07-11-2024, 11:35 AM
This post was last modified 07-11-2024, 11:58 AM by FlyingClayDisk. 
Another post over on ATS reminded me of this incident, so I thought I'd share.
A while back my wife and I went on an Alaskan cruise (fabulous; highly recommended). We were sailing on Princess lines and the cruise departed from Vancouver. So, we flew up to Vancouver a day early just to see the area.
That evening I heard some commotion in the hallway of our hotel. It sounded like some angry chanting. As it got louder and more raucous, I decided to open our hotel room door to see what was going on. As soon as I opened the door, the first thing I saw was some dude in military BDU's, a flak jacket and carrying an M-16 coming down the hall!! No sh!t! Behind him were a bunch of other similarly dressed people (not all the same), some of them carrying what looked like protest signs. WTF????
I quickly ducked back inside and told the wife to take cover! I didn't think they'd seen me, so unless they were going room to room taking hostages, we might be okay. Or so I thought. My wife was freaking out (and candidly, so was I, sort of).
We heard the group pass by our door, and heard doors slamming in various directions. They were all chanting or talking random smack. After a few minutes it got quiet again, so I decided to take another look. Everyone was gone. What the hell???
Called down to the front desk and told the person I talked to what I'd seen and they acted like they had no idea what I was talking about.
After it had been quiet for a while we decided to see if we could just quietly sneak out (we had dinner plans after all). Sooo....we kind of did the look quickly both ways and zig-zag dash down the hall thing (hiding behind potted plants and and trash cans along the way). Made it the elevators without incident and went down to the ground floor.
When the elevator door opened...there they all were!! Hundreds of them, all armed, many with protest signs. Then I started to notice something. Some of them looked strange, like they had some sort of costume on. Then I saw an alien. THEN I read one of the protest signs for the first time. It said..."BRING BACK SG-1!!"...but I had no idea what "SG-1" was. As I stepped out of the elevator I came face to face with a dude who was every bit of 7 feet tall, just a monster of a human (I'm 6'-4" and even I was looking up at him). He was dressed in some elaborate gold lame cape and some other goofy looking sh!t. I still didn't know what "SG-1" was, but my threat level had now gone down considerably.
At about the same time I saw a bunch of these 'militants' all lined up at some sort of a welcoming table where they were shelling out money and putting on name tags. I figured armed militants aiming to slaughter people probably wouldn't be waiting in line for a name tag, so it must be something else. The sign above the table said..."Stargate SG-1 Convention".
OHHHHhhhhhhhhh! Now I get it!!! Duhhhh!
These were all just fans of the television program Stargate SG-1. I had never watched the show, and I didn't know it was filmed in Vancouver, nor that there would be a Star-Trek like convention. The weapons were all fake, but the signs weren't; these people were genuinely MAD! They wanted their show back! The show had been cancelled years before. LOL!
So, no, it wasn't an al-quaeda terrorist invasion...it was just a costume party. LOL!
BTW - While not exact, this is pretty much what I saw coming down the hallway of the hotel...(and they weren't smiling and/or waving to fans).
A while back my wife and I went on an Alaskan cruise (fabulous; highly recommended). We were sailing on Princess lines and the cruise departed from Vancouver. So, we flew up to Vancouver a day early just to see the area.
That evening I heard some commotion in the hallway of our hotel. It sounded like some angry chanting. As it got louder and more raucous, I decided to open our hotel room door to see what was going on. As soon as I opened the door, the first thing I saw was some dude in military BDU's, a flak jacket and carrying an M-16 coming down the hall!! No sh!t! Behind him were a bunch of other similarly dressed people (not all the same), some of them carrying what looked like protest signs. WTF????
I quickly ducked back inside and told the wife to take cover! I didn't think they'd seen me, so unless they were going room to room taking hostages, we might be okay. Or so I thought. My wife was freaking out (and candidly, so was I, sort of).
We heard the group pass by our door, and heard doors slamming in various directions. They were all chanting or talking random smack. After a few minutes it got quiet again, so I decided to take another look. Everyone was gone. What the hell???
Called down to the front desk and told the person I talked to what I'd seen and they acted like they had no idea what I was talking about.
After it had been quiet for a while we decided to see if we could just quietly sneak out (we had dinner plans after all). Sooo....we kind of did the look quickly both ways and zig-zag dash down the hall thing (hiding behind potted plants and and trash cans along the way). Made it the elevators without incident and went down to the ground floor.
When the elevator door opened...there they all were!! Hundreds of them, all armed, many with protest signs. Then I started to notice something. Some of them looked strange, like they had some sort of costume on. Then I saw an alien. THEN I read one of the protest signs for the first time. It said..."BRING BACK SG-1!!"...but I had no idea what "SG-1" was. As I stepped out of the elevator I came face to face with a dude who was every bit of 7 feet tall, just a monster of a human (I'm 6'-4" and even I was looking up at him). He was dressed in some elaborate gold lame cape and some other goofy looking sh!t. I still didn't know what "SG-1" was, but my threat level had now gone down considerably.
At about the same time I saw a bunch of these 'militants' all lined up at some sort of a welcoming table where they were shelling out money and putting on name tags. I figured armed militants aiming to slaughter people probably wouldn't be waiting in line for a name tag, so it must be something else. The sign above the table said..."Stargate SG-1 Convention".
OHHHHhhhhhhhhh! Now I get it!!! Duhhhh!
These were all just fans of the television program Stargate SG-1. I had never watched the show, and I didn't know it was filmed in Vancouver, nor that there would be a Star-Trek like convention. The weapons were all fake, but the signs weren't; these people were genuinely MAD! They wanted their show back! The show had been cancelled years before. LOL!
So, no, it wasn't an al-quaeda terrorist invasion...it was just a costume party. LOL!
BTW - While not exact, this is pretty much what I saw coming down the hallway of the hotel...(and they weren't smiling and/or waving to fans).