Mousemeets 2012 is officially over. Friends have been met. Knowledge shared. Tears of laughter spilled. Money raised for charity. To sum up the weekend in one word – fabulous!
I had not been to a Mousemeet event before but on January 1st I eagerly booked two tickets and a hotel. As the day grew closer an itinerary was published and countdowns posted via Twitter and Facebook. Excitement began to grow and before I knew it, it was 7am Saturday and it was time to start the journey to Birmingham.
My husband and I timed our arrival perfectly as our friends, Tim and Kerrie, arrived moments after us. Just as we were about to leave we were ‘found’ by Mark and Emma (of Daydreaming Disney blog) and Emma kindly showed us the way to registration. As Tim and Kerrie’s sore feet will vouch, my husbands navigational skills are somewhat questionable at best! Thus we were very pleased to see them both. At the Copthorne, the event base, the room filled up very quickly and I recognised quite a lot of people but even those I hadn’t met before, glanced across and smiled so I immediately felt I could slip off my shoes and relax. Unfortunately we missed out on most of Saturday afternoon as the call of the doughnuts grew too loud and we had to go and explore the local sights.
In one of my many prior careers I was an event co-ordinator so I know how hard it is to make an event look seamless, obviously the swan analogy fits in perfectly here. A lot of hard work by a group of people had obviously gone on. So thank you to everyone from Disneybrit as well plus their partners also the podcasters from Your Mousecast, Dis After Dark, UUOP and Minnie Minxes as well as everyone else who took a turn to share their knowledge and obvious passion for Disney.
The weekend was memorable for me personally as I sang karaoke for the very first time, (I know at 40 I really should have tried it before), our team won the quiz (yay!), I went to a cinema and sat on the most comfortable leather sofa ever but was confused that it sold carrot cake but no popcorn, I bid for and won a couple of goodies in the auction (no more mentioning ‘poster-gate’ but Mark Petar has kindly invited me to visit!) but more importantly I met some of the nicest people I could wish to meet. I only wish the weekend would have lasted longer to spend more time getting to know everyone.
However one mystery remains… When Chris Speed ordered his chicken tikka from the Indian restaurant he was vexed by what was placed before him… chicken tikka, that was green, along with a side serving of broccoli. Why on earth would an Indian restaurant serve green food?
LOL!! Poster-Gate will always be spoken about (at least until next year)