I figured that it’s been a month since SDCC 2011, so I better finish the recap…

Saturday:

Another early start to the Convention Center, which paid off with Nels and I able to get into the VERY short line for the Official Convention T-Shirt. Two years ago the wait for this line was close to an hour or more, if you didn’t get in immediately.

We meandered around the exhibit hall, taking more pictures, spotting more celebrities, and grabbing various freebies.  Eventually we made our way outside again, where I was bummed to find out that the CNET Base Station was closed for the convention (where was I gonna eat now?).

Nels and I took a walk down to the giant Smurf near Petco Park.  There we found Alienware and NCSoft’s outside booth, and I got to play City of Heroes – Freedom, and the new Beam Rifle power set.  After going through the tutorial, we walked around a bit more, discovering a free Slurpee booth, where I actually got brain freeze.

We crossed the new footbridge from the ballpark to the tail end of the Convention Center, and on the way back, Nels and I split up, he going to panels, me going back outside to meetup with Wendy before heading out to the movie premiere.

After a water break in the XBox Lounge, we won more swag from Movies on Demand (t-shirts) and then went up 5th Avenue again.  We watched a live demonstration of make up artists that are trying to get on the SyFy series Face Off, and then found a Marvel Monster Truck exhibit, where I saw Stan Lee wave at me while I took his picture.

We headed back inside for a while, for yet more swag and booth browsing.  We then headed back outside and then to the movie premiere.  We arrived a bit ‘early’ so we grabbed lunch (Mexican) and then took a look around where the red carpet event would take place.

We finally got in line for the movie, where we talked to some folks around us, and then got interviewed by AP.  Once we went inside, they confiscated everyone’s cameras (boo!) and then were led to a ‘holding area’ where we sat around for about 3 hours.  During that wait, we made friends with the folks behind us, and Wendy managed to acquire a premiere ticket from them for her husband, Eric, who wanted to see this movie as much as I did.  I also did a quick demo of my Android tablet, and gave a Google + invite to one of the folks in the group.

Around 7pm (one hour before showtime) the three of us were inside the theatre and in our seats.  The big screen was showing the E! Entertainment Television Red Carpet special, and I was going all fanboy as they showed Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg, and others arriving to the premiere.  Around 8pm, Jon Favreau took the stage and introduced Daniel Craig, Ford, Oliva Wilde, and practically everyone in the film, and a few writers and producers.

I was in the same room as Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg.  ‘The Raiders March’ went off in my head, in addition to the ‘James Bond Theme’ when Daniel Craig was introduced.

The movie started, and while it was entertaining, it just wasn’t as good as it could have, should have, been.

After the movie we got to eat at the after party.

That’s right, we were at a movie premiere after party.  We had hot dogs and some yummy salad, and soda, and while we stood at our table, I noticed Academy Award-winning makeup artist Rick Baker, standing a few feet away from us.  He must have seen me and my ‘fanboy gawking’ look at him, because the next thing I know, he’s walking toward me, smiles, pats me on the shoulder and says, “Hey, how are you doing?” and walks past me.

My eyes almost bugged out of my head, and Wendy and Eric were simply laughing at me as I did a minor freak out at the table.  As I regained my composure, writer Bob Orci (LOST, Star Trek, Transformers, Cowboys and Aliens) made a quick stop at our table to get something from another person who stopped by our table.

Minor freakout that time.

It was time to go, so we retrieved our cameras, and walked out with a set of 7-Eleven Cowboys and Aliens Slurpee cups.  It was a short walk from the movie to the Convention Center (we took a trolley earlier).  I said my goodbyes to Wendy and Eric, who were leaving for home in the morning, thanking them both for a great Comic-Con experience.

I then grabbed the next trolley back to the condo.

Sunday:

Kids Day!  And Nelson brought Riley along for the day!

Pretty low key day, since once again I skipped panels, and just walked around the exhibit hall.  The oddest moment was when I walked near the QMx booth, and their TARDIS, and the sound of the Cloister Bell was heard.  It kinda scared me, and that’s when I found that of all the sounds from Doctor Who, from the Daleks to the Cybermen, the sound of the freaking Cloister Bell scared me the most.  I kept muttering ‘imminent danger’ as I stood near the TARDIS.

I took more pictures of more stuff that I missed over the last 4 days.  At one point I got hungry, so I stopped at the one food stand that overlooked the exhibit hall, and ordered a pizza.  I shared a table with a guy eating some nachos, and we got to talking.  He asked about WonderCon, since he saw from my badge that I was from San Francisco.  I mentioned that I had gone to the first WonderCon in 1987, and then he said that he had been goingto San Diego Comic-Con since 1977.  Wow.

I did a quick demo of my tablet for him, since he said that he was a gadget freak like myself.  We exchanged Twitter ids so we could keep in touch.

