ouat | Off to the USA!

SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON, what we’ve been living for all our lives. I decided to just condense the Comic-Con posts into one gigantic post because I’d mostly likely be saying the same things every day…. it’s so big (that’s what she said!), so many cool things, so many people… you get the gist.

San Diego is not very far from Las Vegas, a direct flight is only about 1.5 hours, but a direct flight is also like $70 more per person, so we opted to fly with US Airways, with a 3.5 hour stopover in Phoenix – it took a total 6 hours or so to get San Diego, failwhale. It went by pretty quickly though, now, if only my flight home went by that quickly, I’m not asking for much, all I ask for is that I stay awake for 7 hours, and that the time goes by very quickly, then at 10pm (EST), I can take some sleeping pills and go to sleep – really not looking forward to this jetlag.

We stayed at Lucky D’s Hostel for the duration of our trip, initially went into a 4 bedroom dorm with 2 girls, and then a couple, and then two guys, and then a nice German guy was our roomie.

We had dinner at Lotus Thai TWICE during our stay, such GOOOOOD Thai food, it’s only a block away from our hostel, be sure to order their Thai Iced Tea, so delicious, their Pad Si Ew is also divine, so incredibly delicious. J-Wok is also decent, their Pad Si Ew is not as great, but they have tapas and stuff.

Comic Con Day 1

We were meant to get to the convention centre at 8:30am; we ended up leaving the house at 10am. San Diego locals must HATE Comic-Con, the roads are blocked, 100000 people flock into the surrounding areas of the convention centre and it just turns into a whole nerd-gasm, it’s AMAZING. The convention centre was only a short 10-15 minute walk from us, everywhere, bars and stuff were celebrating Comic-Con. Be sure to visit Nerd-HQ (by Zachary Levi) if you ever visit Comic-Con, you chat and play games and stuff there, and they have some awesome panels that sell out really quickly. They also have a yearly party and it’s supposedly super fun, we didn’t go.

ANYWAY, during the walk to Comic-Con, there were loads of people everywhere and it was just so fun, lots of comics and tv shows and promotional things for tv shows and movies… I saw a life size Jabba the Hut on the side of the road just chilling; it was so so so cool, I totally nerded out and took photos.

We arrived to Comic-Con shortly after 10am and proceeded to go to pick up our badges, we expected really long waits since we went so late (well, actually, not THAT late, the Con does start at 9am), but it was a breeze to collect our badges, we got our badges and these free Vampire Diaries swag bags, I wanted a Fringe one, eventually ended up trading some nice young kid for it. Inside the swag bags was a souvenir book and a comic con 2012 book, the huge bag can probably fit me in it, it’s used to collect all the free stuff you get from the Con.

We had a look at the Psych Panel (which was to start at 2:15pm) at around 10:30am, the line didn’t look too bad, it was beneath a big white tent that had barriers that made you go into a snake sort of line, so we decided to head to the exhibition hall to check out the booths. There are 5000+ booths, walking and navigating the booths is no mean feat, we tried to do it from the high numbers to the low numbers and only managed to walk like 3-4 rows before we thought it might be wise to go line up for Psych at around 11:30am. OH also, we saw Ted Fu from Wong Fu Productions at the awkward turtle stand, I got a little excited, not going to lie, I was so amazed at ALL the artist booths, people are crazy here, they are amazing!!!!!!! I also saw Jason Palmer’s Booth, he is so amazing – he does the Firefly/Serenity art, AMAZING.

ANYWAY, onto our Psych panel line, we got to the tent and there were maybe about 6 rows under the tent, we were on row 4, so we felt decent, the sign said we were maybe like 2000-2500 in line, the majority of our panels were in Ballroom 20, which fits 5000 people. We had a look around and were all “no way this is 2000 people!”, oh we were wrong…. by the time it was 1pm, we were barely moving and they were meant to open the doors in 15 minutes… we probably started making a real move on at about 1:30pm, once we got out of the BIG tent, we thought it was smooth sailing from here on out, oh we were wrong again. There were about 11 smaller tents going straight up the side of the convention centre, and each of the lines within it also snaked, so it fit about 20 people in each of the tents, we had a nice long long long long long long long walk to the END of the convention centre and then walked INTO the convention centre and then straight to Ballroom 20, wait of our lives!!!!!!!!!!!! That sounds convoluted, but it was exactly that. Anyway, we ended up seated in the middle of the Ballroom, so I guess we were around the 2000-2500 mark, we stupidly sat behind a dumb video camera recording guy though (Comic Con’s official guy, so big big cameras and chairs and stuff), so it obstructed our view slightly (I couldn’t see Maggie Lawson or James Roday properly unless I stood up). The panel started and it was AMAZING, probably one of the best panels I went to during Comic-Con, Dule Hill is HILARIOUS, and you can tell the cast get along really well, I’m tremendously excited for the new season. ALSO, I saw Corbin Bernsten walking around the Exhibition Hall before we went to the Psych Panel line, I got totally excited and nudged Anna to tell her “OMG ANNA IT’S HENRY SPENCER FROM PSYCH!! CORBIN BLEU!!!”, and then we both paused and laughed “OH Corbin Bleu is from High School Musical, Fail.”

