Just a few months after A-Kon 12, another con was approaching.. Animefest, the con we'd originally planned to go to for our first con. AnimeFEST! 2001 (August 31-September 3, 2001) wasn't as big of a con as A-Kon was, so we decided not to get hotel rooms and to just go for one day, Saturday. But that didn’t stop us from cosplaying.. hehehe. Because I was very into Cardcaptor Sakura at the time, I wanted to cosplay Sakura. The winter Tomoeda uniform seemed like a good, easy choice, and my friend Ashley said she'd make the top part for me. All I really had to do was buy a white tennis skirt; she did the rest. She took a black turtleneck and sewed a white vest trimmed with red ribbon for it. She also made white cuffs and a white tie, both with red trim (I bought all the white material and red ribbon). I borrowed red hair beads from my friend Elsa, black mary jane shoes from my friend Amy, and white socks from my sister (I didn't have any that were the right length). I also borrowed my friend Areli's Clow Wand and the costume was complete!
The day of the con, I had to get up at 6:30 (>_<) in order to get to Amy's house by 8, which was when everyone was meeting so Amy's parents could take us all to the con. I put on every part of my costume except for the top part, i.e. the part Ashley was making.. she had left it all to the last minute, of course (some parts, like the ribbon, were even hot-glued on!). But everyone finally got there.. me, Amy, Ashley, Elsa, Monica, and Allison.. and Amy's dad took us to the Hotel Inter-Continental in Dallas, which was where Animefest was being held. When we got there it was still pretty early in the morning, so there weren't a lot of people there. (We did meet up with our friend Travis, though.) 
I went into the bathroom with Ashley so we could change into our outfits, only when I got mine on I couldn't figure out how to get the tie on, so I just didn't wear it. Once we had put on our costumes, there were only three of us cosplaying: me as Sakura, Ashley as Yura from Inu Yasha, and Amy as Seraphim from Megatokyo. Anyway, so we went back to the lobby, hung around for awhile at one of the tables, then when registration started we got in line. We were some of the first people registered, yeay! Also, while we were in line, this girl dressed up as Xellos from Slayers came up to me and gave me a rose and then ran away, which really surprised me.. I was like o_o but the girl, whose name I found out later is Candice, came back and said that she was just giving roses to all the Sakuras she saw. So I had to carry the rose around with me the rest of the day cause I didn't want it to get smushed.. even if she probably took it from one of the hotel displays, it was still pretty! Anyway, when they registered us, we paid for Saturday-only passes, but they accidentally gave us all weekend passes! tee hee! we never used them though, but it was still cool.
After that we kind of wandered around randomly.. we found the elevators and (for some reason) thought it would be fun to go all the way up to the 14th floor.. only when we got up there the elevator started making this weird ringing noise.. thank god the doors opened so we could escape. We walked down all 14 flights of the emergency stairs because we were afraid to get back in the elevator, but it was okay.. damn elevator. hehehe.. when we got back down the dealer's room had opened, so we went in there! it was really cool, and I immediately set out looking for Cardcaptor Sakura stuff.. namely, the artbooks, which I had recently been downloading pictures from and so really wanted some of my own. I found a table with the Memorial Artbook and bought it right away.. here's the list of things I eventually bought during the day (they're all CCS, big surprise):
Trading cards (Grr, stupid holographic ones. Yuk)
Two sets of stationary (They both have pretty pictures on them! Like I'm even going to actually write letters on them though)
Sakura first opening dress plushie (So cute!)
Metal box with a picture of Sakura on it (Elsa didn't want this, so she gave it to me)
Second artbook (It's soooo coooool!! My favorite artbook!! It even has a CUTE, CUTE omake at the end about Syaoran being sick!! [Seems like someone's always sick in the artbook omakes.. but Sakura is really worried about him so it's very kawaii!])
I hadn't even planned on getting the second artbook, but when I saw the omake at the end and realized it was the cute one about Syaoran being sick I knew I had to. And it turned out to be the one with the best pictures, too, and is still my favorite CCS artbook, so I'm happy ^_^
By the time we went outside the dealer's room, a lot more people had arrived. Animefest was a lot smaller than A-Kon was, which I liked, because you didn't have to worry about pushing your way through the crowds sometimes, but you also couldn't get away with things as easily (like at one point we were running around in the lobby and a con security guy told us not to run.. at A-Kon they wouldn't have even noticed that). So we walked around looking at everything, seeing what Animefest had. 
