Saturday, August 9, 2014

SDCC- Sunday and Post-SDCC Monday

Sunday was a pretty good day. I actually felt well, it was our two year wedding anniversary (we've been together much longer though), I wore shorts so I didn't melt. Good day.

We started our day off at Nerd HQ. We had an early morning panel with Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day. I was so excited when I got tickets for this panel. Not to mention the fact that we managed to get pretty good seats for it too (third row, right in the middle!). Wil Wheaton was one of my earliest crushes in life, because I was a huge Star Trek TNG fan and I loved me some Wesley Crusher. And Felicia Day is a really good role model for girls I think, and I love The Guild, so I was glad to see her too (my husband was equally as glad, he thinks shes hot). They are the ultimate nerd couple to me. What is it that everyone says? I'd ship them so hard? Yeah. Anyway, the panel was amazing. Aisha Tyler moderated it because Zach had stuff to handle, and she is freaking hilarious. After the panel, we rushed to the photo booth area because we were told that they were doing a Smiles for Smiles photo op. Almost immediately, they said that Felicia Day wasn't going to, but Wil Wheaton would. This bummed my husband out, but the six year old in me was excited to be next to Wesley Crusher. So we stand in line some more and my Nerd HQ app goes off. It announces a photo op with Zachary Levi at the photo booth we are currently in line for. So everyone is like, WTF and the volunteers are like, yeah....Wil isn't going to do it after all. So that bummed me out, but we ended up taking a picture with Zach and he was just so nice. A lot of people started getting out of line after Zach was announced and waited for Nathan Fillion (who had a panel right after Wil and Felicia's), but there was never a Smiles for Smiles announced for him on Sunday, so I am curious if he came out and did one or not.



After the photo op, we ate at the taco stand they had in Nerd HQ. My husband had the nachos and he loved them, I had the Carne Asada tacos and they were alright. The meat was off, not true Carne Asada, and a little greasier than what I'm used to. It rained for a few minutes while we were there, then it cleared up like nothing had happened. When we finished eating, we went to the convention center and got in line for another panel in 6A. This time it was for Sanjay and Craig, the Nickelodeon cartoon.


We made it to the line pretty early, so we got good seats. The lady next to us was there to see an actor that was in Arrested Development, I had no idea he was a voice in the cartoon. We were there because Chris Hardwick voices Craig, the snake. We also found out that Matt Jones (Badger in Breaking Bad) is another voice actor in the cartoon. My kids love to watch Sanjay and Craig, so it was a neat panel. We got to see them table read two episodes, and they performed a version of the theme song made just for SDCC. Plus, they showed us an upcoming episode of the cartoon. I sat next to a girl who's boyfriend works on the show, he'd put together all the stuff they were showing on the screen. I let her know how much I liked it, and how much my kids enjoy the show. I imagine working on something like that must be stressful, so it might be nice for her boyfriend to know that people do appreciate it. At the end of the panel, they mentioned that they were doing a signing at the Nickelodeon booth, so a lot of us went over there. We didn't know that it was a ticketed signing, but because they'd mentioned it in the panel and so many of us showed up, Nickelodeon let us go through the line, which I thought was really nice of them.

I was pretty bummed to find out that the Sons of Anarchy panel in Hall H that was going on the same time as the Sanjay and Craig panel had been begging people to fill its seats though. We wanted to go to that because we love SOA, but we figured that because it was a Hall H event and we hadn't camped for it, there wasn't a snowball's chance that we'd get in. Later on in the day I was checking my Facebook, and a girl I'd gone to school with who was also at SDCC with her finance' had posted that they attended the panel- only because they were approached by SDCC staff. She said that they were begging people to fill the room! What?! Maybe it has something to do with that new wristband thing they were doing, I'm not sure. But if its like that next year, maybe I will attempt a Hall H panel. I would love to see what a big panel is like, even though I am still very happy with the two panels we did get into in 6A.

After that, I think we went back to the Blizzard booth. My husband wanted to get some more of those pins, and that's when we found out that they were trading them. They had a board set up where you could trade, or you could trade with other people that were standing around. I traded my gold Nobu (I think thats how you spell it) for a gold Sylvanas, and I was good. But my husband got all into it, and he was a trading machine. There was this guy there that I hung around with (and I'm horrible socially, I didn't even get his name), and he was explaining to me how things were working, how the people were operating, things like that. He was there observing. He'd gotten all the pins he wanted on Saturday, and was there on Sunday I think to see what kind of deals he could make with his extras, something that could be profitable (if you check eBay, those pins are very profitable right now). He did direct a guy to my husband that had a really rare gold pin (they were sold in blind bags, and then there were regular pins, and then their rarer golden counterparts), which I thought was cool. There was a lady that was frantic trying to get that pin, but she had tried to do a dirty deal with me earlier, and that guy didn't think that was right. I managed to get a rare gold pin from their toy dispenser though, which was awesome. If you bought tokens (they look like Hearthstone coins) and put them in this machine (they look like those machines you put quarters in for bouncy balls or stale candy at the store), you had a chance of getting these little dolls or the gold pin that also came with loot codes. I ended up with a lot of those little dolls, but it was almost closing time on Sunday and I tried the machine again and got my gold pin.




***All photos are from eBay. Search Blizzard Pins SDCC and the listings should come up.*** 


We stayed at the Blizzard booth until it was time to shut SDCC down. That was a strange experience, I've never been there as it was closing. It was a mad house really, and vendors were still selling stuff even after they were told to stop. Aside from being sick, SDCC was good. We stayed an extra night since it was our anniversary (and we didn't want to deal with post-con traffic). We ate at this place called Bootlegger for dinner. It was very good, but the sickness kicked in after I ate, and kinda ruined the rest of the night :(  We had the Crispy Deviled Eggs as an appetizer, then my husband had a BYOBurger and I had the Chicken and Waffles (I'm a sucker for chicken and waffles). 

On Monday, we didn't really do anything in SD. We left the hotel right at checkout time (12pm), then headed to Los Angeles. We stopped at Universal CityWalk to catch a movie and to eat (I was feeling eh that day, and wanted to be close to home before I ate anything). We saw Lucy- I'll review it soon, but eh. After that, he ate at Tommy's (tons of chili on everything) and I ate at the Flame Broiler (something safe for my tummy).  The rest of the trip home was smooth sailing, and I felt relieved to be back in our smoggy, hot mess of a town. The weekend had been exhausting and I missed my children, and our cat. 

Did any of you attend SDCC?  What were your thoughts on the convention this year?


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