Once again on the exhibit hall floor, I spotted Peter (Chewbacca) Mayhew  coming toward me on his powered scooter, so I playfully punched him in the shoulder as he passed and said, “Hey, Chewie!”  He said ‘Hellooooo!’ and smiled back at me as he zipped along his way.

And it wasn’t until much later that I realized that I had seen Han and Chewie in the same weekend.  Whoa.

I made one more pass inside, outside, and back inside, where I managed to get a DC Universe Online cape, before finally calling it a con, and made my may back to the condo.

Epilogue:

This was the best convention experience that I’ve ever had.  Period.  I’m running out of “people who I grew up with on TV and in movies who I want to see or meet”.  The only name that I can come up with is Lee Majors.

And I really don’t know when I’ll be going back to San Diego Comic-Con.  Maybe after a year or two break.

First off, I cannot confirm or deny that I was belting out songs by Journey, Duran Duran and Tiffany on my way to San Diego, in order to keep awake and focused.  So there.

Wednesday:

I spent the morning trying to figure out my game plan for the day, which started out with a quick trip to Albertson’s for deodorant, which I somehow forgot to pack.

My original plan was to drop off my car at the mall near Hotel Circle, and then take a Comic-Con shuttle to the convention center to meetup with Wendy, who had my pass, and her husband Eric.

I managed to drop off the car and made my way to where the shuttle stopped, but the patrons in line told me that I needed my badge in order to catch the shuttle.

Neat trick if I could do it, considering I needed to take the shuttle to *get* my badge…

I decided to take the trolley, and further decided to forget the shuttles for this trip, and stick to what I knew.  I ended up buying a 4-day trolley pass as well.

After doing the three-transfer trolley trip, I managed to find Wendy and her party at one of the local bars (Rocking Baja Lobster) in the Gaslamp District, where I also decided to get a bite to eat before we all headed in for Preview Night.

On the way to that bar, since I didn’t have my Comic-Con badge, the folks handing out stuff wouldn’t give me any swag.  Dammit.

On the way back, we got free sunglasses and scanned a ninja, which gave us passes to go see a preview of the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie (ended up not going to that).

Once inside, and seeing the super sized booths, it hit me like a ton of bricks: I was back at San Diego Comic-Con!  Woohoo!

Our group split up, and I followed Wendy and her friend Susie around, or they followed me, or we wandered around together.  Our first stop was a booth with a line of folks, and we ended up with an OSCORP Industries ID badge.  Yay!

My pictures tell the rest of the story of what we saw that night.  I was actually surprised at how empty, relatively speaking, the exhibit hall floor was, compared to 2008 and 2009, where it was practically shoulder to shoulder around most booths.

We hunted down the QR codes for the Doctor Who scavenger hunt, while grabbing whatever handouts were available at the booths.  After a couple of hours of walking, I figured that it was time to go.  I went outside to ask where the ‘red line’ shuttle was located, and it was way father than I was willing to walk, so I simply crossed the street to the trolley station and rode it back to the mall.

I gotta admit that I kept worrying about my car, since I found on the trolley website that they advise against parking there, because they can ticket or even tow your car if you park there and use the trolley.  Of course, when the trolley stopped at the mall, a dozen folks went to the same spot where I had parked, and not one car was ticketed/towed.

Off to the condo I went for a good night’s sleep.

Thursday:

Since I decided to skip most of the panels that I was planning to attend, I spent a good 1/2 hour outside on 5th Avenue before even going into the convention center.  I walked down to where they were setting up the South Park town, along with the food trucks, and the Sprint/IGN games area.

More pictures taken as I went inside and browsed up and down the aisles, bought a couple of requested Perry the Platypus convention figures for my sister, and then found a good spot for my tablet to pick up a wifi signal.  By this time I was getting a little hungry so I wandered back outside and made my way to the CNET Base Station.

That proved to be a good spot, as they had free food (cupcakes, sliders, fruit and cheese platters) and drink (sodas and water), while also providing Google Chromebooks for people to update their Facebook status.  By doing that you were given sunglasses and t-shirts.  They also had charging stations, with 8 or so cables/plugs for your devices/gadgets, so I used the opportunity to charge my HTC EVO 4G as I stood around drinking and eating.  I filled out a card for their hourly drawing, and almost won a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, because the first card had the name ‘Chris’ and the guy couldn’t pronounce the last name, but it was another Chris with another difficult last name.  Ah well.

After taking some pics of the Star Trek girls in attendance, I wandered back outside and walked around 5th Avenue again.  I literally bumped into Wendy, and so we stuck together and did more people watching and swag collecting.  In addition, she was getting text messages with locations to go to for a chance to win tickets to the world premiere of Cowboys and Aliens.  We hit one spot, where there were about 100+ folks in front of us, and they ran out of the ‘gold bricks’ that contained a t-shirt or wrist blaster, and a card that told you whether or not you won tickets.