Anyway, it was a fantastic panel and we decided stay for Beauty & The Beast, the show looks spectacularly corny and crap, but Kristin Kreuk is gorgeous! I only went for her. After the panel, we decided to look around the Exhibition Hall again, we didn’t look too long because we were too tired. When we decided to leave, we were looking for an exit near the artists area and I saw some sneaky guy with a grey hoody throwing rubbish, I wondered who the hell would look SO suspect at Comic-Con and caught his profile, it looked strangely like someone I idolised so very much, it looked strangely like Joss Whedon, the ginger stubble… the pale skin… I stared, and I’m certain my jaw dropped a bit, he noticed me gaping at him like an idiot, and looked at me like “PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT COME UP TO ME”, Anna looked at me and asked what the hell was wrong with me and I explained that the dodgy guy over there looked like Joss Whedon, she agreed that it was, and we stalked him for a little bit, he was sneakily running around trying to enjoy the exhibition. After he finally walked past me and we decided to stop stalking, I did the nerdiest little dance and jumped up and down and said in a high pitch tone “I CANNOT BELIEVE I JUST SAW JOSS WHEDON THROWING RUBBISH! BEST MOMENT OF MY LIFE!”, I have to say, it is truly one of the top moments of my life. To paint you a nice picture of how I looked, imagine a deer, then imagine it on a highway, then imagine a big truck with huge headlights coming towards it, imagine the deer’s face, then replace said deer’s face with my face. That is what I looked like, sexy, I know it.

The plan for Comic Con Day 2 (Friday) was Community at 10am, followed by Legend of Korra, FIREFLY 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY, Try to get into Game of Thrones, Resident Evil and then Total Recall, Looper and Elysium. We decided to wake up at 5am and get to the Con at 6am to line up, surely, that would be early enough to get into a panel that starts at 12:15pm (Firefly). We were wrong. More below.

Comic Con Day 2

We did wake up at 5am, mainly because I was shit scared that we wouldn’t make it into the Community and Firefly panel, we arrived at 6am and there were already lots and lots and lots of people. We walked so far to the end of the line and saw more tents with snaky lines on the grass, luckily we were told that was for Hall H, and that people had been there since the night before to line up for it to get into Big Bang Theory, Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. OH, we were so not going to get into Game of Thrones, Resident Evil and the rest of our Hall H Panels, we decided to skip it and instead go to the Bones panel after Firefly, well, I suggested it (I wanted to fulfil my dreams of seeing David Boreanaz).

So, we ended up in line for about 1.5 hours before we got let into the convention centre. We made some line buddies by the name of Jules and Rachel, they were super nice and Jules assured me that I would get into the Firefly Panel, I was panicking hard, there were Firefly fans ALL AROUND ME, so many people dressed up as Kaley, and so many people had Jayne’s knitted beanie, usually I’d be ecstatic about being with so many Firefly fans, but what happens if because of them, I could not get in? I would cry, I would swim and drown in a pool of my own tears for the rest of my holiday. Anyway, I will skip the talk about the rest of the lining up, other than it was ridiculously long and we were ridiculously far, about 4000 people were in front of us, yes, we came at 6am, and 4000 people were in front of us, we managed to get into the Community Panel 2 minutes before it started, the panel was also fantastic. We were one of the last few rows, so I GOT IN, I GOT IN, I cannot imagine the pain the people outside felt when they got cut off and had to keep lining up, about 3000-4000 more people were lining up behind us to get in the Ballroom, INSANE.

