Mikaela’s Journey to SDCC 2019: Part IV
Friday! Friday felt like the first reeeally big day of the convention. I managed to go to bed freaking early the night before, and sleep in until after 7am, so that was a win! By the time I was up and getting ready most of the guys had already ventured out into the world. Jonathan was at the Cosplay 5K, and Matt and Gui has headed to the convention centre. I didn’t have to be anywhere until after 9am, and had no desire to wait in the chaotic line to enter the convention centre. Derek was hoping to grab the sweet Metal Gear Mondo print, so he ventured into the line, unfortunately to no avail as by the time his spot in the line was entering the convention floor, all the doors had been opened and people were entering willy nilly anyways. So no sweet Mondo for us today.
It seems like it’s generally impossible to be able to get the exclusives offered at SDCC, as you either need to be randomly chosen, or you try to get in a line that is capped before you were even in the convention centre. The one silver lining to this is we have probably saved a whole pile of money!
Once I left the hotel room I scooted by the convention centre to see if I would have a better shot of organically just walking through the doors once they were all opened. I didn’t. So after hovering for a few minutes, and watching people be outraged that they had to stand in line with the masses, I moseyed on to my first appointment: HBO’s Watchmen experience.
I had stopped by Watchmen the day before and was told to come back the next morning during press preview hour. The person who I had initially talked to explained it in a way that left me thinking they were letting 30 people in at the top of each hour. That was totally inaccurate. In actuality the whole experience lasted about 2-3 minutes, so I don’t know where I had concocted my ideas about timing.
The activation was actually pretty freaking cool. It was really tiny, about the size of an elevator, and had doors that slide open to let you in. When you enter you stand in front of a screen which instructs you to move around the booth in order to calibrate the camera to your body.
Once calibrated, your own Dr. Manhattan transformation begins. You watch on screen as your body is electrified and then as your skeleton rebuilds into Dr. Manhattan. Through this process as you move around in real life you move around on the screen in whatever form you happen to be in. In my particular experience however I definitely was a wee bit confused and mostly just sooo still waiting for things to happen. It wasn’t until close to the end that I realized that I coulda been moving around a whole lot more! It was still pretty neat though and regardless of my own slowness, I’m glad I was able to get in there!
Following my transformation into Dr. Manhattan I met up with a grumpy, disappointed (about no Mondo), and very hungry Derek. We decided to head a little bit further away from all the action to find a restaurant that would be a little bit less crowded and hopefully not too expensive. We stumbled across a Mexican place that was suuuper delish! I had no idea what I was ordering but ended up with a sandwich full of yummy seafood.
Post food we had a much less grumpy Derek who was up for some activity! Word on the street was the line up for the Picard Museum wasn’t too insane so we decided to head that way, it also turned out that the lone was on a side walk that was totally shaded *the dreeeam*.
I am definitely not a Trekkie, and have never really been exposed to much Star Trek, I mean I know what it is And I know the Jean-Luc Picard is a played by Patrick Stewart, but other than that I got nothing. It was however still a really cool exhibit. It actually felt like a legit museum exhibition, with glass cases displaying different paraphernalia, and a little write up on the wall about the significance of each particular piece. Even as a none Trekkie I found it pretty interesting. It kinda made me wanna get into it with the upcoming show! (And it definitely got Derek invested, so I imagine I’ll at least watch some of it!)
By the time we got through the Picard Museum I was having a pee-mergency! We had been planning on heading over to the Detroit: Become Human fan meet up at a little pub we had been to a few nights before, and decided to expedite our stroll over there so I could have a pee ASAP.
While in the washroom I received a message that Bryan Dechart, who is the ‘voice actor’ for the character Connor in the game, had just walked into the place. (!!!!) I walked out into the pub and went to turn a corner immediately recognizing Bryan and a mystery girl sitting at a table getting prepped for fans to come in. Pretty danged exciting, I then used all of my will power, and knowledge of my awkwardness, to leave them alone and get back into the line up.
