GABIT attendees thread

[Fresh_Horse]

this might also be a good trip to pay a little extra for travel insurance. Do your own research please, but it can be a few dollars to buy an insurance policy for the trip...and if you run into northeastern blizzards and 2 week long flight delays, you cna get your airfare back and other things.

Every vacation has some risk of course and stuff happens...but right now with the really bad weather the UK and Northeastern US has gotten, there could be a good chance that something happens. It'd be horrible to have weather keep you from getting there, and then have that same weather literally cost you the vacation and you can't get reimbursed.

If I was doing it, I would also honestly, not plan many 'too far out' trips or have contingency plans for local sight seeing instead of long trips elsewhere.

I know you don't know what the weather is going to be until it happens, but i do think it'll be a factor in your sight seeing and the such this time.

Excellent advise!
If you do get travel insurance, make sure you read the fine print. Otherwise you may end up with the kind of insurance that only pays if you die and notify them 2 weeks in advance of your death.

The only time I ever paid for travel insurance we got squat. The trip wasn't expensive, it was basically just airfare, the hotel etc. could be cancelled. Still, it was practically impossible to get the insurance to pay out.
Naturally, I will not use that particular airline again.

[The Kit Kat Lady]

Quickie question for a newbie to these things. I know there's not be an published agenda for the official events yet but... can any At or cons veterans please give me a fairly rough outline, timescale-wise of the weekend. I need to organise some kind of babysitting/childcare arrangements and need to start thinking about it pretty soon and what I can attend and what I might have to miss. I'm not staying at the Ren, I live way, way, way too close to justify the cost, so will be popping to and fro as need dictates.

This is a "very" rough guide and is based on previous AT events since they have stayed fairily similar in arrangements. You need to be aware that timings have changed very slightly for each event, and this is often driven by the number of attendees, ie at AT4 since it was a sold out event, each day started earlier than it had at previous events. Anyway, as a guide:

Friday pm - registration opens - you will need to do this as it will give you your weekend badge (you won't be allowed into any part of the event without it), as well as your "goodie" bag which will include things such as a programme, attendee guide, plus any little gifts provided by Gabit. The Friday afternoon also now includes the "newbie" meet and greet which allows all-comers, including previous attendees, a chance to meet up and introduce themselves to one another. This is a great chance to meet people for the first time, whether it be because you want to catch up with someone you have chatted to on-line, or are there by yourself. You will also meet members of the G4, Gabit staff and a few of the stewards - this is obviously limited to those not working, or just being able to "pop" in for a few minutes.

Registration will only take a few minutes, whilst the meet & greet will last approximately 1 hour. It will also give you a chance to ask any questions of the staff/stewards in attendance if there is anything in your pack of information you are unsure of. Chances are if you are unsure, someone else will be as well, so don't be afraid to ask as everyone is very friendly and helpful.

Friday night is the cocktail party for those who have tickets.

Saturday starts with the opening ceremony, which will also include housekeeping rules, and then go straight into Amanda's first Q&A. After this has finished, the photo sessions will start - generally about 10 minutes later - and will continue throughout the morning. Saturday afternoon will start with another Q&A session, followed by the remainder of the photo opportunities. Once these have finished, there is another short break (approximately 15-20 minutes) and then the charity auction starts - by this time it is generally very late afternoon/early evening, ie between 5.00pm and 6.00pm. The auction lasts a couple of hours (tops) before the main hall is closed for setting up for the Abnormal's Ball, which generally starts around 9.00pm-9.30pm and goes on until the early hours.

Sunday is very similar to Saturday, except it is the autograph sessions which take place on this day. For those few who win in the raffle, there is the tea/coffee with Amanda (at AT4 this was late morning). The event finishes again late afternoon/early evening with the announcement of how much has been raised, thank-you's from the G4 and the closing ceremony.

Whilst I am guessing, I would assume that the schedule would run to something fairly similar to this, however, there was a message from Julia on Twitter yesterday that she hopes to be able to get the schedule up onto the Gabit site in the next couple of weeks - so keep checking there for more information.

Photos and autos are called by rows, obviously starting with row A (the first couple of rows tend to be stewards and these are done fairly quickly as we cannot always get them through in their allocated session due to them working), so you will find that the first row of attendees does tend to get called fairly quickly - the room is usually set out in 2 blocks, each block consisting of 10 seats per row. A full row, ie A1-A20 is called at a time. Your photo/auto is driven by your seat/ticket number (as they are one and the same). For example, if your ticket number is F14, if I were a betting person I would guess that both your photo and auto session would be sorted in the morning session, whereas if it were P4, you would likely be the afternoon session (I say this as a steward from the photo/auto team).

