Mikaela’s Journey to SDCC 2019: Part III

Thursday started once again with a danged early morning! This time I was prepared though, my alarm was set for 7 so being woken at 6:30 was no bigs!

As I got ready I listened to Stan Lee’s A Trick of Light, both in preparation for the activation I was about to attend, and because I started it Wednesday and am already so into it! While standing in line I was definitely wishing I had made room in my tiny little fanny pack for some air pods so I could be listening while I wait!

Walking into the experience is like walking into one of those mirror mazes you find at a carnival, where you just hope that you don’t accidentally smash your face into a mirror. Quickly the dark room lit up with a storm scene taking over all of the surfaces and surrounding you with incredible audiovisuals. While simultaneously listening to narration directly from the book that sets the scene for you.

From there I walked into a dark room full of bright red light strings that created barriers and walkways that you had to navigate. There were a few areas where you’d stand under a cone type thing and different portions of the book would play, accompanied by various lighting effects.

After this room you are ushered down a hallway, with Stan Lee’s voice accompanying you out as he describes the concept of the book and asks the question: ‘What is more real? The world we are born into, or one we create for ourselves?’.

All in all it was a pretty neat experience and I am stoked to get through the book so I can hear how the story progresses! And while in line waiting for it to open I chatted with one of the other people in line and was so proud of myself for basically networking!

When I had planned out Thursday it felt very full and had me rushing from place to place to place, with my next scheduled stop to be at the mondo booth so I could nab a spot in line for the It poster to drop at noon, with a signing by the artist Daniel Danger (who’s art is hanging on many of our walls at home). However as plans generally do, this one fell apart. As we were walking, towards the Audible experience for me and the convention centre for Derek, first thing in the morning Mondo dropped the bomb that they’ve decided to change their line process. Where as I thought I could line up around 11 for the 12 print drop, it turned out that you actually had to get there first thing in the am and line up to get a ticket which gives you a time slot to come pick up your print. Luckily Derek was on his way to the WWE/Mattel panel, so instead of heading straight to that room he detoured to Mondo and picked up the ticket right off the bat (and still managed to have sweet wwe seats!).

In addition to planning on hitting Mondo I had budgeted my time for coming out of the Stan Lee/Audible event at 11am. So when I didn’t have to go to Mondo and I got out of Audible at 930, I didn’t really know what to do with myself. I hadn’t planned on having free time until after my 2pm interview, so I felt a little floundery!

I ended up deciding to avoid the convention centre and instead just wander around the outside activations and see what was up now that they were all up and running. Everything has huge lines and lots of people (though as I learned later in the day it was still actually pretty chill, and I didn’t know what ‘lots of people’ really meant!).

I walked over to the Petco Interactive Zone, mostly because I knew there was a bad ass giant unicorn there!! As I walked over I was handed a few things and quickly regretted my plan to not bring a backpack, though I would have been such a sweaty Betty with a bag on my back cause it was hot AF… which left me feeling awkward because I knew I didn’t have enough danged sunscreen on!

Regardless the Petco Interactive Zone was pretty danged neat. Ripley Beleive It or Not had a crazy car show set up, featuring a vehicle shaped like a stiletto, a motorbike mad of bone, a wooden Ferrari, a fire truck shaped coffin and many more. There were a few other set ups in the area: Giant Unicorn by Pepsi, Giant shark by Shark week, Range Rovers people could sing in for Carpool Kareoke, amongst a few others.

I headed over to check out the HBO Watchmen activation, but decided to come back the next day for press preview. At this point I was hot and tired and didn’t have any appointments, but desperately needed to pee. So I headed over to the opening of the Panda Express Pop-Up, celebrating their new Sichuan Hot Chiken and Pep-Pep the Sichuan Wonderpepper. It was actually totally fun, everyone in there was so excited and yelling and dancing, great atmosphere! And the chicken was suuuuper yummy. Apparently this chicken is only around for a limited time so head out to your local Panda Express to grab some! (We don’t have Panda Express in Canada. So don’t listen to me if you’re up there in the great white north… well listen to me, but not about Panda Express!)

After that I met up with Derek at the Prime Video Experience again, see the thing is there was a secret way to get comic books, and we didn’t figure that out the first time around. So we went back in hopes of finding this. Through Twitter we knew there was something about a phone number, which we found. Upon calling the phone number we were instructed to find a comic in a box on the grounds, which we found. The comic told us to find a code on a license plate, which we found. And then when we gave that code to the right people we were given a card to come back for comics at 3:30pm. This filled me with regret cause had we found it the day before we probably woulda been able to go right in, but as it stood I had places to be around that time, so unfortunately we were unable to grab The Boys comic book… but I’m still super into it so if I really want more than the tv show I can just buy the book!

After amazon I dropped Derek at the hotel, had a snack, and ventured over to the convention centre to do an interview with the Impact Theory people about the Neon Future comic book. Which you will be able to read about more in the future.

After amazon and interviews Derek and I met up and wandered The floor a bit, then over to the Detective Pikachu Acrivation, where you walk into what looks like a train car and is a representation of Ryme City. It was pretty neat with many things built out of bright yellow fun fur, and lots of Detective Pikachu paraphernalia. My favourite room though was the last one, which had bright yellow fun fur lining all the walls and a giant Pikachu there for you to pose with! I am very grateful to the people who let us come in to take a look as it was a very last minute decision and a super neat experience.

After this we wandered around the Gaslamp district and I realized my early morning shenanigans had mislead me completely, as now it was actually busy, where as before although there was plenty of people around, it was not ‘busy’ at all.

After a little wandering we stopped and had another round of Pep-Pep chicken from Panda Express. Then paused for a little while to have a desperately needed beverage and catch up on writing a bit. Then it was time to head to the Pennyworth party.

This was my first specific press invite ‘party’ with drinks and hours d’oeuvres and famous people. Although to be fair I’m not really that great at knowing who famous people are, I did actually know who one of these actors is. Her name is Paloma Faith, she is a British singer, and I saw her ten years ago at a burlesque show in East London. It was the final performance of this particular burlesque troupe so they had a bunch of invited performance guests and there were a few hundred patrons spread out over a couple floors and I was so proud of myself for going out to something I was interested in by myself while living in a different city and not knowing anyone. And although I remember the whole show as fantastic, Paloma Faith was the one person from it whom I followed their career and listen to her music on the regular.

So imagine my excitement when I was actually invited to a party that she would be attending. Whoweee. I’m not usually a fan girl about much, but I was excited to be in the same place at the same time.

The party was held in the same place as the activation, and I imagine it was much of the same stuff, except we were served drink and food. There was a singer, and photo ops, and different rooms set up to resemble settings from the show. There was even a room set up as a torture room, where police sat you in an electrical chair and pretended to beat you while the photo booth took pictures. It was super neat. And after a couple drinks I steeled my nerves and approached Paloma. At the time she was petting a dog so naturally I got distracted by that and focused on the dog until she had actually walked away. But a few minutes later I found her again, and informed her of our ten year history, by which she was non too impressed. But oh well, she was polite and kind and I guess we will just have to become best friends some other way, some other day.

After the party I was thoroughly wiped. And so instead of heading to dinner with the rest of the boys, I sent Derek on his way to have fun with his friends and headed over to the hotel room to focus on writing and hopefully Crash suuuuper early. As I am finishing this up we are heading toward 9:00 pm and I am very hopefully that I will actually get a decent nights sleep!