The Legend of Korra panel followed shortly after, we sat through it so that we could keep our seats for Firefly, the panel ended up being quite enjoyable, now Anna and I got conned into watching The Legend of Korra, we might even watch Avatar: the last air bender!!! J

FIREFLY WAS AFTER LEGEND OF KORRA. OMG. The 15 minute wait for it was excruciating, I was pulsating with excitement and I kept telling Anna “I can’t believe I am here, I cannot believe I am here to celebrate this”. Anna has said to me a few times this Con is MY CON, everything I wanted to see was here! Anyway, the Firefly themesong “The Ballad of Serenity” started playing during a montage and I started to tear up, there was such a crazy amount of emotion flooding into me… I kept my cool though and just smiled and sang through it, then the guests came out, the entire cast was there except for Jewel Staite (Kaylee), Morena Baccarin (Inara), Gina Torres (Zoe), and Ron Glass (Book), actually, half the cast was missing then LOL. Some writers + producers + Joss Whedon were also there. The Panel was amazing and really was something special, it wasn’t as funny as Psych, but the show just means so much to me and it was so incredible to be there. A fan asked Joss Whedon what the Firefly Fans mean to him, and he paused for the longest of time and started tearing up, then Summer Glau and Nathan Fillion started crying, they were all crying and I started crying and people around me started crying and it was just an emotional affair. I lost my cool badly; Anna just let me be and didn’t say anything about what a huge friggen dork I am. I was wiping my eyes and stuff while everyone gave the cast a standing ovation, Joss said something to the effect of: when he creates tv shows/movies, he starts to feel like they aren’t fake, and that he lives in them, and when he sees all the fans, he doesn’t think Firefly was cancelled, he still thinks Firefly is living and we are ALL living in it. Nathan Fillion also said something really nice, “When Firefly died, I thought it was the worst thing that could ever happen, now I know, the worst thing that could happen was if it stayed dead.” SO TRUE, it will never die because there are so many of us die-hard fans out there, it lives on through comics, through fan gatherings (Browncoats United, yearly Serenity screenings)…. OK, /END NERD RANT. I am far too passionate about Firefly for my own good. :X OH Last thing about Firefly, people lined up from 8pm the night before to get in, in the wee early morning (like, during everyone’s sleep time), Joss Whedon ran out to the line and shook people and woke them up and then ran off, I would have died.

Bones was okay, kinda boring, everyone left after Firefly, like ¾ of the room cleared out, so now we know everyone who lined up so early, lined up for Firefly. At least I got to see David Boreanaz (Angel from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and Angel the Series).

ANYWAY, we left after that, way too tired, tried to do the exhibition hall and failed.

We decided that we were going to wake up at 4am and get to the convention centre a bit before 5am for the next day’s panels: Warehouse 13 (Don’t curr), Once Upon a Time, Futurama, The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad (Don’t curr), The Vampire Diaries & True Blood. We had a little discussion on whether it is necessary to go that early, Day 2 was only so crappy because of Firefly, right? Anyway, we didn’t know so we thought we should go earlier to beat the lines anyway.

Comic Con Day 3

We got to the convention centre at 5am, got let in after a couple of hours, and ended up way way way way ahead of where we were the day before, we were like the first 1000 people, we were INSIDE the building from the start, we did not have to go through that snaking tent line bullshit, it was great, we ended up with some fantastic seats.

I’m not going to talk about Warehouse 13, it was okay.

Most of the cast of OUAT were there, Josh Dallas is so good looking, Jinnifer Goodwin is GORGEOUS, SO GORGEOUS. They had these little specials that they showed us, it was quite a fun panel.

ALL THE CARTOON PANELS WERE AMAZING! I didn’t expect them to be that awesome, we saw MATT GROENING, omg, we saw MATT GROENING FOR 1.5 HOURS, it was awesome, we watched him draw Homer Simpson and joke about how he was going to make the voice actor who plays Homer read Homer’s Illyiad and Homer’s Odyssey. It was awesome; the lady who voices Lisa Simpson was also there. Billy West was also at the Futurama Panel, he is so incredibly awesome; he voices Fry, Dr Farnsworth, Dr Zoidberg and misc people on Futurama.

After a nice 4 hour wait, it was finally time for The Vampire Diaries, the panel was funny, Nina Dobrev is very pretty, Steve McQueen is HILARIOUS, and we finally got to see Michael Trevino.

