On our second day of our first con, we kind of had a better idea how this works and what was important to us. We definitely wanted to catch a lot of panels, culminating in the Grand Prize! The Grand Prize is a somewhat late, surprise addition of Chris Hemsworth, Thor himself! Be still my beating heart.
We knew that we wanted to get in line early to get good seats for the panel and decided that one of us would stay upstairs in the panel room(s) at all times. While waiting in line for the first panel, we started talking to another mother/daughter team and quickly realized that we had a lot in common. We decided to stick together and make our chances of scoring seats even better.
That's one thing I love about Nerd Cons...there are a lot of nice people and you already have something in common! No ice breaker needed.
While sitting in the hallway waiting for them to open the doors to the main panel room, we saw Mr. and Mrs. Mjolnir making its way to another room.
We were also talking to a couple of the security people and suddenly there seemed to be a little bit of a buzz generating. One of the guys we were talking to came over and said that the Generalissimo himself would be walking right past us sometime in the next few minutes! If you're a Marvel fanboy/fangirl, you know that that means the man himself, creator Stan Lee! And sure enough...
You may recognize him even if you're not a fangirl; he has a cameo in every Marvel movie and this felt like our very own real-life cameo!
Our first panel of the day was for former Karate Kid Ralph Macchio. My new friend was in Heaven!
He still looks like a kid. lol
The next panel was one of the best, if not the funniest, of the entire weekend. This actor has quite an impressive resume; his IMDB page spans 1954 through the present.
And he is FUNNY. As. HELL!. OMG, I can't even begin to describe how interesting and fun this panel was.
A fan made this and brought it to the stage. So funny and definitely not politically correct.
And then he brought this lucky fan up to dance with him. I think she asked him if he would ever consider doing Dancing with the Stars.
And then he busted out some solo moves.
Next up was the Boondock Saints panel. I have that move, but I've never watched it. Weird I know. I really loved listening to David Della Rocco.
Sean Patrick Flannery was a bit crazy. And no Norman Reedus, so boo to that.
And speaking of The Walking Dead, Jon Bernthal who played Shane was up next. He answered the questions very thoughtfully.
Stan Lee's panel had been scheduled for the previous day, but it was cancelled because the 94 year old was ill. That was one reason our catching the brief glimpse of him in the hallway was such a treat.
Suddenly, they announced that Stan wanted to come out and speak to the fans, but that it would probably be for only 10 minutes or so because he was still under the weather. That turned out to be everyone's plan except for Stan's. Even though they kept trying to get him off stage, he kept speaking and answering questions. He was awesome.
One note I want to make regarding the panels. I know in some Cons, they clear out the panel room after each panel. I can see the pros and cons of that, but I was very glad that they didn't do that at Wizard World.
What they do is reserve so many rows for each panel's "VIP" ticket purchasers. They will seat all of them and then allow people from outside to fill in the space. It's kind of amazing how man people buy the VIP tickets just for the photo/autograph ops and then do not attend the panel.
But the really sucky thing is that, if the panel requires say 6 rows and the previous one only required 4, they will kick the people out of rows 4 & 5 before even determining how many people are actually waiting to come in for the VIP seats. Those who are displaced end up having to go to the back of the room.
Then, instead of letting people who were kicked out of the seats to come back up, they bring in people from the OUTSIDE line to fill in the front. It's kind of bullshit.
After this happened to us twice, I found one of the security staff that we'd been talking to throughout the day to see if there was any thing I could do to not lose our good seats. He said that if I just moved and stood along the walls quietly without bitching or getting in anyone's way, I could just wait and then jump into seats while they were bringing in people from the outside line.
We then used this all day and got really good seats to most of the panels. But we really scored for Chris Hemsworth. His was the last panel of the day and by now, lots of people had observed us getting out seats back and were now doing the same thing.
But the four of us separated and placed ourselves strategically along the walls. Then we each grabbed the four best seats that we could. When we were all four seated, we looked to see which of us had the best sightlines and then other three moved there. We ended up in the fourth row (even though they have vacated 8 rows for Chris) right in front of him. Woot!
I am bummed that I couldn't go to this years Cons but there wasn't anyone here in Sacramento that I was dying to see and in San Jose, there were a few, but one of those (Ian Somerhalder) had to cancel at the last minute.
I will definitely go to more Cons in the future because it's a lot of fun and really fascinating to hear the stories and answers to the fan questions.
xoxo
