WonderCon 2018
Anaheim Convention Center
March 23-25, 2018
Friday, March 23: Day 1
I left work early to drive down to Anaheim to attend the first day. Now that I have a few cons under my belt, I strategize for each day based on whatever special events or panels are planned during the weekend. Fridays for me are the art shopping days: days when I visit the booths of the artists I follow on Instagram to obtain whatever I've had my eye on, or exclusives offered just for the weekend. I also like to tell them that I appreciate their work, and sometimes have a question for them, although I don't know much about the art except that I really like it so I don't have much to say other than "I love your work".
I left work early to drive down to Anaheim to attend the first day. Now that I have a few cons under my belt, I strategize for each day based on whatever special events or panels are planned during the weekend. Fridays for me are the art shopping days: days when I visit the booths of the artists I follow on Instagram to obtain whatever I've had my eye on, or exclusives offered just for the weekend. I also like to tell them that I appreciate their work, and sometimes have a question for them, although I don't know much about the art except that I really like it so I don't have much to say other than "I love your work".
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| Yes, I bought more than this. |
Pictured, counter-clockwise from the tippy top: Buffy the Vampire Slayer full TV series score + film score from the motion picture, from La-La Land Records; Black Panther "On the Prowl" by Maurice Abril; Buffy / Hamilton "Slay" by Karen Hallion; The Evolution of Luke Skywalker by Jeff Victor; Coco 25 cent wonder by Patrick Ballesteros; "The Little Wonderful Woman" Golden Book by Joey Spiotto; Rice Cooker pin by Genevieve Santos; Captain EO by Jeff Pina.
I saw on Twitter that tickets would be distributed for a sneak screening of "A Quiet Place" at three times: 3:30, 4:30, and 5:30. I didn't know how this would work, but made sure to get in line at about 2:30 when I saw there was already a long one forming. We were moved to the regular queue area, and people around me were receiving different information from different sources, so I decided to just wait to see what they would tell us at 3:30. The only thing I found out that was definite was that the movie would be shown at the AMC Theater in Downtown Disney. When the line started to move, I think they distributed 75 tickets, including a limit of 2 per each person in line. This might have been fine if the people telling people they couldn't sit down were watching people cutting the line instead. The not-sitting-down policy was ridiculous because we weren't in an aisle where anything else was going on, and we were all waiting for at least an hour, and there was plenty of space for our entire line to sit down. Also, they didn't enforce it for everyone the entire time). I was about 20 people from the front for the second wave at 4:30. Luckily for me, I had chatted with the gal next to me and she agreed to save my place in line while I used the facilities. Thank you! I even made sure the guy in back of me would also vouch for me just so I had my bases covered. At the 4:30 distribution, I got my wristband, and I happily went on my way to finish my last purchases of the day. One of the last purchases? Cupcakes from my favorite cupcake truck: My Delight!
Happiness in hand, I walked back to my car to drop off my goodies, eat one of the cupcakes, and take the shuttle to the resort. I'm glad I did that, because bag check would have been a pain.
When I got to the theater at about 6:00, there were already several people in line. I was told that they over-distributed in case some people just picked up 2 wristbands for the heck of it and didn't actually show up. So if everyone got in line, the last 30 people in line would not be able to see the movie. I arrived early enough to get in, and we were given vouchers for free popcorn and a drink. Nice! I sat in front of some reserved seating for Paramount folks, but I didn't recognize any of them, and they didn't do anything special but take up seats that other people at the Con could have sat. We were instructed not to film and that they had infrared technology to catch folks filming and whomever was caught filming would be kicked out. The usher guard people stood watching the audience for the whole movie. At least, they stood there. I was too engrossed in the movie to see if they were watching us. My thoughts about the movie will be in a separate post.
Afterward, I walked back to the shuttle pickup area, trying to walk as quickly as possible so I could miss the post-fireworks crowd. Success! I had a good sleep when I finally got home. My legs were worn out after the day of standing and walking.
Saturday, May 24: Day 2
I arrived prior to opening time on Saturday, and when I got in line, I realized I was behind someone cosplaying as Sadness from "Inside Out". I told her that she was my favorite character, but she didn't seem very chatty (she IS Sadness, after all), so I didn't have the nerve to ask to get a picture with her. She looked perfect, though!