Your seat is yours for the weekend, as each seat is numbered, so if you are late into a session, or need to have a loo break, you can come back and know that your seat will be free.

The amount of time you spend at the event is entirely up to you. You could keep Friday to a minimum if you so choose by just coming along to registration and then leaving again (the reg desk is open early on the Saturday morning again, but as I said, you need to register otherwise you can't get into the main hall). Even if you have a cocktail party ticket, if you are so local, you could go back home for a few hours and then just come back for that.

Saturday you may need to gauge how quickly the rows are being called for the photo sessions and then try to work out whether you will likely be in the morning or afternoon session - if in doubt, check with the stewards on the doors to the photo room who should be able to give you some guidance. Whilst the auto sessions on the Sunday will be similar, they will be slower because autographs automatically tend to be longer, and this is often when people have the better opportunity to have their own personal chat with Amanda.

Part of your attendance will come down to how much time you are able to spend at the event - AT events are renowned for a family feel and everyone chatting to everyone else, even if a person comes by themselves, they soon get to meet other people.

There will likely be parts that you could easily miss, ie newbie meet & greet/Abnormal's Ball if you are restricted on time. Depending on how close you are, you might have time either in the morning or afternoon after Amanda's Q&A to get back home, but again this will depend on your ticket number and when your photo/auto session will be.

My only warning, is that if you get a copy of a previous programme, use it only as a guidance as the schedule will, in all likelihood be different at AT5 and I would not like you to miss part of the fun of the weekend. If possible, wait for the schedule to go up on the Gabit site - people will no doubt post messages on GW that it is available - before you firm up any plans for going back home between sessions.

Hope this helps, but if there is something else you need, don't hesitate to ask as I'm sure someone will jump in with advice/assistance.

[The Kit Kat Lady]

if you go according to the travel books, you only need 3-4 months to see everything.Seriously! i am only taking a quick 1 day trip just over the border to a town named dumfries. there are a few neat old castles nearby which i will do a cab trip to and then head south back to york for a few days. at least then i can say i've been to scottland. i really wanted to go way north and see the highlands, but just don't have time. but in the books, there are so many beautiful and interesting places described. the best to do is find a good book on scotland(i have a book on ireland called "DK eyewitness travel") it's loaded with photos and descriptions of EVERYTHING and lists of restaurants, hotels, tours, history and just about everything you need to know about traveling in scotland. go thru the book and highlight everything that interests you. then go thru again and locate each thing on a map and plan how long you need at each and eliminate those that are way out of the way from other places that interest you. use a different color highlighter for the "must sees" then plan your route accordingly. that's what i've done for ireland and i think it will work out pretty good. the only limiting things to how much you can see is how you travel. if you drive, you can see a lot more because you're not limited to train or bus schedules. i'd kill myself and many others if i tried driving on the other side of the road, so i'm stuck with the train and taxis. besides, a rental van that has a ramp for my scooter costs at least £150 a day. that's how i'm doing it. hope that as least gives you ideas. the "top 10-scotland" by dk is a pretty good resource book also. would love to be able to explore more of scotland - maybe for at6.

This may seem a silly question, and I know that most, if not all of your travel in the UK will be via trains, but you do know that Dumfries and York are actually on opposite sides of the country, ie Dumfries is West Coast, whilst York is East Coast? I know we are a small country, but it will still take some travelling to get between the two cities. Have you not thought of perhaps visiting Edinburgh instead (especially since it is Scotland's capital city), which is also on the East Coast and has lots of marvellous places to visit, such as Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace, the Royal Mile, Princes Street - the whole city is steeped in history. Waverley station, is also just around the corner from Princes Street and fairly close to both Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace and would be much cheaper in taxi fares. Edinburgh also has a huge history with Frankenstein and has underground streets you can visit.

And before you ask, no I don't work for the Edinburgh Tourist Board!!

PS: love the DK books and have quite a few of them myself.

[Celandine]

Why do you say that? Any reason?

Nope! From my POV, I believe TSE was a great success and can't see a reason outwardly to not do another, but like I said, I'm looking from the outside. I've no idea how much the expense was for Gabit to host this half-way cross the world (for them) and if the experience was good enough for them to do it again.

