For my husband’s birthday I bought him Comic Con tickets for this year, understand that we have wanted to do this for years now and was finally able to afford it this year. Comic Con is the world’s largest comic convention, every magazine covers it, every news station is there, and studios and companies wait to introduce new movies, cartoons, and toys at it. I waited and refreshed using 2 browsers on 4 computers to get tickets for 1 day! People from all over come and dress up at Comic Con…this is something to be excited about! This year Warner Brothers was introducing the new Thundercats cartoon…I was so stoked that I just almost wet myself! I researched online which booths we wanted to see, the bag I wanted to get (Thundercats of course), and where the cool stuff was going to be! We paid ahead of time to park in relative proximity to the San Diego Convention Center and had everything ready to go.
The day came, July 22, 2011, we got a good night’s sleep and rose early to get to the convention center early to get our badges…We get to San Diego and our designated parking lot to discover that relatively close actually meant “oh my CRAP! Which way is the convention center and great mother of Abraham Lincoln! Are we there yet?”. We basically followed people with huge bags that said Comic Con on them…Holy cow I could fit both my children in those! We had false hope that we were getting close when we spotted the 30 foot tall giant smurf…we were wrong. Then we saw the convention center…only just over that bridge and 2 blocks to get to an unknown line that lead to nowhere. We came up on it from the south and guess where badge pickup was…the NORTH end! Onward we trudged…after all I was getting the Thundercats bag that could hold my children and be turned into a backpack! To lobby C and upstairs then back around some strange line set up to a lady that said “this way”…after committing our first born we got our badges. On to get our free combination backpack-child holder…They handed us this folded up mystery bag with 2 BOOKS on it and our lanyards, telling us that they weren’t allowed to say which bag it was…but we could trade with someone for the one we wanted. That was my first disappointment of the day…I opened it up to discover Bugs Bunny looking at me, NOT Lion-o! So we were like whatever let’s just find our way to the cool stuff…we looked around seeing no signs pointing us anywhere. I saw something that said “Ballroom A”…now what the hell is that supposed to mean?! So being relatively smart people we started following the crowd again…first to a bathroom then to the exhibit halls downstairs. I saw a very large black woman wearing something smallish, bright pinkish, very fuzzyish, and had a tail…I am pretty sure that image will be with me for the rest of my life! I don’t think God could scrub that from my brain with a steel brush!
We finally enter the exhibit hall and the first thing we see is a ginormous Optimas Prime! Holy crap, we walked right into the Hasbro booth! My husband was very happy as we looked at all the new toys being introduced. We stood in line to get our free toy, took some pictures and started walking on…to crap, crap and more crap. We saw some really awesome things that people were selling…apparently Angry Birds was the “thing” to buy. The problem with this buying business was that it seemed the prices were hiked up by like 50 to 75%...what a freakin’ rip! We only made a purchase when we got to the Chessex Booth, where we bought dice. The Marvel booth was pathetic, the Lego booth wasn’t giving anything away and all they had was a pile of yellow legos for people to build with, and most of the others were fairly pathetic as well. We finally made it to the Warner Brothers booth, right as the Thundercats thing was over…and the display of the new toys was a complete disappointment! I could compare it to something, but it would probably offend people. They didn’t even have the new toys for sale, and I was saving my money for that!!
At this point I was more than a little sad…we moved on and got an unidentifiable one-eyed purple alien/octopus plushy at the Capcom booth and the promise for a free t-shirt at the Nintendo game center at the Marriott next to the convention center. We discovered that they were charging for autographs…$30 for Xander on Buffy, and $50 for Stan Lee who wasn’t there.
We decided that this was a good time for lunch…they had a $10 burger combo special to Comic Con attendees at the Hilton, also next to the convention center. First: “Next to” does not mean close at all…within walking distance, yes…a hike and asking the people where to find, yes! We get there and ask for the said burger and fries, they bring out a hamburger on a bun with cheese upon it…no ketchup…no mayonnaise…no mustard…nothing to dip your fries in. After eating half of it my breathing starts to become a little labored…I look at the bun a little closer and ask the waiter if it is wheat, as I am allergic to wheat. He starts to panic a little as he runs for the chef…it is wheat (who puts a hamburger on a wheat bun?) and I ask for some Benadryl asap! Amazingly enough the Hilton has no ketchup, but they have Benadryl on hand…have they done this before? Thankfully the bun wasn’t cracked wheat or I would have been in an ambulance at this point…the Benadryl stopped the reaction and I was able to walk to the other “next to the convention center” hotel…at the other end of the convention center. Do you have any idea how big that place is?!?
We finally make it to the Marriott in the hopes of our free Nintendo t-shirt…that hotel is nothing but a maze and no one knows anything about the Nintendo gaming center. We finally find it and it becomes the high point in our day…Ryane played Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2, becoming a happy boy! I played Ocarina of Time on the 3DS and I became a happy girl! We got our free shirts and Zelda posters and rested for a while. We did LOVE the Wizards of the Coast booth, as we got a free deck of Magic Cards for playing the new game…Awesome! We also got to play the new Dungeons & Dragons game and got a poster. We got some more free stuff at the convention center and headed for the car when they closed. The walk to the car consisted of seeing a man walking around in his tidy whities…he didn’t even bother to dye them red or anything…another image that is not coming out of my head.
I did discover that we weren’t the only ones disappointed in this year’s convention, which is good because I was beginning to believe that we weren’t missing anything. I think that if we go again we will dress up, that should make it funner…at least I hope!
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