Saturday is my day to attend panels and check out stuff that I missed on Friday. I only had one panel that was a must on my list, so I mostly walked around the different booths. Joey, one of the artists I talked to the previous day, tweeted that a figurine of his work was on sale at the Loot Crate booth, so I walked over there and purchased it. The gal who sold it to me said that the artist would sign it. She was right!
There was a droid-building club, because, of course!
I saw on Twitter that tickets would be distributed for a sneak screening of "A Quiet Place" at three times: 3:30, 4:30, and 5:30. I didn't know how this would work, but made sure to get in line at about 2:30 when I saw there was already a long one forming. We were moved to the regular queue area, and people around me were receiving different information from different sources, so I decided to just wait to see what they would tell us at 3:30. The only thing I found out that was definite was that the movie would be shown at the AMC Theater in Downtown Disney. When the line started to move, I think they distributed 75 tickets, including a limit of 2 per each person in line. This might have been fine if the people telling people they couldn't sit down were watching people cutting the line instead. The not-sitting-down policy was ridiculous because we weren't in an aisle where anything else was going on, and we were all waiting for at least an hour, and there was plenty of space for our entire line to sit down. Also, they didn't enforce it for everyone the entire time). I was about 20 people from the front for the second wave at 4:30. Luckily for me, I had chatted with the gal next to me and she agreed to save my place in line while I used the facilities. Thank you! I even made sure the guy in back of me would also vouch for me just so I had my bases covered. At the 4:30 distribution, I got my wristband, and I happily went on my way to finish my last purchases of the day. One of the last purchases? Cupcakes from my favorite cupcake truck: My Delight!
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| Clockwise from top: Carrot cake; peanut butter; snickerdoodle; breakfast (my fave!) |
Happiness in hand, I walked back to my car to drop off my goodies, eat one of the cupcakes, and take the shuttle to the resort. I'm glad I did that, because bag check would have been a pain.
When I got to the theater at about 6:00, there were already several people in line. I was told that they over-distributed in case some people just picked up 2 wristbands for the heck of it and didn't actually show up. So if everyone got in line, the last 30 people in line would not be able to see the movie. I arrived early enough to get in, and we were given vouchers for free popcorn and a drink. Nice! I sat in front of some reserved seating for Paramount folks, but I didn't recognize any of them, and they didn't do anything special but take up seats that other people at the Con could have sat. We were instructed not to film and that they had infrared technology to catch folks filming and whomever was caught filming would be kicked out. The usher guard people stood watching the audience for the whole movie. At least, they stood there. I was too engrossed in the movie to see if they were watching us. My thoughts about the movie will be in a separate post.
Afterward, I walked back to the shuttle pickup area, trying to walk as quickly as possible so I could miss the post-fireworks crowd. Success! I had a good sleep when I finally got home. My legs were worn out after the day of standing and walking.
Saturday, May 24: Day 2
I arrived prior to opening time on Saturday, and when I got in line, I realized I was behind someone cosplaying as Sadness from "Inside Out". I told her that she was my favorite character, but she didn't seem very chatty (she IS Sadness, after all), so I didn't have the nerve to ask to get a picture with her. She looked perfect, though!
Saturday is my day to attend panels and check out stuff that I missed on Friday. I only had one panel that was a must on my list, so I mostly walked around the different booths. Joey, one of the artists I talked to the previous day, tweeted that a figurine of his work was on sale at the Loot Crate booth, so I walked over there and purchased it. The gal who sold it to me said that the artist would sign it. She was right!
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| Joey Spiotti and the figurine of his Buffy piece Love Spike with the blanket! |
There was a droid-building club, because, of course!
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| Chopper between R2s |
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| Shiny R2 |
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| I'm calling him Boba Fett R2 |
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| They're everywhere! |
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| WALL-E rolled up to me and said "EVE" I told him I wasn't Eve, I'm Sherry. |
I had a little bit of time before lining up for the panel, and got in the line to meet the cover artist of this year's program, Dan Jurgens. I love his drawing of Superman, which he had in print form to purchase, but since he was already signing my program, I figured I would get a different piece. He graciously agreed to pose for a picture.
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| Mr. Jurgens with the print I bought |
I wasn't able to get the signatures of the inker and colorist of the program because they all had to go to a panel, and I wasn't going to that one.
