SDCC, Day the First, pt. 1
For some reason, the night before I simply could not fall asleep. No matter how hard I tried, my body wouldn’t let me sleep. I wound up starting the day with no sleep. That coupled with a wake-up time of 5 AM so we could be in line by 6 made for a rather interesting morning. Thankfully the shuttle ride from the hotel to the convention center was about a 15 minute ride (depending on traffic).
When I went to Fanime Con last month, I made a joke about epically long line being epic… and long.
A view of the San Diego Convention Center during Comic Con. Image taken by Craig Gordon
I must admit now, after seeing how long the badge lines get at Comic Con, that was a gross understatement (and still oddly funny). Honestly, the pre-reg lines that were a result of a power outage on Thursday for Fanime were actually shorter than the line that I saw this morning. I don’t think I ever saw any of the people I saw showing up closer to when registration actually opened.
An interesting observation about waiting in line for registration. You get a good idea of some of the more popular costumes. Of course there was a smattering of anime and video game costumes. However, it is Comic Con, so the overwhelming favorite is going to be comic book costumes.
I will say this though, once registration opened, I don’t think we actually stopped until we picked up our badge, ginormous bag and schedule. Not surprising that for such a large convention they have learned to deal with the number of attendants efficiently.
Once we figured out where we were going in the morning, there comes the matter of figuring out how to get there. Thankfully there are plenty of maps available to help one figure out where one is going. It made figuring out point a to point b much easier.
One thing I was warned about Comic Con (besides the fact that the registration line was going to be huge) was that almost everything would be about waiting in line. And, really, one should be ready to wait in line. Unfortunately, sometimes how the lines are set-up aren’t the most intuitive.
While we were waiting for the first panel of the day, Racebending.com’s panel on diversity in the media panel, they put the line for the dealer’s room inbetween the line for the panel and the panel room itself. That seemed a bit counter-intuitive to me as the line for the panel wasn’t against the far wall. On the plus side, once the exhibit hall opened, the line went by quickly. I was afraid that we would need to wade against the current of people going to spend money on toys and other goods. By the time they were letting people in for the panel, the line had disappeared entirely.
Link to Racebending: http://www.racebending.com/
(Part 2 will be posted Monday morning)