I'd LOVE for there to be a TSE2! I had such a blast and well, it's gotten to the point that I plan all my vacations around Gabit events now.

This is a "very" rough guide and is based on previous AT events since they have stayed fairily similar in arrangements. You need to be aware that timings have changed very slightly for each event, and this is often driven by the number of attendees, ie at AT4 since it was a sold out event, each day started earlier than it had at previous events. <snipped for length>

Very thorough guide to the weekend! When you mentioned the photo and auto breaks on the Saturday and Sunday, I had a warm, fuzzy flashback of hanging out in the Ren lobby with friends. Such a great time.


I've a question though. I'm leaving in a little over 3 wks and wondered when the seat assignments might go out? I know in the past this needed to be printed out and brought along at registration, but honestly, if this info is released at the beginning of Feb, I'm not totally sure I'll have access to a printer then.

[Jumble]

Nope! From my POV, I believe TSE was a great success and can't see a reason outwardly to not do another, but like I said, I'm looking from the outside. I've no idea how much the expense was for Gabit to host this half-way cross the world (for them) and if the experience was good enough for them to do it again.

I'd LOVE for there to be a TSE2! I had such a blast and well, it's gotten to the point that I plan all my vacations around Gabit events now.

I agree, it was a howling success and I seriously doubt that there won't be another or in fact several more. It was actually cheaper for GABIT to stage it in Vancouver than it wood have been to do it here because of the costs involved in getting so many guests to the UK I know that because I asked if we could have one in the UK and got a resounding 'No!' because of that

[lame moose (mocha)]

This may seem a silly question, and I know that most, if not all of your travel in the UK will be via trains, but you do know that Dumfries and York are actually on opposite sides of the country, ie Dumfries is West Coast, whilst York is East Coast? I know we are a small country, but it will still take some travelling to get between the two cities. Have you not thought of perhaps visiting Edinburgh instead (especially since it is Scotland's capital city), which is also on the East Coast and has lots of marvellous places to visit, such as Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace, the Royal Mile, Princes Street - the whole city is steeped in history. Waverley station, is also just around the corner from Princes Street and fairly close to both Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace and would be much cheaper in taxi fares. Edinburgh also has a huge history with Frankenstein and has underground streets you can visit.

And before you ask, no I don't work for the Edinburgh Tourist Board!!

PS: love the DK books and have quite a few of them myself.

good point, but there are 2 castles-caerlaverock and drumlurig near dumfries that really caught my eye. but i'm replanning, because there are also 2 abbeys enroute to edinburgh that i would love to see, melrose and dryburgh. so i might take one more day and see if i can somehow fit all those in and stay overnight in edinburgh and leave to go back to york in the afternoon for the viking fest. still in the planning stage, but must decide by tomorrow morning. i didn't read anything about frankenstein in the guide books. what's that story?

[dipsofjazz]

This may seem a silly question, and I know that most, if not all of your travel in the UK will be via trains, but you do know that Dumfries and York are actually on opposite sides of the country, ie Dumfries is West Coast, whilst York is East Coast? I know we are a small country, but it will still take some travelling to get between the two cities. Have you not thought of perhaps visiting Edinburgh instead (especially since it is Scotland's capital city), which is also on the East Coast and has lots of marvellous places to visit, such as Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace, the Royal Mile, Princes Street - the whole city is steeped in history. Waverley station, is also just around the corner from Princes Street and fairly close to both Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace and would be much cheaper in taxi fares. Edinburgh also has a huge history with Frankenstein and has underground streets you can visit.

And before you ask, no I don't work for the Edinburgh Tourist Board!!

PS: love the DK books and have quite a few of them myself.

Hey, that sounds like a great place to live. Oh, wait a minute.....

[dipsofjazz]

good point, but there are 2 castles-caerlaverock and drumlurig near dumfries that really caught my eye. but i'm replanning, because there are also 2 abbeys enroute to edinburgh that i would love to see, melrose and dryburgh. so i might take one more day and see if i can somehow fit all those in and stay overnight in edinburgh and leave to go back to york in the afternoon for the viking fest. still in the planning stage, but must decide by tomorrow morning. i didn't read anything about frankenstein in the guide books. what's that story?

If you decide to come to Edinburgh, I'd be happy to show you around.

[lame moose (mocha)]

that would be wonderful. i still(at this point) plan on going to dumfries to see those 2 old castles. but the abbeys i would love to see are about 40 miles from edinburgh and no trains can take me closer.really disappointed because they look really beautiful.but that would be an awfully expensive taxi ride. so i'm looking at arriving in edinburgh in the evening and having most of the next day to zoom around. have to be on a train by 6-7p for york. that would be either tues or wed. i have my calendar in the other room, but i would really love that. thank you for the offer. back to my research.

