We've never...been to Comic Con

Harry Potter + Doctor Who

I don't know how many people are aware of this (maybe it's super obvious?) but I'm a huge nerd.  In my defense, I didn't really stand much of a chance of not being one.  I mean, two of my siblings are engineers, my dad is an engineer, his dad is an engineer…  And for anyone who knows engineers (or happens to be one), you know the stereotype is there for a reason.  And so with that kind of upbringing, I am prone to love some pretty dorky things.  My main loves, or perhaps obsessions, are Harry Potter and Doctor Who.  If someone tells me they don't love Harry Potter, my heart literally breaks a little, so if that's the case, just keep it to yourself, please.

Anyway, these 2 loves were pretty much the only reason I went to Comic Con, and despite some people making fun of us (*cough cough* Mike), we were pretty excited.  Going in, we really had no idea what to expect.  They had an app with this schedule of panels about various shows and topics that were going on throughout the day. And so initially, we assumed that we would just go from one panel to the next.  Turns out, we only ended up going to 1 1/2 panels the whole time we were there.

But we did wait in a LOT of lines.  

We didn't go up until Friday afternoon because of work stuff, but our goal was to go to Tom Felton's panel which had originally been planned for 3:30. However, it seems that sometime that same day, they had changed the listed time to be 3 o'clock.  We unfortunately didn't get to the convention center until just before 3 when we found a massive line of people already lined up for Tom Felton's panel.  Turns out, it really didn't actually start until 3:30, so I'm not sure why the time had been changed, but in any case, we waited in line for about 40 minutes, just to be told that the room was full and they weren't letting any more people in.  It was very devastating (mostly to poor Cat who didn't have Doctor Who to fall back on).

Waiting in line for the Doctor Who panel

Before we had even been told we couldn't get into Tom Felton's panel, people had already started lining up for the Doctor Who panel (featuring Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, and Billy Piper!) which wasn't for another…2 hours!  For that one, though, everyone had to buy tickets ahead of time, so we knew we would get into that, but we ended up hopping in line right then anyways in hopes of getting better seats.  So then, we waited in line for another 2 hours.  At this point, Comic Con is looking pretty lame since literally all we've done is wait in line. 

In the Tardis

Luckily, the Doctor Who panel ended up being AWESOME.  Matt Smith was exactly how I had imagined him being--just so hilarious and sweet.  And he and Karen Gillan played off each other really well with a lot of playful bantering.  Matt Smith kept making fun of her wrists (apparently they creep him out because they are so tiny) and all of their accents were adorable.  Billy Piper was interesting…I liked her but she was a little weirder than I expected.  She seemed a little drugged up almost. And she couldn't sit still which was kind of hilarious. She was constantly changing positions and slouching.  Matt Smith called them "Pipes" and "Gills" which was cute.  

And they were really good at handling awkward questions. There were a couple of people who gave some big back stories about how Doctor Who literally saved their lives because their mom had died and they almost committed suicide or stuff like that (which, I'm not trying to sound insensitive because it is very sad but that doesn't mean it wasn't uncomfortable for the rest of us).  They handled it so well, though, and were so sweet. They even invited one lady, who couldn't stop crying while trying to ask her question, to go and sit with them on the stage for the rest of the panel, which probably just made that lady's life complete.

After that, we pretty much just walked around and took pictures.  Some random group of people dressed as Harry Potter characters pulled us into a picture with them and we got some pictures in the Tardis and with a really creepy weeping angel (I know she was fake, but I still couldn't stand close to her for more than a few seconds).  We also ate a 7 dollar slice of pizza because we were super hungry and that was pretty much as cheap as it got there.

Random Harry Potter group

For the next day, we had decided that since we didn't get to go to Tom Felton's panel, we would split the cost of a single autograph so that we could at least meet him.  I'm not sure who sets the price of autographs and photo-ops and if the celebrities have a say but every celebrity was vastly different.  I'm pretty sure his was one of the cheaper options and it was still $45 for a single autograph.  I think a couple celebrities were $100 for an autograph, which is crazy.  Can you imagine someone paying $100 just to have you sign your name and shake your hand?!?!  And it sounds like every celebrity had different rules. Like some offered selfies as an option and some would let you meet them without buying something whereas others wouldn't.  It just made things really confusing and difficult to figure out what we were allowed to do and not allowed to do. 

Getting attacked by the weeping angel

Anyway, when we got in line, we found out that you had to pay for a selfie when we had thought you could ask for one at the same time as getting an autograph (wishful thinking, I guess).  However, they let us exchange the autograph for a selfie.  And again, with the lines -- we waited in line for about an hour I think.  I feel bad for the celebrities. They literally sit there and sign autographs all day. 

While waiting in line, though, the line zigzagged right in front of where Tom was sitting.  And just listening to him talk to other people was the cutest.  He was so genuine and so sweet to people, even to the girl who I'm pretty sure was trying to convert him to Mormonism during her 2 minutes with him (I'm not even kidding).  And his accent wasn't bad either ;).  I didn't realize I had a crush on Tom Felton until we were in line to see him. 

Selfie with Tom Felton!

Our friend, Cat, was seriously going to have a heart attack out of pure excitement to meet him (She loves Harry Potter even more than I do, I think).  And so she was trying to plan out her conversation with him, which was hilarious.  She wanted to ask him about his dog because apparently he tweets about it all the time (Good thing she didn’t because we found out later that his dog is good and dead.)  He shook all of our hands and repeated our names as we introduced ourselves (he even threw in a "my love" with my name -- how cute is he), talked to us for a minute, and offered to take the selfie himself because as he said, he is a "Selfie Master".  He's definitely one of my favorite celebrities now.

Our awesome glitter tattoos 

So after that, we didn't really do much.  We ended up leaving to go get lunch since we didn't want a $7 slice of pizza again, and when we got back, we got some awesome (and nerdy!) glitter tattoos.  We tried to go to a small panel about the Muppets but it was so incredibly boring. We ended up leaving before it was over and just walked around and looked at the artwork and people's costumes before we ended up heading back to good old Provo.  We also debated going to their Sci-Fi speed dating for a while but decided against it for obvious reasons.

In the end, Comic Con was not really what I had expected.  It was a huge money pit and there was a lot more waiting in lines than I had expected.

But am I glad I went? Yes.  I mean, I got to see Matt Smith and meet Tom Felton!  Will I ever go again? Mmm…Probably not.