. But attendee sentiment remained overwhelmingly positive throughout the day, which is good to know. While there is always room for improvement, the positive feelings outweigh the negative ones.

Finally, there is the raw volume of tweets. Pictured below is the volume of tweets mentioning “Anthrocon” over the past week:

2019-hotel-tweet-volume.png

The first hump is from last Monday, when we announced Benjamin Diskin as a Guest. The smaller hump from the middle of the week is when we opened hotel rooms to Supersponsors. And that huge spike on the far right? That’s when we opened general hotel reservations.

So that sums up how hotel openings went this year. Remember, if you have any issues with your reservation, you can email [email protected] for assistance.

See you at the con!

— Giza

Anthrocon 2019 Fursuit-Friendly Cruises

Anthrocon 2019 Fursuit-Friendly Cruises

In conjunction with the Gateway Clipper Fleet, Anthrocon is once again offering two Fursuit-Friendly Cruises.

  • An Afternoon cruise will be offered on Thursday, July 4th.

  • A Sunset cruise will be offered on Friday, July 5th.

  • Boarding will take place at the Convention Center Riverfront Plaza.

  • Ticket prices will be $19.99 each and space will be limited.

  • A complimentary bottle of water will be offered to all passengers and long straws will be supplied for use by fursuiters.

  • The boats have both open decks and closed air conditioned decks so the cruises will be sailing rain or shine.

  • You do not need a con badge to board the cruise. However, you will need your cruise tickets for boarding, whether it be in hard copy or electronic format.

Thursday, July 4th Afternoon Fursuit-Friendly Cruise

  • Sailing on the Gateway Clipper Fleet Princess

  • Boarding begins at 1:00 PM EDT Thursday July 4th

  • Ship sails at 1:30 PM EDT

  • Returns to the dock at 2:30 PM EDT

  • Capacity: 200

Friday, July 5th Sunset Fursuit-Friendly Cruise

  • Sailing on the Gateway Clipper Fleet Princess

  • Boarding begins at 7:30 PM EDT Friday July 5th

  • Ship sails at 8:00 PM EDT

  • Sunset at 8:53 PM EDT

  • Returns to the dock at 9:00 PM EDT

  • Capacity: 200

Don't wait, click here to buy your tickets today!

Fursuit-Friendly Cruise Refund Policy

  • The deadline to request a refund for the Fursuit-Friendly cruise is June 16th, 2019 at 11:59pm EDT. Refund requests after this time will not be granted.

  • The cruises will set sail rain or shine. If conditions on the river itself prevent a safe departure and the cruise is cancelled, refunds will be issued for that cruise.

  • Refunds will not be issued if you miss the boarding time for your cruise.

  • Refund requests must made by email to [email protected].  We need your LEGAL NAME, EMAIL USED FOR PURCHASE, CRUISE THAT TICKETS WERE PURCHASED FOR and NUMBER OF TICKETS PURCHASED to properly identify you for a refund. We cannot accept refund requests made by PM on the website, by Twitter, by Facebook/G+ posts, or other methods.

  • Refunds must be approved/requested by the person who purchased the tickets. 

What To Expect When Hotels Open

NOTE: Hotel opening will be delayed 1 hour, to 12 Noon EST. Treacherous weather in Pittsburgh is making it difficult for Visit Pittsburgh Housing Services employees to get to work, and we are not about to put them at risk trying to hurry into the office. We apologize if this inconveniences anyone, but we need to have to the Visit Pittsburgh staff on hand to help keep things running smoothly for everyone.

On Friday, February 1st, 2019 general hotel reservations will open at 12 Noon Eastern Standard Time (GMT -0500). 

Shortly after 11 AM EST (as shown by the service at https://time.is/), the link to reserve hotel rooms will be posted in the following places, in order:

...in the event that one service is down or otherwise unreachable, we will move onto the next service.   

If you wish to receive alerts and are on Twitter or Telegram, you can configure your client to alert you when a tweet is posted on our Twitter account or a message posted in our Telegram channel.

As room types and hotels sell out, we will post updates to our Twitter feed.

After about an hour or two, once things have calmed down, we will then update our hotel page with details on each hotel's remaining inventory.

TIPS FOR BOOKING A ROOM

  • From PassKey: "We recommend that you only have one browser window open. Using multiple browsers/multiple windows at the same time may cause problems."

  • If you don’t see your first choice for a hotel, you can try shortening your stay, it may only be sold out the first night. You can try adding another night later.

  • From VisitPittsburgh Housing Services:  "If you know the legal names of your roommates when you make your booking, of course you can enter them, and if you have your roommates’ email addresses, enter them in the email field and your roommates will receive a copy of the reservation acknowledgment. If you do not know the true names of your roommates at the time of booking, please do not add fake names or generic names such as Guest #2, Guest #3.  Instead, leave those names blank and then reach out to Visit Pittsburgh as described in the next step...

  • If you need assistance after your reservation is made or need to add/change guests, please email housing(at)visitpittsburgh.com for assistance.  Replies may be delayed for a day or two after reservations open due to volume.

  • While we will try to post updates when a particular hotel sells out, your best bet is the PassKey website itself.  If a hotel is not listed, then it is very likely not available.

NOW THAT I GOT A ROOM, WHAT DO I DO WITH IT?

First, please visit our Anthrocon 2019 Hotel Reservation Experience Survey and let us know your thoughts on the reservation experience.

Next, make travel plans!

Finally, if you need roommates, you could ask on our Facebook Room Share Group or perhaps on #roomshare on our Discord server.

 

(Photo Credit WESA FM)