I had the privilege this year of attending San Diego Comic Con for the first time. My wife was invited to speak on a panel, so we booked a flight and off we went. I decided to write up a review of the experience from the perspective of a first timer and give some general advice to anyone else who may attend it for the first time in the coming years.
First of all, if you don’t get a hotel in the immediate area of the convention center, don’t worry. The city has a light rail system that works really well. My wife and I stayed in old town. We sent $20 each to buy the comic con transit pass which gave us unlimited rides on the light rail during the con. It took about 15 minutes to travel each day.
Thursday
We arrived at the convention center at about 9:00am. This was our first mistake. At this time, there is nothing open yet, but a lot of people have also arrived and are waiting to get in. All you can do at this point is join the line. The next day we arrived at 10am. All the doors are open and we just walked in. This of course doesn’t work if you are aiming to get in to any early panels but is more convenient if your just going to the exhibition hall. Each day, make a choice. Either get there early and get inline for something or come later and just walk in after the doors are open.
The exhibition hall is a wonderful chaotic nightmare. A massive room of vendors covering every aspect of geek culture. Its also crammed full and difficult to move around in. My wife and I had a hard enough time trying to stay together. I can’t image trying to move around with a larger group. We purchased a number of items and spent some time chatting with vendors. Most of the vendor will have business cards so you can find them later if you are on the fence about a purchase. I recommend take a picture of the business card rather than taking it. It was much easier to flip through them them on my phone then have a loose stack in my bag.
We then headed upstairs to see our first panel of the weekend. Chris Perkins, game designer for Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition, was giving a talk on being a good dungeon master. We had no idea how busy it would be so we went 45 minutes early. There were maybe 30 people already waiting but no formal line yet. A few minutes later we were organized into a queue. It didn’t take long for the line to grow to a few hundred people. Then a commotion started. Apparently some people were sent to the wrong line when they arrived and were quite angry to discover they had been waiting in the wrong place on the other side of the hallway. With no easy fix all they could do was join the correct line.
This would become a theme of the weekend. Receiving contradictory info from different volunteers as they did their best of manage the crowd. Finally the doors opens and we were able to go in. The room was laughable small compared to the demand. Holding only 320 people. When we entered, more than 2/3rds of the seats were already filled from people that went to the previous panel and stayed. Comic Con does not clear out the rooms between panels. Once you are in a room, you can stay all day if you want. We were lucky to get in. Most of the people that joined the line after us were turned away. Each line you join is a gamble. No matter how early you get there, you never know if you are going to get in. The panel was great. Its really a shame it wasn’t in a bigger room. After that we spend some more time shopping and them met up with some friends.
Friday
Friday and Saturday are the big day for cosplay. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how incredible some of the costumes are. We spent some time just wandering around and some time chatting with cosplayers. We went up to the mezzanine level and saw some Star Wars cosplayers interacting with a very realistic, full sized, remote controlled R2-D2. We also went outside and saw people in medieval armor having a sword fight. These were not amateur cosplayers, The area was roped off. It was some kind of organized event. Really was not something I expected see.
We had considered seeing a panel at 3:30 but at 1:00, the line for the room was already down the hall and out of the building. Hard pass. The best advice I can give someone attending for the first time is forget the big name panels. Forget anything with a celebrity unless you willing to wait all day and still risk not getting in. There are 20-25 panels every hour, and if your willing to go the less popular ones, your going to find some real gems.
We checked the schedule and saw there was a live digital drawing panel from a Japanese manga artist, Katsuya Terada. I had never heard of him before, but we went in. No line, just walked in 5 minutes before it started and sat down. It was great. They had a projector set up so you could see his screen while he worked. Over the course of 50 minutes, we completed and colored a sketch while taking questions from the audience. Now, I’ll admit, its not a style of art that personally speaks to me, but there is sometime satisfying about seeing a master demonstrate his craft.
