Hey all,
I personally always have a great time at Aquino, but I want to know if you had any critiques/comments about the various aspects.
Please only comment if you were there! (And don't comment on the cost of the rooms! Everyone wants a cheaper room!)

Example:
Hotel:

• Rooms
  
• Breakfast
  
• Dinners
  

Aquino itself:

• Tank Field setup/layout
  
• General Aquino thoughts
  

I'll start!

Hotel:
Once again, I was happy to see that we got all the BBQ BS sorted out prior to the dinners! Just wish the 2nd BBQ was active. Happy with our rooms in general, but seemed that the AC turned off at night.

Breakfasts were much improved over the previous stays with a variety of food each day...
  Friday was Spinach Quiche and Turkey Bacon (Not real bacon), and Waffle maker
  Saturday was Cheese Omelet & Sausage patties (Waffle maker I think)
  Sunday was Eggs (Over hard) & Bacon with pancakes
They actually had GF foods this time around!

Dinners:
@ $14 a drink! Damned bar was pricey like a Las Vegas Convention event! But they did make what we asked for (Thanks again Mitch!) I was pickled very well Friday night.... So no issues.

Aquino:
Food prices were insane...
Did not seem as busy overall. As usual, when a big show finished, we got a deluge of people around us.
Field layout was good IMHO. We may want to move the trailers around next time to create a bit more of a buffer/controlled area. The 1/6th KT was a great draw. And while I did not battle (Surprise!) I did run a few tanks around and fix a bunch of others. (I even came home with 2 more tanks than I started with...)

The hotel prices are what they are. Doesn't matter where you go and this is a NICE hotel, close enough to the museum. Breakfasts better than last year yes. The dinners were awesome guys. I hope everyone settled up with you and you got it covered. Toronto bar prices. Meh, buy a couple at the bar to keep them happy and drink our own. I too had a nice little glow Friday night. :-) There was much better pricing inside the 420 club. My wife brought our big cooler and for the most part we ate our own lunches to keep the costs down. Our AC was good all night. Like a meat locker the way Anita likes it. 

show side, the Friday was busier than normal. This was confirmed to me as they set a record for sales in their gift shop on Friday. figure I heard was 3500 for Saturday. I think 2019 was around 5,000 so they have a bit more to go before they get to pre-COVID numbers. Sunday I think weather forecast influenced it but still not a bad crowd. We were pretty lax on the battling but that is ok. We are there more to show off anyway. :-) I have a plan for next year for the kids to use tanks that will cut the chafe from the wheat like we did this year. Just have to make sure I have 4 tanks for them to play with! :-) The Tiger didn't even make it to the start line! LOL! The A frame posters that Derek made were very valuable with the Q code on them. Derek, I forgot to get the decals from you! I want to put a couple on the trailer! :-) I would have liked the field a little bigger but we can work on that. If we extend it south further we can keep the tents all in a hollow square instead of blocking 3 sides. All comes down to how many are coming too. Hopefully even more club members like Tom, Sandy, Wojtek, etc... can make it out next year. I am going to work on the wristband thingy... Will try and make sense of it before next year... :-) and once again the TANK GODS smiled on us weather wise! Although we had a few tinkles on Sunday overall the weather was great!

I'm glad I managed to make it up Saturday although I was in full jet lagged zombie mode so that pretty well kept me from battling as I would have probably just ended up driving into buildings or falling over.

Almost got enthused about maybe buying one more tank but then I purchased a cheeseburger from the food truck and blew my 2023 tank budget

Dean's monster KT was definitely the highlight for me

Rooms: awesome!!
Drink prices: awesome!! (when you factor in the 3 free drinks that the bar staff missed!)
Food: awesome!!

Meat locker in 202 as well

In summation, awesome experience and a big hell ya to do it again


Oh and ya Dean’s KT is something to see!

OOPS, forgot to mention breakfast and specifically breakfast on the 11th...just 1 word...BACON!

Aquino was an awesome weekend!!  My room was perfect not much air on BUT I have a half s degree temp change issue..LOL
Breakfasts were good.  The cooks for dinner did an awesome job.  Thanks again to the cooks.  I too came home home with 2 extra tanks.

It was a wonderful time, and all of us had a blast.

Thank you so much for allowing us to join the group for this!

(And, once again, my 4 year-old daughter came out with more new tanks than I did...how does this keep happening?  )

Friday it was just me and John down at the museum while my son (Hendrik) was at school, John had tanks to ride on and we did a setup and where possible we helped or answered questions, we left to go back to Peterborough Friday afternoon as we still had a few things to pack up and get ready, saturday at 7.00 am we where back on the road to Oshawa and arrived well before 9 (even if my GPS keeps insisting that i take the 407 while i am not willing to pay the 80 bucks to take the 407 !)
as John was there not just to run his tanks (and he did not as all of them managed to have some issue of some kind and he was not able to find time to properly repair 1 so it could run) but he (and i ) did talk to a fair number of people concerning the tanks available through Mato-mart.com and we where able to answer questions when John was away.. (as long as people asked about stuff we knew about)

Saterday was a nice and hot day, Hendrik was able to run his King Tiger and even battle several tanks he "borrowed" while our own tanks where being prepared, as i personally have never battled any of my tanks and found out later that some of our tanks had ir sensors already in them and would not have needed ir emitters ziptied to the barrels  we just went along and did what seemed natural, enjoy ourselves as much as possible.

we then at 5 ish left to the hotel and while i crashed (still far from the energy levels i had before this auto-immune disease) John and Hendrik unloaded part of the van and met up with the others, we then all crashed.
Sunday was my worst day, the fumes from the Kangaroo really nailed me hard and i was running on food supplements and was exhausted (not the fumes/smoke kind of exhausted) but we lasted the day and got everything packed up and stowed and where on the way home by 5 pm.
we all tried to be helpfull but i freely admit that because of my medical issues and a chronic lack of endurance i may not have been the most active person.

what would i like to do different next year...
well i would like to be further away from vehicles blowing smoke/diesel/gas/fumes and other stuff in my face, i would like to take part in a few battles and i would like to be more productive in the running tanks, my Centurion, Sherman, and 2 trucks as well as the seep saw action and in general performed ok, the Sherman chassis kept throwing the tracks and Dean and Mike where able to help Hendrik sort some of that (and John has been given a list of parts we need to get to fix the track issue) the little WPL tracked vehicle  ran ok but was under powered (and ours has a much bigger battery then the other one plus a different remote and metal tracks.. but she was fun to run).
i would love to come back next year but it would all depend on finances and health.

I would like to thank Dean, Mike and several others for the help and Patience with us and Hendrik, he behaved pretty good and had lots of fun.

Krijn

Request:
as due to phone issues i was not able to take any pictures of our tanks/tables i would like to ask people that did take pictures if they would not mind sharing some for our Facebook group (705th armored brigade)
Tanks in advance

Krijn