So it’s no secret that I had a fantastic time at Anime Impulse.  It was perhaps one of if not my most enjoyable experience at a convention to date.  After all, no convention has indulged my favorite fandom of Fire Emblem anywhere close to this one.  What a lot of people don’t know is that I was seconds away from missing out on all of that.

Anime Impulse 2020 was one of three conventions my wife and I picked for a massive three trip honeymoon.  The way we decided these trips was one was primarily for me, one was primarily for her and one was split down the middle as a lengthy experience for both of us.  Anime Impulse, as you may have guessed was primarily for me. As someone in Kentucky, a trip to California is far easier by plane than any other method so I had flights booked in advance.  Our trip had an hour layover in Dallas between flights; however, shortly after leaving security to wait for the first flight, we find out that the flight has been delayed by 50 minutes due to the snowy weather.  I was not thrilled at the idea of having 10 minutes to go through and navigate an airport as large as Dallas and after checking I found there was no alternative that would allow me to get to the convention in time to do the entire event.  I was literally told, “your best bet is to make a run for it and hope for the best.”

On our first flight, I bought an internet package to see if maybe luck was on our side and the terminal for our flight was not far from where we would land.  Luck apparently wanted to play a cruel joke as the two locations were on opposite sides of the airport.  I map out the directions and memorize them to save time.  As soon as we land my party takes off as fast as we could to get to the terminal.  We get there to see in big bold letters lane closed.  We spoke to the person at the podium and she made a call.  Luck had a change of heart as the plane had not yet closed the door and we were allowed to board the flight.  We get on the plane and I take a nap.  The next day I got to enjoy the first day of Anime Impulse and I was elated at the experience I had.

Ironically the craziness of this story doesn’t end here as we almost had a member of our party stranded in California.  So first of all I’m sure some people are wondering why I say party for a honeymoon.  On the trips that were primarily for one of us my wife and I decided to invite friends to join in the celebration and the trip with both of our interests was a private experience for just the two of us.

After we finished with the convention we went back to the airport to start the whole process over again.  We had three people total on this trip and my wife and I got our boarding passes with no problems; however, the lady at the desk turns to the third person in our party and says “I can’t find you anywhere.”  After a lengthy back and forth my friend showed the lady a confirmation email to which we discovered an unsettling fact. My friend’s return flight was for a month later so she had no flight for that day.  She also booked it with a third party so she had no options to change the flight.

After many attempts to get either the airline or the third-party company to assist her, both of which stated the responsibility fell on the other company involved, we realized the only option was to buy another flight.  The problem is our flight only had one seat remaining and it was first class for $1,300. Far too high for any of us to afford as we quickly scrolled through the prices and realized that we were looking at around $500 to $700 to get her home.  After much planning on how to get my friend home, we eventually found an admittingly terrible flight schedule that at least managed to get her where she needed to go. I paid for the flight to help her out, she quickly paid me back, we went through security.  My wife and I left but our friend had to stay behind because her flight was the next morning.  She had to stay the night at the airport and then travel all day the next day, stay another night at an airport then she got to travel home.  Like I said it was a pretty bad schedule but it was the only thing that was at least affordable.

The craziness of this story only has one more not so dramatic turn.  I guess we didn’t get enough time in Dallas on the way to the convention because our second flight on the way back was delayed by three houses so we stayed four hours in Dallas and just rested till our flight.

So there you have it.  Anime Impulse was an incredibly fun event but we had significant stress with our mode of transportation, but that tends to be my luck in a nutshell. I’m keeping an eye out on the May 2021 dates for the convention with a bit of relief because the weather should be better.