Once we got in we waited in line to meet them and grab signatures. If you’ve ever read my ‘I don’t know how to play video games’ articles, you’ll know that I am a BIG fan of Detroit: Become Human. I played the game all the way through a while back in a very short period of time, and then had to go back and play through the last few chapters a second time so I could get an ending where I didn’t accidentally kill Kara. I was secretly hoping that the super handsome Jesse Williams would be there, but was definitely not disappointed when we discovered the also super handsome Bryan Dechart was there! I feel so bad cause I’m not totally sure who the female actor was, but someone in line thought she was likely the main girl from the Eden Sex Club in the game. Regardless they were both super friendly, chatted with us for a minute, Bryan talked about how even his mom had played the game all the way through and done really well at it, and they took a selfie with us!
Next up we headed back to the convention centre, I to our Geekscape booth and Derek to the FunkoxSDCC booth for our one and only opportunity at getting SDCC exclusives. I was shocked and delighted to find out the Darryl McDaniels was at our booth selling and signing his DMC graphic novels. I was very confused when I walked up to the booth to find a huge crowd around it, and delighted when I figured out why! He even freestyled about hanging out at the Geekscape booth, such fun! He is supposed to come back to the booth Saturday so it’ll be fun to see what he gets up to next!
A little while later I met up with Derek again and we headed over to the Gaslamp district to catch the SYFY drum line. I had no idea what to expect from this but it was actually super fun! This group of drummers and general music makers and dancers took over the street playing drum line versions of popular music, while creating an awesome dance party. Then they invited members of the crowd up to do trivia competitions, hosted by Orlando Jones. It was super fun and so freaking random. SYFY is doing a really great job of creating a presence and a street party vibe both with this, as well as their trivia trolleys and karaoke bus.
We took a breather at the the hotel for a couple hours in the afternoon to catch up on writing and recharge both our batteries and ourselves. Then got ready to go out for the evening.
Due to Derek’s thoroughly preparedness we had scored general admission tickets to The Boys premiere party, where the first two episodes would be shown to an audience for the first time. This would be my first premiere party type situation and I was pretty danged I excited for it. However because it was generally admission, even though we technically had tickets it would still be a first come first serve thing. So, although the parted started sometime after 7pm, Derek assured me we needed to be in line before 5pm. Although I would usually roll my eyes and whine about this, I decided to be a good sport and go along with his plan. When we walked up to the Amazon Prime Video Experience activation I was immediately grateful for Derek’s habit of getting to places ridiculously early, as already there was a line up forming and chaos was about to ensue.
As we were standing near the entrance to the line up we over heard conversation between staff members discussing how many people would be let in and who would be controlling the line up etc.. Derek was luckily able to download the tickets onto his phone so we could prove we were legit and get into the line ASAP. When we got into the line at 4:45 it turned out there were approximately 150-200 people ahead of us already! We stood there for over 2.5 hours and made friends with the people in front of us, who turned out to also be Canadians, from Winnipeg! Initially I thought I would melt, and was so grateful for the umbrellas covering the line. Then the sun ducked behind the trees and immediately I wished I had brought a sweater! Luckily I didn’t have to be cold for too long as they had graciously provided blankets for the viewing, which took place in the open space of the Prime Video Experience area.
The Amazon activation was the first one we had gone to during Wednesday’s press preview, and it has been my favourite one so far (although Pennyworth’s set up was wicked awesome too). So it was neat to see the open space transformed for the party.
The central structure was being used as the DJ booth, as well as another short The Boys performance, There were bars and food stands for people to enjoy, the open area had been filled with rows of seats for the screening, and The Boys activation was still being run for party goers to experience. Shortly before they began airing the first episode the stars of the show all filed into the activation area, and I really hope they got to experience it they was we all do, as I imagine it would be pretty trippy. It was very Meta as some would say.
Right before the show began there was an introduction by Eric Kripke, and all the cast was brought to the front of the stage for applause and pictures. It was all very exciting and pretty cool to be a part of. I was a little disappointed I didn’t get to rub shoulders with anyone big and famous (as far as I know), and especially disappointed that Seth Rogan (who is part of the providing team) wasn’t on site (as far as I know), but really those were just little things in the big scheme and the experience in all was absolutely super rad!
It was also an effective marketing strategy, cause I definitely want to see more of the show now! It’s such a neat premise to consider what it would mean if super heroes weren’t all happy sunshine and following all the rules. There were lots of laughs and a few shock and awe moments. I think it went over pretty well and I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes off!
We got back to the hotel around 11pm to a room full of sleeping people, and after trying not to wake anyone while stumbling around in the dark, I passed the eff out!
