KublaCon! And... Service, shmervice!

In just 1 short week I'll be leaving for my annual Memorial Day trip to KublaCon, a game convention in the bay area! I'm excited to go for a couple of reasons...

* I'll get a chance to hang out with a lot of people I only see once or twice a year, like Julie and Peter from Seattle, Andrew from L.A. (who I'll be rooming with), Alex Eaton-Salners from San Diego, Aldie and Derk, Chris Hillary, Chad Ellis from New York, Rick Holzgrafe and J.C. Lawrence from San Jose (or thereabouts)... I'm sure I'm missing a few people as well.

* I've submitted a game to the Game Design contest again. I finished 2nd the last 2 years in a row with All For One (with David Brain) and Wizard's Tower (with John Heder). This year I've submitted Reading Railroad (with Scott Slomiany), a game with word building in it (like scrabble), but it's not a word game... I am anxious to see how it does, as it's not as finished and polished as my prior entries have been. I think it's a really cool idea, and something you don't see every day. The idea is that people who hate word games and people who love word games could both enjoy this game.

* Since I'm flying out on May 22 and will have little or nothing to do that night (the convention starts the 23rd), I'm going to go see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull! I'm looking forward to this movie, because it's Indiana Jones, and how can you not look forward to an Indiana Jones movie? But part of me worries that it might suck - just as most movies that get the "20 years later" treatment end up sucking. i think it's likely this one will be good though, so I'm remaining hopeful while trying not to get too excited about it.

Speaking of the movie, I called up the hotel to see if I could arrange a shuttle for a group of us to get to a theater and back on Thursday night. I figured they have free shuttles to the airport, and I'm sure they aren't running all of them at 10:30 at night, maybe they could accommodate a small group of the hundreds of people coming to their hotel for the convention...

No luck. According to the concierge, they just won't do that. We'll have to take a taxi for $25 or so to go the 10-15 minutes into town to see the movie. I suppose the hotel isn't required to provide such transportation, but it irks me that they couldn't accommodate this request, considering how easy it would be for them to do so. At a hotel I stayed in last year for work the concierge set me up with a shuttle to the office, when it was only me needing to go, not a whole group.

I'm hoping that when I get there next week I'll talk to someone who will be able to hook something up, but if not I guess it's taxi for me. Is it me? Is it too much to ask? Or is that a little ridiculous that they can't shuttle a handful of customers to and from downtown San Mateo?