SPN Con: Asylum 14 - Day One
So, it's been an exhausting day!
I arrived home from the Falklands on Wednesday morning after 20 hours of travelling and two 8-hour flights back-to-back, so I was totally exhausted and had just 30 hours to get my life back up and running and pack for A14!
We got to Birmingham last night and went to the HIlton to attempt to register... however, having still not received my e-ticket, I was told the 'missing e-tickets booth' wouldn't be set up until this morning....so we went back to our hotel to watch episode 10x21.
This morning, we got up early, got to the con hotel at about 8.15 am, ready to register... only to be told that the 'missing e-ticket booth' wouldn't be open until 12pm! On a whim, we joined the queue for extra photos and autos to see if there was anything left.
3 hours later, we got to the front of the queue... I had been so worried that they wouldn't let me buy anything without a ticket number, and also that there wouldn't be any JDM autos left, but I was in luck. They had all photo ops and autos available except Jensen single photos, and all Coffee Lounges except Misha's. So, I bought a JDM auto and a Samantha Smith auto :). I also got raffle tickets for Jensen, Jared and Jeffery coffee lounges.
By the time we got through those queues it was almost 12 pm, so we went to find the 'missing e-tickets' booth... which still wasn't there. We were told to wait a bit... and then wait some more... then we joined a queue for it at 12:30 pm and finally at 1:30 we got our tickets... then had to join another queue to register.
Once that was over, we joined yet another queue to get into the panel room!
By 2:30 pm we were seated in the hall, ready for an afternoon of panels.
First up was Mark Sheppard, who was in his normal fine form, wandering the crowd and bringing his son, Max up on the stage:
Then Curtis Armstrong and Tim Omundson, who had only just met but seemed to work well together... they decided that they would lose an item of clothing for each excellent question :P (they only got to one jacket and a shoe being taken off though):
After that we had Sam Smith, followed by Lauren Tom and Erica Carroll. Sam was a little quiet at first, not much stage presence, but she had some good answers and seemed to relax a bit after a while. Lauren was good, but it's Erica's first con and she was a little quiet:
After them it was Jim Michaels, who didn't answer a question for a good few minutes as he just started rambling about what had been happening since the last time he was at a UK con... some good stuff about behind the scenes of the 200th episode and Jared and Jensen's kids. He was asked questions about the outcome of episode 10x21 and confirmed he didn't agree with what they did with Charlie and also about the spin-off, to which he admitted they made mistakes with it and that they should have used an already established character for it:
And finally, Ruth Connell, Travis Aaron Wade and Alaina Huffman. Ruth was great fun (lowering the tone in places :P), while Travis didn't really get a chance to do much talking as they brough him on halfway through the panel. Alaina was a surprise because I'd heard that because she doesn't know the show well, she isn't good at answering questions and instead just turns them back on the fans, but she was interesting and fun :):
Orlando Jones also turned up to crash some of the panels, take pictures and ask a couple of questions :P.
Tomorrow, we have the strange thing with panels in two halls - first up is Jared in my hall (Jensen in the other one) and then we end with Jensen in our hall on Sunday afternoon. We do get a J3 panel though!
I arrived home from the Falklands on Wednesday morning after 20 hours of travelling and two 8-hour flights back-to-back, so I was totally exhausted and had just 30 hours to get my life back up and running and pack for A14!
We got to Birmingham last night and went to the HIlton to attempt to register... however, having still not received my e-ticket, I was told the 'missing e-tickets booth' wouldn't be set up until this morning....so we went back to our hotel to watch episode 10x21.
This morning, we got up early, got to the con hotel at about 8.15 am, ready to register... only to be told that the 'missing e-ticket booth' wouldn't be open until 12pm! On a whim, we joined the queue for extra photos and autos to see if there was anything left.
3 hours later, we got to the front of the queue... I had been so worried that they wouldn't let me buy anything without a ticket number, and also that there wouldn't be any JDM autos left, but I was in luck. They had all photo ops and autos available except Jensen single photos, and all Coffee Lounges except Misha's. So, I bought a JDM auto and a Samantha Smith auto :). I also got raffle tickets for Jensen, Jared and Jeffery coffee lounges.
By the time we got through those queues it was almost 12 pm, so we went to find the 'missing e-tickets' booth... which still wasn't there. We were told to wait a bit... and then wait some more... then we joined a queue for it at 12:30 pm and finally at 1:30 we got our tickets... then had to join another queue to register.
Once that was over, we joined yet another queue to get into the panel room!
By 2:30 pm we were seated in the hall, ready for an afternoon of panels.
First up was Mark Sheppard, who was in his normal fine form, wandering the crowd and bringing his son, Max up on the stage:
Then Curtis Armstrong and Tim Omundson, who had only just met but seemed to work well together... they decided that they would lose an item of clothing for each excellent question :P (they only got to one jacket and a shoe being taken off though):
After that we had Sam Smith, followed by Lauren Tom and Erica Carroll. Sam was a little quiet at first, not much stage presence, but she had some good answers and seemed to relax a bit after a while. Lauren was good, but it's Erica's first con and she was a little quiet:
After them it was Jim Michaels, who didn't answer a question for a good few minutes as he just started rambling about what had been happening since the last time he was at a UK con... some good stuff about behind the scenes of the 200th episode and Jared and Jensen's kids. He was asked questions about the outcome of episode 10x21 and confirmed he didn't agree with what they did with Charlie and also about the spin-off, to which he admitted they made mistakes with it and that they should have used an already established character for it:
And finally, Ruth Connell, Travis Aaron Wade and Alaina Huffman. Ruth was great fun (lowering the tone in places :P), while Travis didn't really get a chance to do much talking as they brough him on halfway through the panel. Alaina was a surprise because I'd heard that because she doesn't know the show well, she isn't good at answering questions and instead just turns them back on the fans, but she was interesting and fun :):
Orlando Jones also turned up to crash some of the panels, take pictures and ask a couple of questions :P.
Tomorrow, we have the strange thing with panels in two halls - first up is Jared in my hall (Jensen in the other one) and then we end with Jensen in our hall on Sunday afternoon. We do get a J3 panel though!