After the panel ended, I contemplated leaving and not seeing the True Blood panel, Anna and I talked and said we should probably stick around even though Alexander Skarsgard was probably not going to be there… we did wait a couple of hours in line for the panels. Anyway, as the panel guests were announced, OUT WALKS ALEXANDER SKARSGARD, I screamed and screamed, it was so exciting, he is so very hot. It was a funny panel, and they ended up giving us a ticket to collect some free swag. We didn’t collect it until Day 4.

FRINGE IS ON DAY 4 IN HALL H!!! After seeing the ridiculous lines for Hall H today, we decided that we needed to get there a bit before 4am, so we rushed home and just slept.

Comic Con Day 4

We got to the convention centre just a bit before 4, and we were already lining up near the water, the line was insane, I’m certain that 3000-4000 people were already in front of us and had been there the entire night, we did not anticipate this, no, we did not. It was a cold cold morning and I slept on the concrete floor next to a park, homeless people thought we were all homeless on the streets. HAHA. ANYWAY, we ended up getting in just before 9:30am for a 10am start. The Fringe panel was amazing, amazing seems to be an adjective I abuse on this blog, especially when describing panels, but I don’t know how else to describe the Fringe Panel. The entire main cast was there, everyone looked like they got along very well, Jasika Nicole (Astrid) and Anna Torv (Olivia) started crying when talking about Fringe ending, and then I cried too, it was emotional again, it’s the last season for them, Season 5 does look like it is going to be mind blowing though (we received a sneak peek). John Noble is hilarious and so is Lance (the guy who plays Agent Broyles), and Joshua Jackson…

Supernatural was next, and Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki were both there, entertaining as usual, we got a sneak peek of their very popular gag reel.

We left before the Doctor Who panel started, the majority of the people who waited in line were for Doctor Who, but Anna and I had no interest. We decided to go the Marriot to collect our swag from our tickets.

Boyyyyy am I glad we went, the True Blood Swag bag is AWESOME, we received:

A drawstring true blood bag
Some vouchers for true blood merchandise
A blood droplet stress ball with the true blood logo on it.
A true blood note book
A true blood t shirt
The Dead as a Doornail novel by Charlaine Harris

Like I said, awesome swag, free stuff is awesome, apparently 4 years ago, the ticket was for entry into a True Blood party a couple of streets away, it was at a hotel and they served free food and true blood drinks… it was supposedly very awesome, anyway, our swag bag was cool too.

OH I forgot to mention, we also got a Fringe Fedora for the panel too! It is a grey fedora, much like the ones that the Observers wear in the show, it was awesome. We are April and March!

We ended up lining up at the WB Booth at the Exhibition Hall to get some free magazines from Entertainment Weekly, they have 4 different magazines that have flip covers for : The Vampire Diaries, Fringe, Big Bang Theory and Supernatural. The line was kinda long but so worth it, I didn’t know that we would get all sorts of other things like:

A superman Tshirt – in LARGE, LOL, really? I will sleep in this.
Little badges for some tv show
A metal badge thing for The Hobbit, THIS was actually really cool
4 Comic-Con Magazines
1 Entertainment Weekly Magazine

Free things are the best. Did I say that already?

We left after this, we had had enough of Comic Con, 3 days of lining up such early early times is just plain painful, I can’t do it, this is a once in a lifetime thing – I can’t say I’m too old to wake up that early and wait though since I saw 60y/o + people doing it.

Anna and I passed out at 3pm back at the hostel and didn’t wake up until just before 8pm.

Comic-Con Tips

Line up for a panel that you want to go to about 3-4 panels before hand, if it’s a popular panel, expect to wake up super early to go, you will need to fight tooth and nail for a good spot.
Pack your back pack with lots of snacks, lunch, and drinks – food there is expensive and not worth it
Speaking of drinks, limit the amount of liquid you consume, you can go out of lines, but it’s a hassle, people in line are generally super nice though and will hold your place if you ask
MAKE FRIENDS IN THE LINE, it makes time go past so quickly, it’s very fun geeking out over a common interest and seeing where everyone is from
Book accommodation VERY early on, places sell out and go for 2x or 3x the price
Hang around the Hard Rock Cafe, Hilton, Omni or Marriot if you want to celebrity spot, a lot of people stay at the Hilton.
Buy your official exclusive Comic Con tshirt very early on, they sell out and the lines are SO friggen long, maybe try to get it on preview night.
Know what you want to go to in the Exhibition Hall, that hall is huge, maps don’t help much if you don’t already know what you want to go to.
Don’t try to go from Ballroom 20 to Hall H on the same day, it’s near impossible, they have the longest lines and you will not get in.