Michigan LEGO® Users Group

Attendees:

Peter Guenther
Ken Koleda
Chris Leach
Larry Pieniazek
Steve Ringe
Jason Spears

Overall Picture Directories:

Jason Spears	Larry Pieniazek	Ken Koleda
Peter Guenther

Friday 11/21

Peter finished hanging ornaments on the tree about 7am. Ken came over at 9, they loaded the tree into Ken's van, and hit the road for Dearborn. At the center they found the director of the Festival quickly; he led them to their square at one end of the exhibit hall, although they couldn't set up right in it at first because people were hanging lights from a lift. They carried the tree in the front door and got it basically put together, then took Ken's van to the loading door in back and got help from one of the carters bringing in all the table legs Ken had.

Ken took off and Peter spent the next two hours working on the tree, stringing lights and garland and wiring them onto the tree. When the time came that Peter had to go back to work, the tree still wasn't quite up to our expectations, he hadn't bought enough garland and the tree looked very bare. In a panic, he called several other members and told them to bring more garland and bows when they came to set up the layout.

Jason and Chris showed up around 4pm and unloaded all the tables, baseplates, buildings and whatnot. They had to setup the tables just a bit to the side as a lift truck was in the way setting up some signs. Larry showed up about 45 minutes later. Jason realized that he had forgotten a few things and called up Ken to beg him to bring those by. Steve Ringe also came by later with the plexiglas guards. Ken got put in charge of making the tree look spiffy and made a quick trip to the store to pick up some more garland and lights. He was able to finish up the tree about the same time the others finished the layout and everyone was able to leave around 8pm.

Saturday 11/22 - Black Tie Gala

Jason, Larry (in black tie), Chris and Peter all arrived close to the same time, when the non-dinner portion of the gala began (although there was still plenty of wonderful food to be had). Before they even got their, the tree had sold for the price set by the Festival. The four pretty much hung around the layout for the gala, answering questions and so forth. The biggest lesson learned is that sometimes adults can be the biggest kids and need to be told repeatedly not to touch (especially when mildly inebriated).

To combat this, Peter crawled under the table in his three-piece suit and popped up in the middle of the layout, where he could ask people not to touch with a bit more authority. Favorite question of the evening: "How did you get in there?!?" Favorite answer: "I stood here and they built the layout around me. I get out next Sunday. Until then, if I'm lucky, they'll send food around on the train."

Sunday 11/23

Jason was on first shift of the morning and learned the challenge of running a layout with only one person. Once he got some stanchions setup around the layout (only a 10x10 layout) it became pretty manageable. Chris showed up around 12 or so and helped out. The crowd was less than what we have seen at some of our larger shows (ala GATS) but still pretty busy. Jason had to duck out around 2pm and Chris was able to run the show for the rest of the day on his own.

Monday 11/24-Friday 11/28

Chris had the idea of letting kids run the train for $1, which he ran by Peter in person, and which Peter ran by the rest of the people who owned elements of the display. All agreed, and Chris and Peter allowed their trains to be run by kids on the layout's two loops. Peter built a special Christmas train for this purpose, with reindeer, tree, passenger, candy cane, and sleigh cars; Chris brought out his Metroliner. The club was able to raise well in excess of $1000 dollars for research at Children's Hospital through the kids-(and occasionally adults)-run-the-trains feature.

To let the kids run the trains, we put two controllers outside our plexiglas guards. We had a FoT donation tube right there and kept someone with a stopwatch stationed there. When a kid wanted to drive, he dropped $1 in the tube, the person showed him the basics of the controller and gave him a rule that he had to stop the train before he changed directions (to save wear and tear on the motors). There were enough cars on each train that they wouldn't go flying off at full speed on the curves; most of the problems were when a kid changed directions too quickly and inadvertently de-coupled some cars.

The big hit of the show was Chris' giant snowman, built from someone's instructions on Brickshelf and placed on one of the roads to terrorize the town. As the week went by the snowman trashed several cars, was scaled by an Arctic minifig with pickax and shovel, and attacked with flame-throwers--the ultimate weapon against a snowman, as suggested by one mother at the show.

Friday Chris added a Children's Hospital which he built on Thanksgiving. That and the helicopter with spinning blades were a popular addition.

Saturday 11/29

Jason came back to the east side of the state for a second weekend at the Festival. Chris took off Saturday afternoon, pulling a few things from the display in order to take them to the club's other show in Saline. Saturday night, Peter introduced him to the joys of hamburgers at Red Robin, not far from the Festival.

Sunday 11/30

Jason opened the show at 9 and Peter joined him around 10. The final day of the show was not much lighter than the previous day. Several people who had been earlier in the week came back for their kids to drive the trains one last time. At 6 the show closed and Peter and Jason started tearing down; Larry joined them not long after, and Chris arrived from the Saline tear down about 7pm. Total tear down time was about an hour and a half, including loading the vans at the back entrance.

Final thoughts:

All in all, the longer show was a lot of work for us but also a lot of fun and very fulfilling because of the money we were able to raise for the hospital. With the longer show, too, we were able to play with the layout a bit and make more additions and changes than at other show.

Layout Details:

Layout Pictures:

Town/Train:

Castle: