After being absent from G-Fest since 2005, this year I finally returned to the Crowne Plaza O’Hare in Rosemont, Illinois for G-Fest XV! Thought by many to be one of the best G-Fests ever, G-Fest Fifteen was held from July 4th through July 6th 2008 at (once again) the Crowne Plaza O’Hare in Rosemont, IL, just outside of Chicago. As usual, the convention completely took over the hotel with somewhere around 1300 convention goers (estimate). Pre-registration for the convention was way up this year and in fact, was the highest ever, seems like G-Fest just keeps getting more and more popular as the years go by. There was really no central theme this year, but if there was one, it would have to be celebrating the return of original Godzilla suit actor Haruo Nakajima after eight years as the very special guest of the convention. Other guests included Ultimate Fighting Champion and star of Godzilla: Finals Wars, Don Frye, Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah star Robert Scott Field, and author August Ragone. As usual, the convention was filled with activities, panels with the guests, games like G-Pardy (kaiju version of Jeopardy), model / costume / art sessions, and of course, the dealer’s room. As always I had an incredible time hanging out with my good friends James Bond, Danny Tokarz, Andy & Brandon Shields, John “Dutch” DeSentis, Kevin Fredrick, Jean Carbajal, Greg Cordaro, Joey McCough, Tim Crane, Jay Johnson, and all the other new fans that I met. So anyway, let’s get to the convention report for more details!
I would say same old journey, different year, but this year it wasn’t. This year was more of a vacation / G-Fest event as my girlfriend (now ex, thankfully) also came along for the ride. We headed out early Thursday morning and made a few stops along the way through Wisconsin (most notably the zoo in Madison, Wisconsin), before arriving at the hotel around 5:00 PM. Upon arriving at the Crowne Plaza, we instantly ran into a group of the Goon Squad who were going out for pizza as well as Armand Vaquer and Brett Homenick. We said our hellos and while they left, we got to establishing ourselves in our room (just a couple doors down from the rest of the squad). My girlfriend and I then went down to check out the convention area which was same old same old with G-Fest having basically the whole two floors to itself for the weekend. It should also be noted that on this night there was a Kaiju Film Fest being held at the Pickwick Theater to accommodate early arrivers. The films featured in this double, double feature were "Attack of the Mushroom People", "Destroy All Monsters", "Godzilla vs. Gigan", and "Orochi the Eight-Headed Dragon".
So after running out and grabbing a bite to eat ourselves, I met up with the guys later in the night and we hung out in the hotel’s bar, where we had a few drinks and met Haruo Nakajima and his daughter, who were eating dinner. Not wanting to harass them while they were eating, we sat at the bar until they left. We all shook hands with the legend before heading back upstairs to hang out. This was when the craziest thing happened as Don Frye, Captain Gordon himself, came up to the Goon Squad rooms and hung out with us, having a few drinks and laying down a few words of drunken tough guy wisdom (Shiela) before we all turned in for the night around 1:00 or 2:00 AM.
This being more of a family vacation, my girlfriend and I got up early Friday morning to head over to the Lincoln Park Zoo & Conservatory over in Chicago. It was an incredible zoo and I would highly recommend it and all other zoos mentioned in this report. After that we returned to the hotel in the early afternoon and I headed down to the dealer’s room to help James Bond set up his table and added the figures I have for sale to his table as well. We also ran into our old friends Scott Horton and his fiancé who were setting up the Applause Inc tables, Tony of Tempting Toys, Lenell Bridges, Tom & Diane of Clawmark Toys, Linda Conrad of Chibi-Goji Toys, Greg Lyman, and Bill Kerner of Far East Monsters among others. The dealer’s room seemed smaller than previous years with seemingly not as many dealers attending, but toys were still flying off the tables like crazy all weekend. I, unfortunately, didn’t purchase any new items for myself as they were either too expensive or were snatched up before I could get to them (oh well).
Anyway, while finishing setting up in the dealer’s room, the convention was already rolling. From 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM there were many sessions, including ones concerning G-FEST orientation with JD Lees, What is a Kaiju?, Ultraman, Space Giants, Godzilla in the Grindhouse, costuming panels, and G-Pardy (I will hopefully be elaborating more on these later on). At 6:00 PM sharp the dealer’s room doors opened and fans flooded in to get their hands on whatever kaiju goodies they could. After three hours of this, the dealer’s room closed and my girlfriend and I went out to see fireworks for the Fourth of July while some others went to see the Friday night Pickwick film, “Godzilla vs. Biollante”. Unfortunately the film had some issues and froze right as the first fight between Godzilla and Biollante began, so the film was reshown on Saturday evening with the other option of a refund. Friday night was a rather tame night as we all passed out early.
