Hotels in Portland part II- The Holiday Inn by the Bay

We have reserved a block of twenty rooms at the Holiday Inn by the Bay in Portland for Saturday, May 16- Sunday, May 17 2009. The room rate is $119 per night. The Holiday Inn is located downtown in the Arts District. There will be a shuttle available to bring people to and from the festival or anywhere else in Portland.

http://www.innbythebay.com/

The rooms feature two beds per room and are for single or double occupancy. Reservations must be made by calling the hotel's local reservation department at 1-800-345-5050. Attendees must ask specifically for a room from the Maine Comics Arts Festival block to ensure you get the proper rate and availability. Reservations must be made by April 15, 2009. After that any remaining rooms will be released from the block for general public resale.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Website up/ registrations open

The festival website has been published. It may take a day or so to work its way across the internet so don't be surprised if you don't find it immediately.

http://mainecomicsfestival.com/

If you can't wait to register as an exhibitor you can download the registration form here:

http://casablancacomics.com/mecaf/mecafcon.pdf .

Some things to keep in mind. There are not a huge number of tables available. Some tables are committed to invited guests. We are still waiting to get a final table count but hope to measure things this week. If the first offering of tables sell out we will start a waiting list in case more tables should become available. Please feel free to e-mail us with any questions. Thanks!

Hotels in Portland- The Portland Regency

We have three hotels that we are working with in Portland. The first one is the Portland Regency.

http://theregency3-px.trvlclick.com/default.htm

This fine hotel is right in the heart of Portland's Old Port. This is where we usually reserve rooms for guests who are appearing at our store. It is approximately a 30 second walk from the hotel to our store.

They have set aside a block of rooms for people attending the festival for the dates of May 16 and 17. The room rate is $149 a night (savings of $20 per night). Reservations must be made by phone to their reservation department and you must mention that you are attending the Maine Comics Arts Festival.

Reservations & Information: USA: 1-(888) 636-8311 or 1-888-893-4606.

Of the three hotels we are working with, this hotel is the most convenient to shopping, restaurants and bars.

We will be listing the information for the other two hotels next week. We need to finalize the contracts and have codes assigned to the reservations. Please e-mail us with any questions. Thanks!

Updates/ website/ registration

Hello,
The website and registration forms are finished. I am having some people review them for errors and then everything should go live this week.

We have some cool sponsorships that we should be able to announce later this week. More should follow. Thanks!

Vendor table registrations

We should be opening vendor table registrations within the week. We need to visit the event site one more time to get an exact table count so that we do not oversell the room. If we do not have a chance to do that, we may open most of the tables but hold a few back to be safe. A few tables have already been committed to invited guests.

Planning on attending? Please feel free to post in the comments section. Thanks!