Wandering WonderCon and other bunny day adventures

I’m going to start off by saying that it’s difficult to attend a con for a single day (especially when it is the last day of the con) when all of the tweets and facebook posts about the con during the previous days make you desperate to be there. I mean… the Geek and Sundry Tabletop Day was happening during WonderCon… and OMG! so many awesome people there! Which means that those people would be at WonderCon all day… which means that I fail for not being there on Tabletop Day. Sigh. Initially, I had intended to be at WonderCon all weekend but life happens and I didn’t want to miss celebrating my friend Phil X‘s birthday at his surprise party. Priorities, amiright? Sigh.

For the record- the party was worth it.

Anyways, so I grabbed my WonderCon buddy (i.e. Charity)  and off we ran to Anaheim on a delightful Easter morning. If you remember last year- it was pouring cats & dogs and there were “sporting” events occurring at the same time. This year it was sunny and apparently WonderCon had the convention center to itself. Nice change of pace.

We had originally planned to arrive early and hop in the line for the Much Ado About Nothing panel, but as we walked up to the building we knew that the line was going to be long and annoying. If you’ve read my epic SDCC 2012 write-up, you know that I’m not a fan of panel lines. Unless you are willing to be there ridiculously early, you might as well just not waste your time. And personally, I’d rather sleep in my own (or a hotel) bed and be rested and clean… personal opinion though (not to say that the fans in the line weren’t clean or anything but… well, whatever). Looking at the schedule we determined that it would be a waste to try to get in the room later for the Arrow panel as well because the room was booked back to back by events that would pretty much lead to no one leaving. So we bailed on panels completely and opted to spend the day in the exhibit hall.

R2D2

First thing to note is that walking the rows, stopping to chat occasionally or look at things, it took about 3 hours to walk the room. Part of this has to do with idiots stopping in the center of the aisles to talk and also there were the usual R2D2s strolling around, being stopped for pics. There was an adorable Wall-E, too. I adore the little robots but people stop them in aisles for pics and bam! traffic jam. Annoying. Sigh. The next thing to know is that at one of the first booths we hit we picked up a scavenger hunt list (brilliant idea, by the way!) and so throughout our wanderings we kept having to refer to the list in order to find and mark off items. For the record, we completed the necessary points and got the prize.

The downside of the scavenger list was that we got so focused on finding the things on it that we forgot entirely where the things we wanted to go back for were. In the afternoon, we wandered for a good 45 minutes trying to find a booth that had a stuffed penguin that Charity wanted to pick up for a friend… it was lost in a blackhole. We did eventually manage to locate it- by sheer luck. And I’d seen a tardis license plate holder I wanted to pick up but completely forgot about it until we got back to the car!

There were the usual con attendees in the autograph area- Lou Ferrigno, Richard Hatch, Herbert Jefferson Jr., a power ranger, and some women whose claim to fame is that they were either a very early Playboy model or a screamer in a Hitchcock/early horror film. Or both.

Pretty sure I’ve never seen Alice look like that

Oh, and the Soup Nazi. No one was particularly of interest to us, and honestly only Lou look interested in being there. Not sure if that’s because it was Sunday or what but the attitude was a turn off to wanting to spend time there. Artist Alley was full of the usual artists- though I miss the one’s I am friends with- and they did their best to hock their wares to us. Charity and I got into a long discussion about the physics of the women in their art and how Wonder Woman (and everyone else) would not have been able to save anyone with her boobs looking like that, or in those heels. Sigh.

The one celebrity sighting we made was Jane Espenson and the trio from Husbands. Actually, we spotted them twice. But I still failed to get a pic with Jane. My fault entirely. Someday! It did give me a warm feeling to see the positive response from fans though.

I don’t think there were quite as many cosplayers this year. Or perhaps it was just day three and they were tired. We did overhear a lot of cosplayers complaining about their feet or being uncomfortable- which led to snarky comments from us about their not having read the rules. There were some really good costumes though. Not sure I was fast enough with the photos for all of them… And I do love having to go through the random pop culture references in my head in order to figure out who some of them were. For the record, Charity was a Tardis. I just wore my skull and crossbones dress, cat woman converse, and a bunny ear fascinator- in honor of the holiday, of course. Someday I will figure out a costume that works with the rules.

I know, it sounds like I’m venting and raging a lot. Sorry about that. But the honest truth is that I had a lot of fun. I missed seeing some of the things I would’ve loved to see (panels), I didn’t get to see friends (Katrina, Emily, etc), I didn’t get to randomly find celebs I’d love to meet (everyone who was there Saturday!), and I got annoyed by people. But I laughed. A lot. I saw a lot of fun costumes, toys, comics, books, crafts, etc. I had a lot of amusing ideas and discussed them with Charity. I finished a scavenger hunt. I didn’t have to deal with traffic. I picked up some delicious apples from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. I only bought one thing, really, at the con and it isn’t for me! It was a good time! And I hope WonderCon opts to do another year in LA/Anaheim/Southern California because I’d like to go again and watch it grow.

FYI- here’s the link to the album on Facebook

ETA:- here’s the only pic of Charity and I together- with our prize for the Been Better Comic Scavenger Hunt.

big thanks for the fun!

Tags: Action Flick Chick Posts, Actors, Comics, Conventions, CosPlay, Costumes, Events, FanGirl Squee, Friends, Geekery, Intellichick, Nerd Adventures, Nerdtastic Ramblings, Personal, Phil X, WonderCon