What a con!!
Sunday morning (okay, it's almost noon), having a late breakfast at a Panera here in Sandy Eggo, before we hit the road to go home. Two stops, to drop off the chair at Sam's office, and to pick up the kitties, and then we can relax this evening. It was definitely a fun con, but we will do a few things differently next year.
Wednesday: Checked in to hotel, no problems. Except for the person in the SUV who was blocking the entire drop off area for the hotel and parking entrance. But Sam got to put up with that while I went and checked in. Our hotel was right up against the trolley and train lines, which meant we had lots of train and trolley sounds, but it really didn't bother us much, and we chose it specifically for that convenience. We parked in the hotel's lot Wednesday, and did not touch the car again until we checked out this morning. Downtown San Diego is great that way. Irvine could learn a thing or two.
We headed over to the con and got our badges, chilled out for a while in the very well air conditioned Sails Pavilion until the exhibit floor opened, then went down there and looked around for a while. For dinner, we decided on McCormick & Schmick's, a fancy seafood restaurant that is located in the Omni hotel across from the convention center. I had a delicious miso marinated sea bass with udon noodles and stir fry vegetables (sooooo good! I declared we must go to McC&S's for my birthday) and Sam had something with shrimp I think? I forget. Back to the hotel to relax and sleep. It was chilly waiting for the trolley transfer, which took a bit, but I survived.
Thursday we saw Will Wright's panel, where he talked about games and play and then showed us some gameplay from Spore. And he ended it with a "RussianGerman Space Minute" which was an interesting lesson on the beginnings of rocketry and the space program.
After Spore, we went to Steve Purcell's panel. He is the comic artist who created Sam & Max, and has worked on various computer games and animation projects (including Cars; he's currently with Pixar). Sam loved that because he's a big fan of Sam & Max. He snapped a lot of photos over the two panels, I think it was 100 for the day. I will post links later when he has it all sorted and uploaded. ;)
We left for our hotel around 4:30 for the day, and had a call from my friend's brother to meet up for dinner. He took the trolley over to the Little Italy neighborhood we were staying in, and we had Italian for dinner, at Buon Apetito. Yummy dinners, then he ran off to another panel back at the con, and we stopped at the 7-Eleven on our way back to our room and got drinks and munchies, and had an early evening.
Friday was the Big Bang Theory panel, which was fun, because they had the entire main cast, as well as the writers, and a nice little clip montage put together of the geekiness of the show. Loved it. :) Oh, and Adam Savage of Mythbusters was the moderator. That was cool. :D That was actually the only panel we saw, and we walked around the exhibit hall some more (including parking the wheelchair at baggage check so we could get in and out of places easily. We left the con early again and brought in dinner from the Jack In the Box a block down from the hotel.
Saturday was our big big day. Lots to see and we had to get over to the convention center early to nab a seat in Hall H for all the big panels. Heroes was first. And Heroes was WOW. We got to see the Season 3 premiere in its entirety, and believe me, if you follow Heroes, you've got a lot to look forward to. This season is going to be something big!
As if seeing the premiere wasn't enough, they had the entire freaking cast there, except for the kids. Hiro, Ando, Claire, HRG, Matt, Mohinder, Maya, Peter, Nathan, Mama Petrelli, Nikki, Sylar, they were all there. :) Don't worry, again we have lots of pictures to post. :) They had a Q and A session of course, and then they were gone.
After Heroes, LOST was kind of a let down. They only had the writers (Lindelof and Cruse) and then Jack (Matthew Fox) showed up at the end. Oh and an old guy who was supposed to be from the Dharma Initiative and sponsoring the panel. There was this whole setup about someone leaking video from inside the DI testing booth down in the Exhibit Hall and it was okay, but the highlight of that panel was the prizes they handed out during Q&A. They seemed to anticipate what a lot of the questions were, and had a big white box with the DI logo on the side that they pulled prizes out of that were kind of fitting for the questions asked. One guy who had a question was nearly a dead ringer for Hurley (hair, size, and all) and for him the prize was a gallon jar of Dharma Initiative Ranch Dip. LMAO!
We sat through the Terminator Salvation panel, also in Hall H, so we wouldn't have to give up our seats, as the Disney / Pixar panel was after that. At Disney / Pixar we got to see about 20 minutes of footage from Bolt (not all finished rendered, some was storyboard and some was just uncolored, unlit renders), and then we got to see a couple different clips from UP! and get introduced to a couple of the characters. Both the websites are live now I believe, Bolt, and UP
We had some time to kill and walked around the exhibit hall again to stretch our legs after 5 hours in Hall H, and then went up and took care of next year's registration, and went to the room where the MythBusters panel was and sat in on a couple earlier ones so we would be sure to have a seat. Good thing too, because it seems a lot of people were doing the same thing, and that room was packed to capacity for the MB panel. We got a teaser for the NASA Moon Landing episode coming up this season, a few clips of Adam slapping Jamie in Slow Motion when they did the sobering up myths, and Adam running on a treadmill while drunk, and the obvious result thereof, hehe. Poor Adam.
