EPTSince I only live 45 mins away from the international center the plan was to just drive there each day. Friday night my wife and roommate went out to grab stuff to make and decorate cookies for the casters/staff and buy a bunch of all the candy types Huk keeps mentioning in interviews that he likes. Everything is going fine so far, stuff gets baked, candy goes in a bag with tissue paper to make it look pretty etc.
9 AM Saturday morning the car refuses to start for no reason and it was working fine the night before. By 9:45 we've tried everything in the known universe to get the car to start and called every person we know for a ride with no luck. We can't just take a bus because it's a two hour busride that passes through multiple fare zones. The morning wears on and we retreat into the house to make more phone calls and watch the event on stream. Much thanks to everyone in the LR thread who was sympathetic to my plight and kept me from losing my mind.
After much struggles and tears and terrible luck we acquire a car and make it to the event in time for the last game of Ret vs Puzzle. There is zero hope of finding seats of course by that points so we just end up on the floor at the front which turns out to be the best spot ever. We happened to be right by the curtain everyone goes in and out of and when appropriate that allowed us to get autographs, hugs and pics without waiting in horrendously long lines. Since we arrived late we had left the cookies at home but promised to bring them for Sunday, there was much excitement about this.
The event itself Saturday was a blast, the crowd was loud and energetic as hell and at least where we were they smelled fine, no heavy perfume/ cologne and no BO. Every game was awesome and it was a lot of fun to cheer every time someone said Canada or something even remotely interesting happened. The DJ was excellent so during the breaks between games, which were already short, we didn't lose any energy in the room due to bad music. Even though I missed half the day Saturday went from tear inducing to throat sore from cheering with glee.
On the way back to the car we stopped and chatted with a fellow fan for a bit about how crazy he was to come from Minnesota and how he and I hoped for Alicia to win. Frodan and Soe (and someone I couldn't see well) walk past and Frodan calls out to my wife which startles us just a little but is also cool as hell because omfg he remembered us.
Sunday was even better, we got there early and pretty much just grabbed the same spots as Saturday although I opted for a seat in the front row since there weren't enough premium members to fill them early on ( I would have moved if anyone asked me to but no one did). Mr Bitter stopped by early, said hi and made off with half a dozen or so cookies which was awesome. A few of the others stopped by during the day for stuff too.
Once again the games were good and sore throat or not it was great to cheer with the whole crowd. I was a bit surprised and kinda proud actually that the crowd pretty much stayed put during the tribes finals and while we certainly weren't cheering as loud for it we made a reasonable amount of noise especially since a lot of people had no clue about the game. I have to give credit to the casters, they also really hyped it and were pretty informative while keeping the play by play casting going. I don't think I'd ever play tribes but I could fairly easily follow a game of it even without casting at this point and recognize the classes and tactics being used.
Singing the national anthem felt awesome ^-^
Boss toss did not disappoint vs Ret, and oh man when we realized he was going carriers it was the sweetest thing ever. There was so much tension in the room while he built them up and we waited for Ret to find out. They really are a situational unit but I'm going to miss them in HOTS, especially after that game.
Finals were epically sad as a fan of Alicia, Stephano played really great but there was just something missing in those games. Stephano vs MC felt like a much stronger series where both players were evenly matched.
Victory celebration with the champagne shower and dancing was awesome though and it was great to stand up and have some fun at the end of a long day. More tournaments need prize ceremonies like this. I am not sure if Alicia got forgotten in all of the celebration or if he was just hiding but it was a bit saddening to not be able to give him one last cheer for his valiant effort.
All in all good times and well worth the money spent. I truly hope more tournaments will come to Toronto in the future.
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Random notes:
There was one security guy there who looked super serious all the time and like he was examining every person as a potential terrorist or something. It was a little weird since most of the rest of security was pretty friendly despite working with large crowd. Perhaps he only stood out since I saw him the most and he was tall as hell.
There was also the tech guy who flipped Rotti off for ruffling his hair, it was kinda cute though. I felt kinda bad for him when he kept having to come out and crouch behind the desk/ under casters trying to fix various stuff that kept breaking.
Clutch is really cute IRL.
Kennigit was scarier than super serious security guard.
Small children at sc2 events are way less annoying than small children pretty much everywhere else.
Special thanks to Brandi for being fun to chat with and a big help sunday ^-^
Also thanks to Smix for taking the bag of candy to Huk saturday after he disappeared, we can only hope it helped cheer him up some.