There were several gaming and panel rooms, a J-Pop room, a few big video rooms and a few smaller ones.. one thing that we did at Animefest that we didn't do at A-Kon was actually go to con activities. During the course of the day, we went to the webcomics panel (mostly for Megatokyo), a cosplay panel, and the English voice actors panel (because Allison wanted to see Kirby Morrow, Trowa's VA). We also hung out in the J-Pop room for a bit, and I have to say that it's there that I got into J-Pop.. after watching a few videos, we left, but as we were leaving I got a list of all the videos they were going to play and took it home, where I downloaded a lot of them.. stuff like Ayumi Hamasaki and Morning Musume, and even some L'arc~en~ciel (I like J-Pop better than J-Rock).. and that's where my love of J-Pop music was born. There's even a part of my winamp playlist that I can say has stuff straight from the Animefest J-Pop video list.. hehehe.
As we were walking around, lots of people asked me if they could take a picture of me!! That made me very happy, 
because that hadn't happened very often at A-Kon, and I was in a much more recognizable costume this time and knew it, so it was so cool every time someone asked me for a picture. One of the people that took a picture of me was Daniel, whom I would later meet along with Luke at Ushicon.. it's so weird to think about people you encountered at cons and didn't know them although you were going to know them later, isn't it? But I'll save that story for later.. As for other CCS cosplayers, there was another Sakura there (that I saw), who was in a kimono with her hair in blue hair beads. I also saw a girl cosplaying as Ruby Moon, and I was really impressed cause that's a pretty hard costume, and also one that I really like. So I took a picture of her ^.^
By that time it was around lunchtime, and we were all getting pretty hungry. But because there were virtually no (affordable) restaurants at the hotel, we decided to walk around outside and look for somewhere. We saw a T.G.I.Friday's within walking distance, so Amy, Elsa, Travis, and I (the only ones who really wanted to go somewhere to eat) walked over there. At first the waitress was suspicious of us because we were so young (and we got a few weird looks from some of the people inside because of our costumes), but after we told her we had come from the anime con she said she had wanted to go to that and stopped pestering us about where our parents were. After we ate (I had cheese sticks! yum) we walked back to the hotel, and met back up with Ashley, Monica, and Allison.
There were a lot of periods at this con where me and my friends would just sit at one of the tables in the lobby and play with the stuff we'd just bought, and a lot of times someone would take my Clow Wand and play with it.. because it's the American one, you push a button on it and it says corny things like "RELEASE the POWER!!" and makes cheap generated "card-capturing" noises, and because of that people had a lot of fun pushing the button and pointing it at random things and going "The Chair Card! The Trashcan Card! The Table Card! The Allison Card!" (because Allison would do this funky wavy thing with her hands, Ashley kept capturing her). At one point I captured the "Travis Card", as you can see in the picture.. hehehe.
After that we walked around aimlessly (a common activity at any con we go to), and somehow ended up in the fancy bathroom on the second floor, which has lots of marble and wood and actual couches, so we had fun in it.. and got a little crazy. We took weird bathroom pictures, as you can see.. like one of everyone popping their heads out of stalls, and one of everyone trying to cram into one stall.. We also sat on the couch and talked for awhile (the picture from that is up there somewhere).. yup, we had some good times in that bathroom. hehehe!
Then after going to some panels, we collapsed, exhausted, in front of what was apparently the beginning of the line for the BoA concert. This lady came up to us and asked if we were in line for that, so we said "sure", and she numbered us off, and people started lining up behind us! This was around 6, two hours before the concert was slated to start, and we stayed there for all of them, sitting, talking, trying not to fall asleep from our tiredness.. it was pretty boring. And then, because almost everything at a con starts late, so did the concert! It was supposed to start at 8, but Amy's dad was picking us all up at 8:30, and when it hadn't started by then we had to go!! So after waiting in line for two hours, we didn't even get to see BoA! The lady said she'd send us some autographed CD's and posters in compensation, and Elsa even gave her her address, but she never got anything. grrr..
In conclusion, Animefest was more fun than A-Kon was (and the con after that would be more fun than Animefest, and so on). We experienced a lot of new things, like going to more panels, and I think altogether we had a lot more fun getting more used to the whole going-to-cons thing, especially at Animefest, a con so different from A-Kon. Animefest is more of a hang-out-and-talk con, as opposed to a busy and popular con-with-a-purpose.. since that's exactly what we did for most of it, I think in general everyone had fun!