The convention is big enough that it take place beyond the convention center. Many of the smaller panels are held in the ballrooms of the nearby hotels. We decided to go find where my wife’s panel was being held. We still had a few hours but we wanted to make sure we knew where to go. After we located the room, we wondered through the hotel for a bit and stumbled on an art exhibit. “The ito-verse.” Junji Ito is a Japanese horror artist. His work is amazing and deeply unsettling. It only took 10 minutes to walk though but it was something interesting we didn’t expect to find. You don’t need to schedule every moment. Give yourself time to just wander around and stop into things you find. Even if it not something that normally interests you. You never know what you might discover.
We grabbed some dinner and headed over to my wife’s panel. Its was a panel on using cosplay during charity live streams to help drive viewer engagement and raise more money. Its a bit of a niche topic, but that’s part of the beauty of these large conventions. There’s a great opportunity to present and attend discussions that are perhaps too narrow for smaller conventions. Although the panel was great and they presented some wonderful advice, the panel had a small audience. Why? Not become the topic was niche, but because of the time slot. 8Pm on a Friday. By contract, I watched a panel the next day on getting work in Hollywood as a production accountant. An equity niche topic, but they had a turn out that was four times bigger in the same room. The only difference was it was 4pm on Saturday. We found each day that late panels were criminally under attended. Its make sense. People are on their feet all day. They get tired. They want dinner. The exhibition hall closes at 7pm and people leave. So don’t neglect the after 7pm panels. There’s some great stuff and you have fewer people to compete with.
Saturday
Behind the convention center was a large area set up for Hulu in promotion of their animated shows. We heard that it was fun, so we decided to start there. We walked up a little after 9:30am and located the end of the line. Since this was outside, it was completely separate for the line to get in to convention center. The staff member who was monitoring the end of the line told it it would be a 5 hour wait. Nope! Not worth it. I’m sure it would have been fun, but I wasn’t willing to wait. We did some shopping and then looked for some more panels.
We spotted “Quick Draw!” a panel where three animators would be given prompts and have to do some funny drawings. The drawing were projected on to the wall, just like the panel we attended the day before. There were no names in the description other than the host. We walked in a sat down. The three animators worked at Disney, Hannah Barbara and Mad magazine. Legends in their field! The room was thankfully large, holding 2,160 people. Although it was mostly full, we were still able to walk in 15 minutes before it started and get seats. By the way, if you do go to a panel and its full, just go pick something else. There are many panels with no lines that you can walk into at the last minute.
At end of the panel, they announced the next panel in the room was a voice actors panel. Including voice actors from Disney and Hanna-Barbera. Not something we planned on watching, but we stayed and enjoyed it very much. Again, be flexible with your schedule. You never know what you’re going to stumble into. The actors discussed their careers for while and then did blind reading of a fairy tale script, switching to different voices through out the show. A bit of live theater we were not expecting and completely delightful.
At his point my wife had an industry event to attend and I had a few hours to wonder around on my own. I decided to stick to the smaller hotel ball rooms and check out some of the more niche panels. I caught the second half of “Collecting rare editions of Stephen King books.” Followed by getting into “Hollywood production accounting.”
I found my wife after her event and we grabbed some dinner. We returned to the Con at 7:30. As expected, the line for the cosplay masquerade was crazy long. It seems to be the only late evening event that draws a real crowd. We skipped that and found the panel for “Comics Lab” Its a podcast from two guys that are professional comic artists that discuss working in the business. We had never heard of them before, but in we went. This was another panel that was mostly empty due to the time slot and absolutely hilarious. The hosts, Dave Kellett and Brad Guigar, put on a great show, and I will be listening to their podcast from now.
Sunday
Sunday we had to catch out flight home in the afternoon. We stopped by the Hulu area again which was just a busy as the day before, did some last minute shopping and said goodbye to some friends. This has gone on long enough, so I won’t go into anymore detail. But, I want to mention that most cons I’ve attended are far less busy on the last day. Not this one. It was just as packed as every other day. If you want to pick up anything last minute, you’ll still need to fight through the crowd.
Overall, It was a great experience. If you are a nerd in anyway, I suggest going at least once in your life. Thanks for reading.
- Written by Dan @StayOnYourCouch