Melbourne's first ever Comic Con... Any first convention, especially on this scale, you have to make some allowances... No allowances could cover the debacle that this event was! We were lucky to arrive and somehow be ushered in quite quickly, before 10am, once in it was gridlock... Every way you could possibly turn there were people trying to move but getting nowhere, people getting angry and stressed because there was nowhere to move! Queues seemed to back up in every direction, for tokens, panels, Stan Lee autographs, which then resulted in queues just to browse the stalls... We decided to go out, get air and come back for the Sean Maher panel, as we edged towards the exit, we noticed a queue to get back in! They were at capacity and weren't letting people back in!!! So we went and sat in between the staging area and had some snacks... Due to the extremely dodgy queuing set up, which I won't even try to explain, we moved on, which was awesome because in our new spot Jason Momoa - Khal Drogo - Game of Thrones, walked past us, at this point, the highlight of my day... Dude is huge and surprisingly beautiful, but that may be my inability to separate the character from the actor...
We went in to the Sean Maher panel, the mics were low and the sound bleed from the other rooms was treacherous! I caught maybe 85% of what he was saying... Hunger Games panel was next, now if I knew that they were going to clear us out, I would have skipped Sean for Primrose, but I didn't, and it took 15 mins of that panel just to get out and back to the entrance! It was full so we decided to leave, and get a little space...
We went down south wharf, did some browsing, went for a hot chocolate at a lovely cafe, just chilling the eff out... An hour or more passed, and I really, really wanted to see Julie Benz, so we went back! 30% of the people were outside, 30% were in the Stan Lee panel which left us some time to browse in a way that wasn't a fire code hazard! Then Julie started, we got third row, and could hear every charming word! She's still gorgeous, funny and charismatic... I thoroughly enjoyed her panel, was sad it was over! My plan was to stay for Fran Kranz, but Mark isn't a fan and he had already spent my hour with Sean cruising around so we headed home!
I only hope that they sort out some of their issues for tomorrow! And maybe next year choose a venue twice the size!
After writing this I read about the people with tickets being turned away, that the doors closed up to an hour at a time! I am just glad we got in, would have been livid after organising a whole day of childcare just to be turned away!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
