San Diego is a fine city. Being so far south, I was expecting it to be warmer than it was. In fact… my home state of WA was actually hotter that month, and I know I know, we’re supposed to be ~*100 days of summer*~ and never ~*get hot*~ and ~*Edward Cullen*~ is supposed to be able to attend a full school year without getting kicked out, but reality. It was pretty strange I could wear my normal clothes and not at all be bothered in San Diego, to be honest. Now L.A… That place is a hot town.
Anyway, the con. Holy crap, I have never been to a con that big before. It was immense. Ginormous. Absolutely impossible to go anywhere and do anything, which is always a buzzkiller no matter where you wind up. The line to pick up badges were likewise gigantic, but for a line that long they actually moved fairly quickly and we were in there for about two hours. Very impressed with the efficiency of the line staff.
The next day, the con started. We wrote the Trolley the few minutes it took to get to the convention center and tried to decide what to do. Food stands and restaurants were crowded so we had to walk fairly far to get to some place that wasn’t bursting to full. The lines for the panels on popular series were ridiculous. We then spent most of our time pursuing the dealer’s and exhibition room that morning.
The crowd was awful. Any time I saw something interesting and wanted to stop to look at it, it felt like there was a surge of people behind me that wouldn’t let me stop. By the time I’d gotten extracated enough to look at the item in question, about half a dozen people had stepped out too. Sometimes I’d be waiting five or more minutes as a roulette of people came along to look at the same damn thing and pushed their way in front of me. Couple times, I gave up and moved on, which was disappointing. I did find some wonderful gems of steampunk based comics to purchase, though.
I have to admit, when you’re looking for your particular tastes in what’s supposed to be an International Comic convention, it’s a little disappointing seeing everything is Marvel or DC or Doctor Who (I don’t get that one) and less representative of foreign books and other domestics. I mean there was a lot of manga, anime and video game things there, once you found, but I really felt the focus on Marvel and DC. I’m also going to admit here, I’m not a big fan of either company.
“So why did you go?”
For the experience, for the video game demos, for the chance to see new things, and in Tekka’s case for the street passes.
Anyway, after that, Tekka dragged me off to the Nintendo room, which was also very crowded but fun. There were things being given out, Pikmin Tees and Pokemon things. I watched people play at Just Dance! and tried out The Wind Waker Remastered and street passed with people. It was way more relaxed there than in the other parts of the convention.
The panels we didn’t get to until the next day, where we started off by waiting two slow, agonizing hours for the Korra panel. Now, this actually went and pissed me off. We were standing in line for that long with one of those obnoxiously loud people behind us that I seem to get cursed with no matter what con I’m at, and the line staff couldn’t even be bothered to announce when Korra was over- it had gotten started late and ended late, yet they had announced when the previous panel was over. By the time we had gotten to the room, a panel for Bones was starting and I’m like “no.” And for some inexplicable reason they wouldn’t let us get out of line when we finally heard the panel had changed, we had to move through the room. It was weird.
So, the next panels we went to were ones of my choosing, involving comic book painting with Scott Hampton. That was really informative and I enjoyed it. Of course, we got in a bit late because of the insane way they had that section of the panel rooms set up. For instance, you couldn’t even get to the room we wanted unless we went ALL THE WAY DOWN the parallel hallway on the other side and found the almost hidden secret entrance to the back of the hallway we did want. I swear, a city planner who plans out what streets to make into one way roads in the middle of downtown decided that entire nightmare.
After that, Tekka wanted to go back to the Nintendo room, so we did and enjoyed the atmosphere again for some several hours, getting ridiculous amounts of street passes. I just stopped playing the space invader street pass game because it took too long to play. Another Tee and some games under our belt, and we headed out into the city for dinner.
Now, every time we went out to get something to eat or go see what was happening outside (which didn’t much interest us most of the time) there were these people with music and signs standing on the corners, shouting about Jesus.
I swear to God if I wasn’t such a coward I would have stood up on one of the steps and started shouting about TALOS. ALL HAIL TALOS, the SAAAAAVIOOOOR of MAN! It would have been hilariously bad or had security taking us away. I think this was the one regret I took out of CC though; not spreading the word of Talos. Damn my public speaking insecurity.
The next day was another spent mostly in the dealer’s room, trying to get good deals on the little things we liked, but we finally had enough of the crowds and left early for our hotel.
All in all, I had a lot of fun at this convention when we weren’t trying to get anywhere or do anything. I’m used to large conventions, but the biggest one was a little too much for me.