San Diego Comic Con: Part One

My second year at Comic-Con is what I would call a learning experience. It had it's ups and it's downs. Our second two days ended up much better than the first two. We got a pretty late start on Thursday, and didn't get a lot in. Lesson one. A hotel is worth it. The past two years we have spent the con with my Grandma-in-Law about 30 miles from the con. It saves us on some gas money, but still, with the drive everyday, the gas, and the parking, the idea of having a hotel within walking distance seems heavenly. My legs still haven't fully recovered from all the walking.

Lesson two: avoid ballroom 20 and Hall H on Friday and Saturday. On Friday, there weren't really very many small panels we were interested in, so we figured we'd try to get into Game of Thrones. HAH! Close but no cigar. The theme of the weekend quickly became “1 hour earlier and we would have made it in.” We kept getting right to the front of the line, just to get cut off because the room was full.*sigh*

See the problem is, Comic-Con doesn't clear the hall between panels. Why don't I like this? Well think of it this way. They expected 126,000 attendees this years. Hall H holds approximately 6,000 people. The way Comic Con does it, those 6,000 people can get in line at 5 AM and sit in HALL H all day, through 5 different panels, leaving no room for anyone else in line to get in. “So what?” you might say, “They put the time in they should get to stay.” Which would be fine, if those 6,000 people actually wanted to SEE all 5 panels. What usually ends up happening is that those 6000 people sit through 4 panels that they don't even care about, to get into the one they do. This effectively blocks thousands of people who wanted to see those other 4 panels. If they cleared the rooms between, yeah, maybe you would have to pick and choose which panels you went to, but overall way way more people would be able to get into at least one major panel.

So Thursday and Friday ended up being kinda slow for us. Mostly we wandered around the absolutely enormous dealer hall and worked the SCA Iron Brigade demos. Speaking of the SCA, G4 stopped by with Janina Gavankar from “True Blood” and did a little spot. They filmed a with our heavies fighters, it was cool to watch. (Watch it here) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK3ZuhUzQ3s Although they did insist that we are LARPers despite repeatedly trying to correct them. I guess Historical Recreation just doesn't pull ratings :P

Other celeb sightings this year included Levar Burton, David Boreanaz and Vincent Caso (Bladezz) from “The Guild.” I didn't get any autographs though, too cheap, Haha. My husband did pick up two older “Amazing Spiderman” comics though, so he is pretty psyched. Next post I will go over some more exciting stuff, the panels I went to and our great swag hunt!

~By GoblinGal




#ComicCon2012