Comicon 2013: Part 2

(Part 1 here)

Saturday morning, Sak and I lined up with our bag of grocery store meals for Ballroom 20 again, this time about three hours before the first panel at 10 AM.  The lineup today would take us til about 5 PM.  At this point, we were pretty comfortable with the Comicon panel process, and we didn't even mind sitting in line, leisurely enjoying our breakfast.

Finally walking in!

The first two panels were for Once Upon a Time, for the spinoff and the main show.  Fradulent again, I have not watched this show! :P  But it was a nice panel, and we were pleasantly surprised with swag too - little velvet bags with pins inside.

The following two panels were for Futurama and the Simpsons.  Creator Matt Groening was there, along with the entire Futurama cast!  It's their last season, so I suppose that's why everyone was there.  I was so excited that they did an episode reading!  It was so cool to see :)  Voice acting seems like such a fun job, and they all made it seem so natural and easy.

After Groening's panels were Seth McFarlene's for Family Guy and American Dad.  Seth M wasn't there though, unfortunately, but many of the other voice actors were (Chris, Lois, Joe, etc).  The panels were pretty funny, but it was kinda disturbing when young kids would ask questions during the Q&A.  Even the actors were concerned about it! Not all cartoons are for kids - something you'd think modern parents would understand by now. >.>"

And finally, the last panel and one I was especially looking forward to - True Blood!  Yes, it's one of those very racy HBO shows, but I really liked the books, and..Eric!  It was a huge panel, with pretty much all the main characters other than Bill or Eric (boo!).  I was kinda amazed at how good looking everyone was in real life, haha.  At the end of the panel they handed out swag tickets, which we redeemed later at the fulfillment room for a backpack full of stuff - t-shirt, sunglasses, journal, and screen cleaner. Random, but a fun surprise!

Pam!

Channeling Layfayette!

After panels, we checked out the Nintendo lounge, which had some really cute photo booths set up!

We also walked around some of the outdoor exhibits, looking for the Geek and Sundry lounge (which unfortunately was in the middle of watching a movie).  We did find some yummy crab cakes in a food truck though :)

Geek & Sundry lounge was on the top floor.

Viking boat races!

Big floaty Axe cop!

Teen titans

In my freshly made Star Wars dress, next to Jabba's barge and some troopers!

People pretending to get arrested for a photo op @_@. Not sure how I feel about this one, haha! 

For a lot of money, you could do a Walking Dead experience and run away from zombies in Petco Park!

Big lego hobbits!

In the back of this blow up castle were people singing karaoke in a cage @_@

Crab cake sliders!

Eventually walking back to con-center, we mulled around the exhibit hall again, getting lucky at snagging swag in the Fox booth (poster tubes).

There was a line just to get into the BBC store!

Different special effect makeup schools were running demos, so crazy!

GIANT harvest moon cow! SO CUTE.

Crazy pony leggings I bought my sister. Because she loves ponies.

Street Fighter Hello kitty. Because why not?

We had a little time to kill before the Masquerade started up, so I dragged Sak to another Gaia panel. It was good we went though, since I ended up winning a cute plushie in the raffle!  I felt really bad for the poor kid that asked during the Q&A if cutie chicky 1 was in the audience after promising to meet him there. No one answered, and he lamented that his dad was probably right about it just being a random dude online! :{  I hope things work out for him next time!

We decided to watch the masquerade in an overflow room, since we were tired of waiting in lines.  It wasn't a bad decision though, because our overflow room was full of hilarious hecklers shouting out random stupid things the whole time.  Up until this event, nothing had really been similar to the anime conventions we go to.  But the peanut gallery of immaturity - spot on. Loved it. But I still don't know what bat wolf means.

Friend S!

Anyway, the masquerade acts were pretty good! My friend acted in one of the skits too! She looked like a movie star on the big screen! And her husband played batman! The Star Wars musical skit with the can-can dancing jawas was another one of my favorites. It was pretty epic.

We left a few skits before it ended in order to get on a shuttle bus before all the crowds got out.  And like that we were on the last day!

Now, for Sunday, the only thing I wanted to do was go to the Dr. Who 50th anniversary panel.  But that required lining up at 3 AM in the morning.  I didn't want to ruin my schedule, knowing I'd have to go back to work shortly after. Plus, I'm a pansy.  So I had to live vicariously though Cousin T, who did do the wait and did get into the Hall H panels.

Sharknado. @_@

Instead of cheering with an excited crowd at Matt Smith, we checked out and did one last swag pass through in the exhibit hall.  Then we drove home.  Stopping for a comforting bowl of ramen along the way. :)

Yum.

My take-away?

Pros:  Loved all the free swag.  Loved all the bigger-than-life hollywood treatment throughout the downtown area.  Loved the quality panels. And definitely loved the well-organized lines and line staffers.  It also helped that a lot of the conventioneers were older (expensive con means less crazy teens).  People were generally well behaved and polite.

A little swag :)

Cons: It's too big of a convention.  There was too much going on, and we hardly saw any of our friends at all! I saw Cousin T twice in passing only, and didn't get to see Friend S in person.  We only saw Friend E at night back at the hotel room which we shared :P  Also, since there's too much going on, I got really frustrated reading blogs and twitter reports of all the cool things people did that I never even knew was happening! Especially with the events away from the main convention center, it was really hard to tell what was going on.  It's also a pretty long drive, and a very costly convention.  It was cheaper for Sak and I to go to Otakon last year, and that's including plane tickets to Baltimore.

So, although the experience definitely exceeded our expectations, we decided we probably won't go back.  I think we're just more comfortable with anime conventions. Or smaller conventions. Something like that :)

With all the high budget displays, this was a little lackluster!