Hi.

The cost depends on how many people are sharing the room and how many nights you'll be there. Will you be there only for Friday and Saturday nights or will you be there on Thursday night as well? I don't know yet if the other two people will definitely be sharing the room. The room rate is $99/night plus tax. I don't know yet what the exact amount of the tax will be, so I can't figure your share exactly. If you're the only other person sharing our room, your share would be 1/3 of that amount. If we have four people in the room, it would be 1/4 of that amount. And if there are five people in the room, it would be 1/5 of that amount. So, depending on how many people share the room, that would range from $33/night plus your share of the tax to $20/night plus your share of the tax. Multiply that by the number of nights you'll be sharing the room. As for the age ranges. I'm 65 and my wife is 46. There is one other person who expressed an interest in sharing our room. He is 21. The room is no smoking since my wife is physically allergic to tobacco. Since we are dealers, we have to get up early enough to get down to the dealers' room an hour before it opens to the public. I'd like to sleep later, but we have to be at least semi-awake to be able to do business. It also means we probably won't be up all that late at night and will probably already be in bed by the time you turn in, so try not to wake us when you come in. One other thing. If you are able to help us with dealer load-in and/or dealer load out, we could take some off of the amount you'd otherwise owe on the room. The more you could help, the more we can take off. So that would make your cost even lower.

Now, for load in, you'd have to be there on Thursday and for load out, you'd have to be able to be there long enough after the dealers' room closes for us to get stuff out. I realize you can't carry the heavier boxes. I can't lift the heavy boxes, so otherwise it's just my wife who has to to it. Still, even helping with the other lighter boxes will help. Especially if we can snag a cart from the hotel so we can keep two cart loads going all the time. I don't know yet the details on load in/load out. I still need to wait on the head of the dealers' room to send that info to me. But at most anime cons, dealer load in starts from between 4-6 pm on the Thursday before the con and the dealers' room closes on Sunday usually either at 3 or 4 pm. Depending on the exact logistics on getting things in and out (and if we can get a cart from the hotel), load in and load out will take from 2 1/2 to 4 hours each. We have a lot of stuff. We intend to be at the hotel no later than 3 pm on Thursday, July 4th.

I haven't heard more from the other person who might share the room with us yet. I was out of town for over a week myself. I'll send him a message and see if we can find out more about if they will be sharing the room.

I'll stay the night Friday and Saturday. I'll help with the loading Thursday afternoon and Sunday after it all closes. It really depends on the weight of the boxes you're asking me to carry. I'm as strong as the average male in my weight class but that doesn't mean much since I'm still pretty light. I also have a friend who wants to go but isn't sure yet. He's male but I don't mind sharing the bed with him if he decides to. If he doens't, I could easily curl into an armchair meaning you could probably fit in that other guy.

Don't worry about the weight of the boxes. Most aren't that heavy and my wife can handle the heavier boxes. All we need to do is unload the boxes from the van onto a cart, take the cart into the dealers' room, and unload the cart in our booths. Would your other friend also be interested in helping out with load in/load out? We have our own small cart, but it would help if we can snag a cart from the hotel.

BTW, have you gotten your membership yet? We have two extra vendor memberships that come with our booths. I was hoping that a couple of friends of ours would be able to make it, but it doesn't look like he can get time off work. We've heard that they are encouraging people to pre-register because they are going to limit memberships to no more than 5,000 and they expect to fill up. If you don't have a membership yet and since you will be helping us, we could give you one of our extra free memberships. Let me know.

He bought his ticket yesterday so he's going for sure and he says he'll help out but he's not really reliable when it comes to these kinds of things. I bought my pass months ago but thank you for the offer.

Yes. If you don't mind another person in the room, I have a friend whose interested in your vendor membership. I'll be paying for his share of the room.

Ok. So, let's see. There's you, your two friends, and my wife and me, so that makes five people so far who are staying in the room, right? Now, will your friend who's interested in the vendor membership also be helping us with unloading Thursday and loading Sunday. We could get in trouble with the con if we give a vendor membership to someone who isn't one of our helpers.