For those of you unaware, getting tickets to SDCC used to be fairly simple. Tickets would on on sale in the fall, and up until a few years ago never sold out. Even showing up the day of the con, one could easily buy a pass and go inside after going through the registration line. Then, a few years ago, something unheard of happened. 4 day passes for the con sold out a few weeks before the show opened. Everyone was surprised. That had never happened before. Sure, one day passes were still available, but for the first time ever one could not buy a 4 day pass for the convention by showing up on Thursday morning.
This was but the beginning of a trend.
The following year, 4 day passes sold out months before the con, and single day passes sold out for Friday and Saturday (typically the busiest days of the con) a few weeks before the show. The year after that, the entire convention sold out only a few weeks after going on sale. What used to take months to sell out now did so in less than two months. Demand was getting pretty insane, and I suddenly found myself wishing I had bought my tickets for the 2011 SDCC while still at the 2010 convention. I wasn't horribly worried though. It still took weeks to sell the show out. So long as I bought my tickets the day they went on sale, I'd be ok, right?
Wrong.
This year, buying a ticket to SDCC was harder than getting into a Pearl Jam concert circa 1994. Comic Con International themselves tried to sell tickets through their own site as they had traditionally done before, but after having their sight brought to its knees twice by the sheer volume of people trying to purchase tickets at once, they realized they would need help. They decided to go with a company called TicketLeap, who promised the Con organizers that they would be able to handle the load of tens of thousands of con fans all trying to buy tickets at once. For the third time now, a sale date and time was given, and fans (myself included) counted down until they could log on to buy passes for the 2011 show.
The day the tickets went on sale can best be described as a true exercise in patience. Unsurprisingly, TicketLeap couldn't handle the sheer volume of comic con fans either, and their site started to buckle. It didn't completely collapse, but for the vast majority of people trying to get in, all they saw was an error screen saying that traffic on the site was to high, and an instruction to hit the refresh button to try again. I don't know how everyone else's experience went, but I spent about 3 hours straight hitting refresh every minute or so, only to get the same error message again and again and again.
What was really annoying though was following Comic Con's official twitter account too, which kept updating people that tickets were indeed being sold, so keep trying. Then came the dreaded tweet I didn't want to see. 4 day passes were sold out. Before I could even log in, I had lost the opportunity to get my 4 day pass. I did eventually get in (thank god), but by the time I did, passes for Saturday were sold out as well. Taking what I could get, I bought passes for Thursday and Friday and fumed silently for a while.
As the following months went by though, my anger subsided. This would actually be a good thing, I told myself. It would change the way I went to con. With only two days to attend the show, I would be more focused on only wandering the floor and not spending time in lines for panels upstairs. The floor is mainly what I go for anyways. Plus, this way I could take Saturday and drive up to Disneyland instead. As far as backup plans go, Disneyland is always a good one.
So, yeah, I'm fine now with having only gotten the two passes. It worked out well in the end, and I may even try to do the same thing next year. That is, if I can manage to even get tickets to next year's show. I did try to pre-register for the 2012 show at this year's show, but once again I was schooled in just how big this convention has gotten. It turns out that the usual pre-registration ticket allotments that they sell at the convention (about 2,500) per day, were selling out minutes after they went on sale in the mornings. People were lining up at 5am just to buy their tickets for next year's show. I must not be a big enough nerd I decided, because I just don't have the desire to get up that early to buy tickets for a show that is a year away. Call me crazy, but I'm just too old for that shit. That's definitely on my Murtaugh List now.
Ok, enough about the ticket debacle. Let's discuss the 2011 San Diego Comic Con!!!
Surprisingly enough, what with all of the crazy demand for tickets, the show this year didn't seem as busy as it has over the last few years. I got onto the exhibit hall floor at around 9:30am on Thursday and it was pretty dead. I figured that since this would probably not last very long, I decided to head over to the bigger toy and movie studio booths to see what all they were showing off before the big crowds showed up. One of the first places I stopped at was the Mattel booth, which was giving out a bunch of cool free schwag including Stay Puft Marshmellow Man car air fresheners and this totally sweet miniature Rey Mysterio WWE action figure.
Surprisingly enough, what with all of the crazy demand for tickets, the show this year didn't seem as busy as it has over the last few years. I got onto the exhibit hall floor at around 9:30am on Thursday and it was pretty dead. I figured that since this would probably not last very long, I decided to head over to the bigger toy and movie studio booths to see what all they were showing off before the big crowds showed up. One of the first places I stopped at was the Mattel booth, which was giving out a bunch of cool free schwag including Stay Puft Marshmellow Man car air fresheners and this totally sweet miniature Rey Mysterio WWE action figure.
After leaving the Mattel booth, I wandered over to the movie booths but they weren't really giving anything away yet. I guess it was too early. Still though, I very much enjoyed walking through the big booths without having to navigate the crazy crowds. I spent an hour or two in the bigger booths looking at all of the cool large displays, and then moved back to the other end of the floor to begin my more traditional method of walking around the con floor. I call it the grid pattern (or The Grid for short if you're a Tron fan). I start at one end of the hall, and then walk up and down each aisle in a grid pattern, thus ensuring you see everything and that you don't miss any potentially cool booths.
This is actually a lot harder than it sounds. As you are walking through the exhibit hall, you are bound to come to a moment where at one of the big walkway intersections you see something really cool that you want to check out, but it's a few aisles away. The temptation to break the grid pattern is amazing. One must exercise both internal strength and patience to not step off of the assigned aisle by aisle pattern. If you do, you are pretty much guaranteed to miss something even cooler that your friends will tell you about after con, and then you'll be kicking yourself until next year and swearing that this time you won't get off of the grid. It's happened to me more times than I care to admit to. Take my advice, stay on The Grid!