Instead, I queued up for the Warner Bros panel for "Ready Player One". We didn't see much more than a trailer and very little behind the scenes statements from Spielberg and others. They really didn't want to give much away, but the visuals looked outstanding!
The panel was author of the book Ernest Cline, screenwriter Zak Penn, and cast members Ben Mendelsohn (Sorrento), Tye Sheridan (Parzival), Olivia Cooke (Art3mis), Lena Waithe (Aech), Philip Zhao (Sho), and Win Morisaki (Daito).
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| Full panel |
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| Ernest Cline |
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| Zhao and Morisaki |
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| Waithe and Mendelsohn |
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| Sheridan, Cooke and Waithe |
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| Cline and Penn |
Highlights:
- Question: What is your favorite video game?
- OC: I don't play video games. Does Tamagotchi count?
- Q: What was your first direction by Steven Spielberg?
- TS: He wanted me to walk like John Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever". When he asked me to walk, he turned on "Stayin' Alive" (TS bops his head back and forth), struts over to me with the phone, and says, "Like that."
- Q: I heard that a lot of celebrity visitors came to the set.
- ZP told a story about George Lucas coming to the set with his daughter and showing her all of the digital cameras. GL said to Steven, "I thought you were never going to film anything in digital?" Steven: "George, that ended a long time ago, and you still keep asking that question!"
- OC talked about Tom Cruise visiting the set the day she had was dressed in the bodysuit with the ping pong balls for the CGI, and she wanted to hide from Tom because of what she was wearing, and she was sweating because they had just done a take. But Steven said, "Olivia, come on over and meet Tom Cruise!"
- OC talked about the fact that LW's character is very tall, and she and TS kept forgetting not to look in her eyes, but to look up at the ball hanging above her. LW: "I was telling them, you're staring at my chest!"
- Ben Mendelsohn is hilarious and said that he agreed to be a villain again because they pay him extra money to do so.
- WM had an interpreter with him, and when the moderator was asking the video game question, he asked him to answer, too. Win speaks English well, though.
- This was Philip Zhao's first film.
- EC said that he was starstruck for the first several times he spoke to Spielberg about the film, and geeked out about everything he said.
- Q: I need to know: with this movie using different elements of Spielberg's other films, did he ever say, "Well, when we were doing 'JAWS', this happened?"
- ALL: YES!!!
I'm sure I"m forgetting a bunch of stuff, but that was a fun panel. I do remember that they were all asked about their favorite Spielberg movie, but I can't remember the answers. Oh, yeah, OC likes "Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom". Another person said, "Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade". I know there were other movies mentioned that had nothing to do with Indy.
I wanted to get a couple of con-exclusive comic books, so I did that before meeting up with Dodie and her friends. We walked around and they talked to people they knew at the different booths. One of them used to work with an artist whose work is up above, and the other is friends with the guys from La-La Land Records, so that's cool. This walk-around time gave me more time to look at the cosplay around us.
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| Two Doctors! |
As we were leaving, I saw this, and pointed it out to my companions. We tried to catch up and guessed who it was: Lego Wicked Witch? Lego Gandalf? Lego Tin Man?
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| All we knew for sure was LEGO. |
Then LEGO cosplayer caught up with his friend, and we got our answer.
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| LEGO Gimli and LEGO Gandalf |
Dodie and friends had dinner reservations at Tortilla Jo's and invited me to join them, so I drove us all to Downtown Disney. We walked around afterward and somehow I refrained from buying more art at Wonderground. Dodie's friend loves Disneyland popcorn, but doesn't have a pass, so Dodie and I went into the Park to get her a souvenir tub and popcorn.
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| I love being able to just go in for 10 minutes for necessities! |
I said goodbye to my companions and went home. Here is some of what I bought on Saturday.
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| Not a big art day, but still some. |
Pictured, clockwise from top right: Buffy figurine by Joey Spiotti froom Loot Crate; Gloomy Bear plush; WonderCon program; Superman #150 by Dan Jurgens; Unicorn heart pin and Mermaid art by Faheema from Unicorn Crafts; Supergirl #19 variant; Ariel and Eric wedding Funko Pop.
I didn't attend the Sunday of the Con because I needed to be elsewhere. I'm glad my heart wasn't set on the panels I had planned, but I was still sorry to miss the last day.
Next up on the Con Agenda: Whedon Con
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