We wandered down to the South Park experience again, and waited for t-shirts or Cheesy Poofs, but we were not able to get either.  We stopped by Tin Fish, which NBC redressed as The Playboy Club, and I got pics taken with bunnies and had a Playboy key cut to one of my house keys.  I also got a winning card from Movies on Demand, so we stopped by their suite in the Hard Rock Hotel, and I got another t-shirt.

We made our way back inside the convention center, stopped by more booths for stuff, and randomly ran into Bruce Campbell’s entourage, Susie and more folks, and John Barrowman, in more or less that order.  We also managed to get a signed Star Wars book and then decided to try again outside for the Cowboys and Aliens tickets.

Earlier we were close enough in line to get free t-shirts, but we finally got to a spot quick enough to get gold bricks.  Wendy opened hers, and the card was not a winner.  I opened mine and it said ‘CONGRATULATIONS’, which took me a moment before I realized what that meant, but Wendy was already screaming ‘YOU WON!’  We followed the directions on the back of the card to get the tickets, and by this time I was so spent that I decided to call it a day and went back to the condo.

Friday:

Nelson and I got an early start on the day, since there was one panel that I was determined to get into: “The Captains” with William Shatner and Avery Brooks, moderated by Kevin Smith.  Shatner was the only main cast member left on my Star Trek bucket list, and I didn’t want to miss this opportunity to see him.

The line was long when we arrived, but not impossibly long, unlike the line for the Torchwood panel, which was about 9,000 people long, for a Ballroom that only held 4,000 people.  I took the opportunity in line to take more pictures.  We didn’t wait very long, perhaps an hour or so, before the line began to move, and within moments we were inside the panel room and seated.

We were going to see ‘the Kirk’.  Wow.

As introductions were made on stage, the crowd rose to it’s feet as William Shatner was introduced.  Then came my one moment of clumsiness.  As I sat down, the zoom lens on my camera smacked the head of the lady sitting in front of me.  I apologized right away, making sure that she was okay.

The panel was as entertaining as you’d expect, with Smith being Smith, and Shatner being Shatner, and even Brooks being Brooks.  The big surprise came when they screened a clip of “The Captains” documentary where Shatner first meets Scott Bakula, and then Scott Bakula himself walks onto the stage to a huge roar from the audience.

Here I’m stunned.  This is Sam Beckett, who never made it home.  Jonathan Archer, captain of the first Starship Enterprise.  And most recently, Steven Bartowski, Chuck’s father and the agent known as ‘Orion’.  I’m as big a fan of his as I am practically any other person that was on the stage, or even at the convention.  I was hoping he’d say ‘Oh, Boy!’ or ‘Aces, Charles!’ while he was up there.

Of course the best moment came at the end of the panel, when Shatner led the audience in what was called the Long Khan.  Video here.

I checked on the lady in front of me one more time, and she and her friend both said she was okay, but they would send a medical bill if needed.  Heh.

We were given a ticket to claim a prize for attending the panel, so Nels and I made our way to the prize fulfillment room in an adjacent hotel (the Marriott).  That hotel also was where the Mattel pre-order pick up area was located, so we made a stop there so I could pick up Kilowog and a Swamp Thing figure that I ordered for a friend.  Also located in that hotel was the Nintendo game lounge, and we checked that out as well.

Nelson took off while I stood in line at the FedEx office to ship my friend’s figure to him.  Afterward I browsed the hall again, this time taking a green screen picture with the Justice League, following Chuck’s Captain Awesome, Ryan McPartlin,stopping by the NCSoft/City of Heroes booth and bumping into Mythbusters’ Grant Imahara (he was dressed as an officer from Battlestar Galactica).

I managed to get a picture with me between two Wonder Women at the CNET Base Station, then did another green screen photo with Rango, and grabbed more hand outs and stuff.  I tried to get more tickets for Cowboys and Aliens, but the line ran out of gold bricks.

I met up with Wendy and Susie again, and after scanning codes for the 5 Voltron lions, we made our way back to the food trucks/South Park, where I bought pizza and a soda for $6, cheapest meal that I paid for.  After trying to get tickets again and failing (out of bricks again) we wandered the floor, where we were almost stampeded by LL Cool J’s entourage near the Starz/Sparticus booth.

Ah, randomness.

Outside we actually got a small piece of swag from SyFy, a mini speaker set.  Around this time I went back to the condo for the day, too tired to stick around for the Batman Year One premiere.

Next up: Saturday and Sunday.  Stay tuned!

Congratulations! You successfully discovered all five lions in the Voltron Scavenger Hunt at Comic-Con. In celebration of the upcoming release of  “Voltron: Defender of the Universe” video game, THQ would like to reward you by sending you a Voltron DVD and t-shirt.

Yay!