Turns out CrusaderCat might have actually been at the convention a little longer than expected. I was looking through posts from the event, and someone recorded him in the fursuit parade.
Here's a video of the parade I found on Youtube, Crusader makes an appearance at about 5:22.
Here's a partial archive (it's just the part where he's visible on camera):
According to
the convention's schedule, the fursuit picture and line-up for the parade were at 12:30 PM, and the parade was at 1 PM. The convention recently
tweeted out the fursuit picture a few days ago and Crusader is visible in the upper left. There's someone taller standing right in front of him, but the bowl cut is immediately recognizable.
The Fur Con AI photo that blew up on Twitter was tweeted at 1:42 PM. So here's my guess on how shit went down:
CrusaderCat arrives at the event either Friday night or Saturday morning. Somehow, he was able to either pre-register or register at the event, getting his badge. Given that most people know his fursuit more than his face or real name, it's feasible that he didn't raise any alarms with staff at the time.
Saturday: Crusader arrives for the fursuit photo at
12:30 PM, making it in time to be photographed. The parade started at
1 PM, presumably taking 15-25 minutes (based on the length of that youtube video). After the parade, Crusader wanders around, sees the Fur Con AI booth, and takes a picture at
1:41 PM. It blows the fuck up on Twitter.
Someone on Twitter claimed they later went to the Convention War Stories panel, where the chairman was late. When they made it to the panel, they stated they were late because they had to deal with the Crusader situation. The convention's schedule listed this panel at
2:30 PM, so we can reasonably assume they were probably 20-30 minutes late.
While I think Fur the more made numerous shitty decisions for last year's event and this year's event, I do at least have to give them credit for dealing with the situation fairly quickly, by tracking him down and removing him in 90 minutes or less.