Here are pics of some of the cool stuff I found on the Con floor.
It's the giant dog thing from Adventure Time!
This was set up for the new Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City game that Capcom is putting out this fall. I didn't get a chance to play the game, but I watched some other people play and it looks like it will be a lot of fun.
Voltron: Defender of the Universe. You can see to the left the WWE poster and the girl in the black shirt standing directly to the right of said poster. She's the one who was giving out the Rey Mysterio figures.
It's just your friendly neighborhood Spider-man, hanging from a street light. Nothing to see here.
It's the Tardis!!! For you non Dr. Who fans out there, that stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space.
I so envied these kids. I really had to hold myself back from jumping right into the center of the pile and burying myself in Legos.
It's a giant, life-size action figure of The Undertaker!
It's the G.I. Joe team, parachuting down from the ceiling!
As always, the cosplayers were out in force again this year. Of all of the people I saw though, I think the guy on the left was my favorite. Not only was his armor suit really well made, he actually looked a hell of a lot like Robert Downey Jr. too. I love it when cosplayers actually look like the characters they are dressing up as.
Giant, life-size, ultra realistic statue of Christopher Reeves as Superman. This thing creeps me the hell out. Don't look directly into its eyes. It will steal your soul. It's better to just run away. Run away as fast as you can!!!
Flying, radio controlled balloon sharks = super mega awesome and I want one RIGHT NOW!!!
This has to be the greatest Star Wars greeting card I have ever seen. Seriously. Ever!
As I said earlier, I don't really do the panel thing at all anymore. I just don't want to spend four hours in line to get a sneek peek at something that will be out in a few months anyways. I'd rather walk around and experience the sights and sounds of the con. Therefore, after Thursday came to a close I left the floor and went home to go get some much needed sleep. Ten hours of straight walking will do that to you.
I got up the next morning and hit up the floor again. It was a little busier on Friday than it had been the day before, so I avoided the big booths this time and wandered around checking out the comic booths and other smaller areas like Artist's Alley. After a while though, I decided to venture back into some of the bigger areas though in search of more free schwag. Man oh man am I glad that I did that. As I was walking by the BBC america booth, I saw some guy handing out things to passersby. I changed direction and headed towards him. As I got closer, I saw people putting things on their arms, but I could't see what they were. As I got up to the guy handing stuff out, he held out a small plastic square to me that had something inside of it and said, "If I give this to you, you have to put it on right now."
I looked around , but everyone who had been putting the thing on had already walked off. I was running blind here but I figured, what the hell. If it's something stupid, I'll wear it for about 100 feet then take it off. I wanted to know what was in the bag. I told the guy that I'd put it on and he gave me the plastic square. I opened it up and took it out, and it looked like a short, small piece of women's pantyhose. I put it over my arm, as instructed. As I did so, it finally became clear what this mysterious freebie was and I got really excited.
I looked around , but everyone who had been putting the thing on had already walked off. I was running blind here but I figured, what the hell. If it's something stupid, I'll wear it for about 100 feet then take it off. I wanted to know what was in the bag. I told the guy that I'd put it on and he gave me the plastic square. I opened it up and took it out, and it looked like a short, small piece of women's pantyhose. I put it over my arm, as instructed. As I did so, it finally became clear what this mysterious freebie was and I got really excited.
I had just received a fake set of full sleeve Dr. Who tattoos!!! Complete with the Tardis, Cybermen, Weeping Angels and gangsta style font that says "Bowties are cool" on it.
I'll admit it. I felt sort of bad ass wearing this thing on the floor. It actually looks pretty good if you keep the seam of it on the inside of your arm. I wore this for the rest of my time on the floor on Friday and didn't take it off until I got on the trolley to leave. Even then, I only took it off because it was really hot outside and my arm started to sweat. This was easily my favorite freebie of the entire convention. Well done BBC America booth. Well done indeed!
One thing that's cool about SDCC as it has gotten bigger and bigger is how the convention itself has expanded past the borders of just the convention center itself. It now encompasses almost all of downtown San Diego, with cool displays and events taking place blocks away from the exhibit hall floor. Every year there are usually one or two must see events taking place out in San Diego's Gaslamp district. This year it was South Park: The Experience.
Across the street from the convention center, Comedy Central had set up a huge area that was designed to look like part of South Park where attendees could take part in a number of events like tricycle races to creating their own South Park avatar. They were even giving away free t-shirts if you checked into the South Park Experience on Foursquare. It was a lot of fun and I have to give major props to Comedy Central and South Park itself for creating such a fun, interactive experience.
Oh, and I totally won the tricycle race that I took part in.
My time at the convention quickly coming to a close though. I'd spent the better part of two days walking around. I'd seen as much of what there was to be seen as I could and I was desperately in need of a good Carne Asada burrito, so I walked off of the floor of the San Diego Comic con for the the last time and said goodbye to the show. Even though getting tickets was a huge pain in the ass this year, and knowing that it will probably be even worse for next year's show, I'm still going to try to attend again.
This year marked my 20th year straight as a San Diego Comic Con attendee. I haven't missed a year since my first time back in 1992. It's a part of who I am. It's a yearly tradition that I know I will miss if I don't go at least for one or two days. After all, SDCC is the only place in the world where, as you're walking down regular city streets, you get to see stuff like this.
How could I NOT attend this show again next year?
See you later Comic Con. I had a blast this year. I hope I can do it again next year!