[PengYn]

Hey, that sounds like a great place to live. Oh, wait a minute.....

Hey Dips! Remember you owe me a double poem in my book this year - start planning those epic lyrics

[SWMBOTGSG]

I've a question though. I'm leaving in a little over 3 wks and wondered when the seat assignments might go out? I know in the past this needed to be printed out and brought along at registration, but honestly, if this info is released at the beginning of Feb, I'm not totally sure I'll have access to a printer then.

You will have your E ticket with your seat assignment on it by the time you leave...

Kay G4

[Celandine]

You will have your E ticket with your seat asignment on it by the time you leave...

Kay G4

Woo! Thank you.

[The Kit Kat Lady]

good point, but there are 2 castles-caerlaverock and drumlurig near dumfries that really caught my eye. but i'm replanning, because there are also 2 abbeys enroute to edinburgh that i would love to see, melrose and dryburgh. so i might take one more day and see if i can somehow fit all those in and stay overnight in edinburgh and leave to go back to york in the afternoon for the viking fest. still in the planning stage, but must decide by tomorrow morning. i didn't read anything about frankenstein in the guide books. what's that story?

Couldn't find much on Frankenstein myself, other than it relates to a pub, but I was going on information I remember my sister mentioning a couple of years ago. However, the Edinburgh Vaults, which are underground, do exist and are linked to the graverobbers, Burke and Hare, and were supposedly where they stored some of the bodies! I had forgotten that there is also Greyfriar's Bobby in the city centre as well.

Do you mean Drumlanrig Castle - if so, that is pretty impressive? I haven't been in it, but know that the front is two stone staircases, but I don't know where the main entrance is - I've only driven up the entrance drive, stopped and taken a photo. Since this isn't a ruin, you might want to check about disabled access, as there is every likelihood that there will be multiple floors, and you might be restricted on what you can see/access on your scooter. Having looked at a couple of details for Caerlaverock Castle, this has a couple of towers, and you may again be restricted.

Having been to Dumfries several times, there isn't a lot in the town centre. Of course you also have Gretna Green not too far from here.

I'm not trying to put you off going, but it's a long way to go and then find you cannot see much of what you have travelled to do. Scotland has some stunning places to visit, and because of your restrictions on time, you might be better served going to a major city for your first visit.

Good luck on your planning and subsequent booking for whatever you choose to do.

[The Kit Kat Lady]

Another quick note for you - I'm currently looking at one of my tourism books for Scotland, and it suggests that Drumlanrig (if that is where you want to go) is only open from May-Sept. Check out the website: www.drumlanrigcastle.org.uk as this might confirm that information. Caerlaverock looks as though it's open most of the year - www.historic-Scotland.gov.uk. Hope these can provide a bit more information for your planning.

[myblackrose]

My friend keeps telling me to get to Blarney Castle in Ireland. I may, but not sure I really want to kiss the stone. Don't think the gift of gab is worth whatever nasties might be living on said stone in the form of people's spit and smeared lipstick...no matter how much antibiotic gel used afterward.

There are MUCH better places to go in Ireland than Blarney Castle... unless you really enjoy hanging upside down for some reason Check out the Cliffs of Moher, the Ring of Kerry, the Aran Islands, Bunratty Castle and Killarney.

http://amandaraesmith.com/gallery/ireland2008 - Spring 2008 - this one is mostly Dublin (the first 18 pages), Galway, Inis Mor (Biggest of the Aran Island and my favorite), a few of Shannon, Limerick and of course, the Cliffs of Moher.

And me! Looking about 5 years old

this might also be a good trip to pay a little extra for travel insurance. Do your own research please, but it can be a few dollars to buy an insurance policy for the trip...and if you run into northeastern blizzards and 2 week long flight delays, you cna get your airfare back and other things.

Going by the news recently, I don't think insurance companies have been paying out for snow-related expenses They're being treated as an act of god... Perhaps overseas insurance companies will be fairer, but I know a lot of UK companies refused to pay out at Christmas because basically the entire country tried to claim at once... the same thing happened with the ashcloud.

Airlines are always obliged to give you a refund because they have a contract to carry you to your destination. Most hotels will refund minus an admin fee, but do check if it's something you're worrying about.