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San Diego Comic Con report!
ComicCon was a freakin' BLAST. I haven't had that much fun in ages! I'm definitely going to try to go next year. I don't even know where to begin with the retelling... although the beginning, as they say, is usually a good place to start.
Wednesday
The trip didn't start off so well. I had a ticket for a 5:45 am flight, for which I was planning to get up at 3:30 am. As a result, when I woke up Wednesday morning and saw 6:33 am on my alarm clock I was rather distressed, to say the very, very least. A long stream of curses later, and Doug (who was considerably more rational about the whole thing) got on the phone with Delta. Long story short, I wound up flying out to San Diego later in the day. I arrived at about 5:00 pm and met Arielle and her boyfriend Jim at the airport. Because they were also going to be picking up another person from the airport in a couple of hours, we just hung around downtown in the Gaslamp District to stay fairly close to the airport. Gaslamp was really very nice -- sort of everything Ybor City in Tampa is trying to be. We got dinner at a Japanese place, then headed back to the airport to pick up Arielle and Jim's friend Steve. Then we all headed to La Jolla, where Arielle and Jim both live, and went to an arcade. Arielle and I played DDR -- a first for me -- and had a lot of fun. I'm not exactly what you'd call a natural at it, but it was fun nevertheless.
Thursday
We'd decided the night before that the best day to begin attending ComicCon would be Friday, so on Thursday we headed to the wonderful San Diego Zoo. It was a really nice day, and the crowds weren't too awful. I got some nifty pictures of the giant pandas and a few other critters. I haven't resized the pictures yet, so I'll do a post a little later with those and some more zoo stories. All in all, a very nice day. In the evening I got thoroughly trounced at Trivial Pursuit: Genus 5 edition (which I'd never heard of before, but it's a pretty good one).
Friday
First day we attended the con. We drove out to a mall and took the trolley from there -- good thing, too, because the parking near the con was completely full when we arrived, and probably had been for awhile. We met a friend of Jim's, Sean, at the trolley stop, so we had a group of five. In spite of the almost overwhelming crowd, it really didn't take us long to register and get into the con. It just took awhile to decide what to do. ;) We decided to head into the expo hall, and... wow. Just amazing. We explored the corner closest to where we entered -- and discovered later, when we looked at a map, that it was just a tiny, tiny part of the whole hall. My god. It was just amazing. One booth nearly killed me -- a huge assortment of animation cels from just about any animated film or television show (and a few commercials) that you could name. If I go next year, I'm saving and budgeting specifically for buying at least one, because I've always wanted to collect them. It's an expensive hobby, unfortunately. On the first day, I spent the bulk of my allotment for purchases on a Penny Arcade t-shirt and poster, a "Jay and Silent Bob Take San Diego" ComicCon shirt, and a sort of "starter set" collection of Tick comics (I've always wanted to read 'em). We went out to a nearby cafe for lunch, and decided to attend the "Starship Smackdown" and "Mirrormask" panels, which overlapped, next. Starship Smackdown was a gloriously geeky (and very funny) competition between various starships for the honor of ... well, most popular, most likely. ;) Ships were paired randomly, and a panel of five "experts" picked the winner in each bout until they arrived at a champion. It was fun, but I really wanted to see the Mirrormask panel, featuring Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean talking about a new movie they're working on with Henson Studios. Exciting, no? It does sound interesting, but I was disappointed to learn that there won't be any puppets -- just CG effects. Beh. Even so, I'm looking forward to it.
Okay, as late as this report is, I'm still going to have to leave it at this point for now. To be continued. :)
Wednesday
The trip didn't start off so well. I had a ticket for a 5:45 am flight, for which I was planning to get up at 3:30 am. As a result, when I woke up Wednesday morning and saw 6:33 am on my alarm clock I was rather distressed, to say the very, very least. A long stream of curses later, and Doug (who was considerably more rational about the whole thing) got on the phone with Delta. Long story short, I wound up flying out to San Diego later in the day. I arrived at about 5:00 pm and met Arielle and her boyfriend Jim at the airport. Because they were also going to be picking up another person from the airport in a couple of hours, we just hung around downtown in the Gaslamp District to stay fairly close to the airport. Gaslamp was really very nice -- sort of everything Ybor City in Tampa is trying to be. We got dinner at a Japanese place, then headed back to the airport to pick up Arielle and Jim's friend Steve. Then we all headed to La Jolla, where Arielle and Jim both live, and went to an arcade. Arielle and I played DDR -- a first for me -- and had a lot of fun. I'm not exactly what you'd call a natural at it, but it was fun nevertheless.
Thursday
We'd decided the night before that the best day to begin attending ComicCon would be Friday, so on Thursday we headed to the wonderful San Diego Zoo. It was a really nice day, and the crowds weren't too awful. I got some nifty pictures of the giant pandas and a few other critters. I haven't resized the pictures yet, so I'll do a post a little later with those and some more zoo stories. All in all, a very nice day. In the evening I got thoroughly trounced at Trivial Pursuit: Genus 5 edition (which I'd never heard of before, but it's a pretty good one).
Friday
First day we attended the con. We drove out to a mall and took the trolley from there -- good thing, too, because the parking near the con was completely full when we arrived, and probably had been for awhile. We met a friend of Jim's, Sean, at the trolley stop, so we had a group of five. In spite of the almost overwhelming crowd, it really didn't take us long to register and get into the con. It just took awhile to decide what to do. ;) We decided to head into the expo hall, and... wow. Just amazing. We explored the corner closest to where we entered -- and discovered later, when we looked at a map, that it was just a tiny, tiny part of the whole hall. My god. It was just amazing. One booth nearly killed me -- a huge assortment of animation cels from just about any animated film or television show (and a few commercials) that you could name. If I go next year, I'm saving and budgeting specifically for buying at least one, because I've always wanted to collect them. It's an expensive hobby, unfortunately. On the first day, I spent the bulk of my allotment for purchases on a Penny Arcade t-shirt and poster, a "Jay and Silent Bob Take San Diego" ComicCon shirt, and a sort of "starter set" collection of Tick comics (I've always wanted to read 'em). We went out to a nearby cafe for lunch, and decided to attend the "Starship Smackdown" and "Mirrormask" panels, which overlapped, next. Starship Smackdown was a gloriously geeky (and very funny) competition between various starships for the honor of ... well, most popular, most likely. ;) Ships were paired randomly, and a panel of five "experts" picked the winner in each bout until they arrived at a champion. It was fun, but I really wanted to see the Mirrormask panel, featuring Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean talking about a new movie they're working on with Henson Studios. Exciting, no? It does sound interesting, but I was disappointed to learn that there won't be any puppets -- just CG effects. Beh. Even so, I'm looking forward to it.
Okay, as late as this report is, I'm still going to have to leave it at this point for now. To be continued. :)