Anyway, I need to wrap up to go, so I will post more later. Bye!!!
Wednesday: Checked in to hotel, no problems. Except for the person in the SUV who was blocking the entire drop off area for the hotel and parking entrance. But Sam got to put up with that while I went and checked in. Our hotel was right up against the trolley and train lines, which meant we had lots of train and trolley sounds, but it really didn't bother us much, and we chose it specifically for that convenience. We parked in the hotel's lot Wednesday, and did not touch the car again until we checked out this morning. Downtown San Diego is great that way. Irvine could learn a thing or two.
We headed over to the con and got our badges, chilled out for a while in the very well air conditioned Sails Pavilion until the exhibit floor opened, then went down there and looked around for a while. For dinner, we decided on McCormick & Schmick's, a fancy seafood restaurant that is located in the Omni hotel across from the convention center. I had a delicious miso marinated sea bass with udon noodles and stir fry vegetables (sooooo good! I declared we must go to McC&S's for my birthday) and Sam had something with shrimp I think? I forget. Back to the hotel to relax and sleep. It was chilly waiting for the trolley transfer, which took a bit, but I survived.
Thursday we saw Will Wright's panel, where he talked about games and play and then showed us some gameplay from Spore. And he ended it with a "RussianGerman Space Minute" which was an interesting lesson on the beginnings of rocketry and the space program.
After Spore, we went to Steve Purcell's panel. He is the comic artist who created Sam & Max, and has worked on various computer games and animation projects (including Cars; he's currently with Pixar). Sam loved that because he's a big fan of Sam & Max. He snapped a lot of photos over the two panels, I think it was 100 for the day. I will post links later when he has it all sorted and uploaded. ;)
We left for our hotel around 4:30 for the day, and had a call from my friend's brother to meet up for dinner. He took the trolley over to the Little Italy neighborhood we were staying in, and we had Italian for dinner, at Buon Apetito. Yummy dinners, then he ran off to another panel back at the con, and we stopped at the 7-Eleven on our way back to our room and got drinks and munchies, and had an early evening.
Friday was the Big Bang Theory panel, which was fun, because they had the entire main cast, as well as the writers, and a nice little clip montage put together of the geekiness of the show. Loved it. :) Oh, and Adam Savage of Mythbusters was the moderator. That was cool. :D That was actually the only panel we saw, and we walked around the exhibit hall some more (including parking the wheelchair at baggage check so we could get in and out of places easily. We left the con early again and brought in dinner from the Jack In the Box a block down from the hotel.
Saturday was our big big day. Lots to see and we had to get over to the convention center early to nab a seat in Hall H for all the big panels. Heroes was first. And Heroes was WOW. We got to see the Season 3 premiere in its entirety, and believe me, if you follow Heroes, you've got a lot to look forward to. This season is going to be something big!
As if seeing the premiere wasn't enough, they had the entire freaking cast there, except for the kids. Hiro, Ando, Claire, HRG, Matt, Mohinder, Maya, Peter, Nathan, Mama Petrelli, Nikki, Sylar, they were all there. :) Don't worry, again we have lots of pictures to post. :) They had a Q and A session of course, and then they were gone.
After Heroes, LOST was kind of a let down. They only had the writers (Lindelof and Cruse) and then Jack (Matthew Fox) showed up at the end. Oh and an old guy who was supposed to be from the Dharma Initiative and sponsoring the panel. There was this whole setup about someone leaking video from inside the DI testing booth down in the Exhibit Hall and it was okay, but the highlight of that panel was the prizes they handed out during Q&A. They seemed to anticipate what a lot of the questions were, and had a big white box with the DI logo on the side that they pulled prizes out of that were kind of fitting for the questions asked. One guy who had a question was nearly a dead ringer for Hurley (hair, size, and all) and for him the prize was a gallon jar of Dharma Initiative Ranch Dip. LMAO!
We sat through the Terminator Salvation panel, also in Hall H, so we wouldn't have to give up our seats, as the Disney / Pixar panel was after that. At Disney / Pixar we got to see about 20 minutes of footage from Bolt (not all finished rendered, some was storyboard and some was just uncolored, unlit renders), and then we got to see a couple different clips from UP! and get introduced to a couple of the characters. Both the websites are live now I believe, Bolt, and UP
We had some time to kill and walked around the exhibit hall again to stretch our legs after 5 hours in Hall H, and then went up and took care of next year's registration, and went to the room where the MythBusters panel was and sat in on a couple earlier ones so we would be sure to have a seat. Good thing too, because it seems a lot of people were doing the same thing, and that room was packed to capacity for the MB panel. We got a teaser for the NASA Moon Landing episode coming up this season, a few clips of Adam slapping Jamie in Slow Motion when they did the sobering up myths, and Adam running on a treadmill while drunk, and the obvious result thereof, hehe. Poor Adam.
Anyway, I need to wrap up to go, so I will post more later. Bye!!!