I’ve been staying at my dad’s place for the past few days because it’s Comic-Con time again and he lives closer to the Convention Center than I do.
Anyway, I’ve been to Preview Night and I went yesterday so far. I’m taking a little break today since my legs are so sore and I’m just tired. Preview Night was insane! I’ve never been to one before, and from what I’ve read about it previously, people have always said that they were able to walk around on the exhibit hall without all the crowds. That was not the case this year, it was packed! As packed as all the other regular days of the Con that I’ve been too. I just walked around scoping things out, not really buying anything or picking up much of any good freebies since I didn’t get there until an hour after it started.
The very first and only other time I’ve been to Comic-Con was in 2004 and that year I volunteered every day so that I could get in for free. It was a pretty cool experience, but it takes 3 hours out of your day each day, so there’s a lot of panels that you can miss if you’re a volunteer, unless you volunteer in the programming department and then pick the event that you wanted to see.
This year, I managed to get a free four day pass from someone. I really want to take this time to thank him so much for it! It’s been awesome having it so far. 🙂
Yesterday was my first day going not as a volunteer, so I had to wait in the normal entrance line (at first). One of the nice things about volunteering is that you can get inside the building earlier and out of the sun while you sit around and wait for your assignment. Anyway, so I made my way all the way around the corner of the building to the back of the line. Then one of the guys in the red “ELITE” shirts (maybe next year I can go to Comic-Con wearing an ELITE shirt, then I can do what I want… LOL) came around asking if anybody had a Professional or Media badge. Mine happened to be a professional pass, so I got to get out of the long line and into the much, much, much shorter (only about 15 or less people) Pro line. Sweet!
Even though there was less waiting to get into the building, we still had to wait until 10 AM once we got in the building, so there was still some sitting around for a couple more hours, but at least I was inside with the AC.
I found out just how sore I was from preview night and could barely even walk without aching. So I didn’t walk around the exhibit hall much. I just did a quick little walk through some parts of it, getting some free bags (the WB bag is what I wanted and I got that), a few manga samplers, and I had to go and sit down. Out in the lobby, there were these guys working for NBC who were passing out stuff for their new “Chuck” show. All they would say is, “It’s a show about Chuck” and then give out a little card. After a few minutes, they brought out some black Chuck t-shirts with a URL on the front and CHUCK on the back. I asked for a shirt since I was just sitting around not doing anything except texting and e-mailing with my phone. After a few e-mails, I left to put some stuff away in my car. I love parking underneath the convention center. It’s so nice just to be able to walk to the car, put stuff away, then come back. It’s well worth the 8 bucks.
Then after that, I went back inside, watched one and a half episodes of anime. After that, I waited around for the Stan Lee panel. I ended up sitting in on the Star Trek DVD panel just to get decent seats for Stan Lee. I’ve never seen an episode of Star Trek, so I was just kind of sitting there bored, but it’s better than wandering the exhibit hall with the waves of B.O. everywhere you go.
Stan Lee was so hilarious. I loved his panel. Here’s a video of the panel: SciFi.com – Stan Lee: True Believer Comic-Con 2007 Panel Anyway, the panel was excellent. I enjoyed it.
After that was over, I went straight to Ballroom 20 to get in line for the Lost panel since I noticed that a line was forming when I was walking over to the Stan Lee panel. By the time I got back there, the line was already going around the corner, all the way down the hallway, and around the other corner. It was insanely long. I kept thinking, maybe I shouldn’t have gone to the Stan Lee panel. But in the end, it worked out okay. I got a decent seat in the first 20 or so rows, so it was close enough to get footage with my camcorder, but still had heads in my way.
They didn’t really reveal much of anything about season 4 except that Harrold Perrineau would be back. At the end of it, they showed an unfinished Dharma orientation video for the orchid station. If you actually want to watch the whole panel and the video, it’s up on darkufo (google it!) as of this post. Saves me the time of typing about it. 😛
After Lost, I went to the Internet Superstar panel. I was really just there to see the guys from Pure Pwnage, but since the Lost panel ended late, I was a little late to the podcast panel and didn’t get very good seats to take any pics. I wanted to get a picture with Geoff and Jarett, but by the time the panel was over, I was just so tired and just totally wanted to go home. So that’s what I did… only to have to run an errand for my dad to get him a new wireless router and set it up.
Today is a nice day off from Comic-Con. I get to rest a little and just relax and stay away from the crowd. So I’m gonna go do that right now.
I’ll be going back to the Con on Saturday for the Heroes panel and I plan on being in Ballroom 20 all day until it starts just to make sure I get good seats. 😀