On Saturday I woke up bright and early to join James, Greg, and Andy in the dealer’s room to sell more figures before attending both the Haruo Nakajima and Don Frye sessions at 10:00 AM and 12:00 PM respectively. Both talked about their experiences in their films (Nakajima was very interesting and Don Frye was hilarious with his jokes and comments). Aside from those two important sessions / panels, there were also kids activities and sessions for model making, costuming sessions, the video room was running, models and art were on display, gaming and video gaming was going among other things. We spend most of this time following the Nakajima and Frye sessions in the dealer’s room throwing lemon sours and selling toys. Then, at 3:00 PM, the autograph session began where you could get autographs from Haruo Nakajima, Don Frye, Robert Scott Field, and August Ragone. This was an incredible experience even though the line moved so slowly, but it was so cool to shake the hands of all the guests and get pictures with them. I got a reprint of the Godzilla: King of the Monsters 1956 poster with Raymond Burr signed by Nakajima that’s defiantly going in my office (when I get one, heh). After this we finished up in the dealer’s room as it closed at 5:00 PM and then headed out to a local Italian restaurant for some food. After this, we all hung out in the hotel for a while until the costume parade at around 7:00 PM. There were several great entrees and the photos of these suits can be viewed in my photos area. The suits in the contest included GFW Rodan, SpaceGodzilla, King Seesar, and Gabara among others. After this, some of us went to the Saturday night movie at the Pickwick (Godzilla X MechaGodzilla) while the rest stayed at the hotel and watched Gamera: The Brave on the G-Fest channel. It was a pretty slow night until roughly 11:00 PM when I met up with Greg, Danny, Joey, Kevin, and some of the others who hadn’t gone to the movie and we partied it up in Dan’s room with August Ragone until we heard some extremely funny news. It seems an older fan / dealer named Bob Monko had gotten so drunk that he urinated and vomited all over himself in the front of the hotel while sitting on a bench. Laughing our asses off for a few minutes, we then decided to go down and take pictures of the remains (which had already been hosed down) and erect the “Bob Monko Memorial Lounge”, much like the “Godzilla Memorial Lounge” seen in Godzilla vs. Biollante. This consisted of a caution wet floor sign and a couple drawings of Bob. After doing this and taking a few photos, we headed back in and I called it a night.
Sunday was a long day for me as I woke up early in the morning so my girlfriend and I could go to the Brookfield Zoo, which is another excellent zoo. While we were there, several events were taking place for G-Fest back at the hotel, much the same as were held the previous day (again, I hope to elaborate on these more later on in an addition to this report). Also, Haruo Nakajima received his Mangled Skyscraper Award at the awards luncheon. Upon returning to the hotel, I helped James finish up in the dealer’s room as it and the events for the convention wound down around 4:30 with the ending of the final sessions and the closing of the dealer’s room (always a sad thing to see). After helping James take down his table and packing up all the toys the guys headed out to eat at Outback Steakhouse while I went to spend some time with my girlfriend and grabbed some good Chinese food and went swimming. Later on we wound meet up with Dan and the others and the mayhem would begin. Capping the entire convention off was Jay Johnson’s infamous Godzilla Blood party held out on the back patio of the hotel starting at around 9:00 PM. It was a warm summer night, a perfect ending for G-Fest XV. The Godzilla Blood was flowing (fruit punch mixed with moonshine), great conversations were had, new fans were met, fireworks were shot off, and memories were shared of this and past G-Fests. My girlfriend and I spent hours out there talking with Dan, Joey, Greg, Dutch, Kevin, Don Frye (for a few minutes), August Ragone, Armand Vaquer, Brandon & Andy, the list goes on and on, but unfortunately around 2:30 AM, it was time to pack it all in. We said our goodbyes to friends old in new because we had to rise early the next morning to head home.
To sum it all up G-Fest XV was a great convention, defiantly one of the best ever. It was great to get back after not attending the convention since 2005 and what made it great were the incredible guests, the volunteers, the films, and of course, the friends and fans that I got to spend time with. So a big thanks and congratulations to JD Lees, Armand Vaquer, Brett Homenick, all the volunteers, and everyone else that put on such a great show at G-Fest XV. Hopefully I will see you all again next year! Now go check out the photos!
Click here for My G-Fest XV Photos!
