Here’s my LA toy fair diary from September, from the day before the flight to the night before the showroom opened.
The day before
Flying tomorrow. On the 11th of September. My wife and family are not happy about the date. I am not fussed, what happens happens, and no amount of worrying has ever moved a flight schedule.
Looking forward to the showroom. Less looking forward to the flight time and the queue at immigration once I land. I know all about Global Entry and its fast lane. French passport holders have apparently not kissed the ring hard enough to qualify, so it is the regular queue for me, same as everyone else who didn’t get the memo.
Not that it’s unfamiliar. No shortcut is basically how Konomocha runs full stop. No big-brand name behind us, no fast lane into a distributor’s diary, and not even a listing in ITB’s Official Guide directory, even though we are members. None of it stops us. We queue with everyone else. Most of the time we get there. Some of the time we don’t.
Good news on the calendar though. Days are packed but more concentrated this year, so I am there for twelve nights instead of last year’s fifteen. Turns out spreading meetings too thin was not actually efficient. Who knew.
New showroom too. We have outgrown Regus, so thank you to Maurice Chan at RBI for hosting us this time round.
Day one
Left Bangkok at 5am. Landed in LA at 11.30am. Same day. Two and a half hours to Hong Kong, then thirteen hours to LAX. Somewhere over the Pacific I crossed the date line and, for a few hours, was younger than my own son. It didn’t last.
Immigration this year was quick. More desks open, fewer people around. First pleasant surprise of the trip.
Coming off the flight, I witnessed a miracle. At the aircraft door, around fifteen wheelchairs were waiting for passengers. Fifteen. Lourdes, Fatima and Medjugorje have got nothing on LAX. By the time I got through the luggage hall, every single one had got up and walked off unaided. LAX is officially the latest pilgrimage destination. I can already see the coach tours coming.
Genuinely disabled travellers will end up paying for this once airlines start charging for the service to stop the abuse.
Car hire at LAX has its own process now. Dropped at the kerb. Walk through the car park with all your luggage and samples. Up to the fifth floor. Queue for over an hour because four of the thirteen desks are open. Pay roughly the national debt of a small European country for insurance.
Then it’s down to the ground floor, except here they call it the first floor, just to keep you on your toes, and back across the car park with the same luggage and samples to actually find the car. Off you go. By that point I was jet-lagged enough to check twice which side of the road I was meant to be on.
Got to the new showroom before checking in anywhere, since I hadn’t seen it yet. Photos flatter. The rooms are smaller than they looked. My passport photo doesn’t. It’s years out of date, and for once that works entirely in my favour.
Then the cherry on top. The Airbnb I’d booked months ago was sold as a self-contained unit. The photos were either years old or had been given a serious Photoshop makeover. The pool and tennis court were completely different colours in person.
Walked in to find a separate door from the main house. The room was on the first floor, second floor for Americans, which still confuses the shit out of me. At the far end of the bedroom, another door led to internal stairs and a shared bathroom. Not remotely what I paid for.
Serves me right for booking on photos alone. I should know better. Self-check-in suddenly made a lot of sense. I’d have had words with the landlord otherwise.
Credit where it’s due, Airbnb sorted it fast. One video, and they refunded the whole stay. No argument. So then came the hunt for a new place. Ended up back in the same hotel as last year.
Appointments keep coming in. So do requests to move ones already booked. The whole week is one long game of Tetris now. Every block is already in place and there isn’t a gap left to slot anything into.
It’s 4am here. I want to say Friday. My phone says Saturday. At this point I trust neither of us. Jet lag. Lovely stuff.
Day two
Finding solutions to problems, that’s the theme for today.
New Airbnb booked, and I’m glad to report this one matches the pictures. At least on the inside. The outside is still a bit grim. But I have my own kitchen, my own bedroom, my own dining room and, crucially, my own bathroom. A massive improvement on the original booking.
Not enough shelving in the showroom, so I had to get creative. Home Depot wouldn’t cut the wood planks for me, and I was not about to hire a circular saw and find out the hard way why that might have been a mistake. Found a builder’s yard instead. They cut my melamine shelves without blinking. We are in business.
Building the diary itself was a massive game of Tetris. Then the moving parts started moving on their own.
You find out exactly where you sit in the pecking order once appointments start shifting. There’s the cancellation dressed up as “my schedule changed,” from someone I have personally seen walking round the corridors. And there’s the polite request to just shift the time, again. Then there is my favourite, the “we don’t book appointments, we’ll just pop by” crowd, who then get frustrated when they can’t get in, because guess what, we’re already very busy.
Showroom not yet finished. No storage in the room means my Airbnb is starting to look like a warehouse, every broken down box currently living in the dining room.
Not being in the Official Guide directory still gets under my skin. We are on the official website, we listed ourselves there. But we’re also not on the banner in the hallway of our own building, which is honestly more annoying. I’ll fix that myself with a bit of A4 paper and sticky tape.
Teething problems for what promises to be a very successful event.
Day three
First night in the new Airbnb, and I slept like a log, jet lag doing its job for once. Then wide awake at 2am, body convinced I was back in Bangkok and late for work.
The inside of this place is lovely. The street is not. Broken down cars, a small mountain of rubbish in next door’s front garden, and a chained dog that barks at everyone who walks past. Saturday night was party night, Latino music until half past two in the morning. Then the cockerels next door clocked on at half past four.
I finally drifted off again, until Airbnb rang at 6am to check the new place was alright. “Are you okay to talk now?” I was asleep two minutes ago. “Oh sorry, your number is Thai, I thought it would be safe to call.” Yes, it is daytime in Thailand, but the booking is in Los Angeles. “Oh I am really sorry, I can call back later.” No need, I am awake now.
Showroom setup finished. We got everything in that needed to go in, a bit cramped, we will find somewhere bigger next year.
Done by 6pm, home to shower and change for the main event, the football match organised by ITB. This tradition comes from the old January trips to Hong Kong. I could not tell you who won. Plenty of spirit, a few goals, a couple of questionable calls from the referee, no VAR to save anyone. Lots of fun had, which was the entire point.
Given the World Cup was played in the US so recently, football, or soccer for our American cousins, is still very much a European and South American sport. We will have to have a baseball, basketball or American football game next time to be a little more inclusive. Some people must be feeling their lack of fitness today. Sore legs all round.
Then there was the after party in Hermosa Beach. Great atmosphere, and a chance to see people I only ever see at toy events. Meeting new people too, which is fantastic. Awards were handed out there for player of the day and the winning team. Sadly, no peace prize.
One thing though, Alex promised us Nico serving food in a waitress uniform, which surely would have been the highlight of the whole event. We did see legs in shorts. I think the event was missold and I will be asking for a refund.
Day four is when the whole reason I am here actually starts. Let’s have a great fair.
