Category: Conventions

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WonderCon 2008We spent Saturday at WonderCon in San Francisco, the first time either of us had attended the convention. It’s run by the same people as Comic-Con International, but it’s more comics-focused and considerably smaller. Which is not to say that it’s tiny, and the floor did get crowded in the middle of the day, but it was a much less stressful convention than San Diego tends to be.

Update: Photos are up!

Getting There

The trip to San Francisco was spread over several days during which we stopped at various tourist traps and visited friends. We got into town late Friday afternoon and spent the evening visiting family.

Line in front of Moscone CenterSaturday morning, shortly before 11:00, we arrived at Moscone Center. We could tell we were at the right end of the convention center by the Stormtrooper waving people along. 😀 The pre-reg line ran to the end of the block, but at least it didn’t wrap us around the corner. And when it started drizzling, they opened up a ballroom as a holding area and moved everyone inside. Clearly, they decided to get people in as quickly as possible instead of worrying about ticket fraud (probably more of an issue with CCI anyway). Instead of scanning the tickets’ barcodes, printing labels, etc., they had two people standing at the front of the line: one with a cardboard box, the other with a bunch of blank badges. As we walked past, one collected printouts and tickets, checked whether it was a one-day or 3-day pass, and put it in the box. The other handed out blank badges of the appropriate type. We were in the convention proper within 15 minutes.

The Exhibit Hall

The main floor reminded me a lot more of SDCC than Wizard World Los Angeles, though everything was smaller. Continue reading →

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I’ve driven 500 miles in the last 2 days. We’re heading up to San Francisco for WonderCon this weekend, stopping along the way to visit friends in Silicon Valley and family in San Francisco. We ended up with an extra day at the beginning of the trip, which we used to visit Hearst Castle.

We left around mid-morning on Wednesday, driving through 2 hours of crappy Los Angeles traffic until things finally cleared up out toward Ventura. Along the way we saw something we’d never seen before: Our Prius runs in part on a battery, which is recharged by the gas engine, by coasting, and by braking. It has an 8-bar battery gage that mostly moves around in the 2–7–bar range. Heading down the pass into Camarillo, for the first time, I saw it fill all 8 bars.

We took the 101 most of the way, branching off at San Luis Obispo to take Pacific Coast Highway up to San Simeon. With all the rain we’ve had this winter, the countryside is amazingly green. The last few times I remember taking the 101 up the coast, it was summer, so the hills were all golden brown. We lucked out with the weather: instead of the constant rain I was expecting from the forecast, we only had scattered showers.

We spent Wednesday night in San Simeon. Dinner was at a restaurant called The Sow’s Ear in Cambria, which was very good.

Blurry Lunar Eclipse through cloudsWe actually managed to see the lunar eclipse. Sort of. The cloud cover was just light enough to see the bright sliver shortly before totality. It screened out the reddish light completely. I have a blurry picture of the just-as-blurry eclipse.

Neptune Pool at Hearst Castle.Thursday morning we went to Hearst Castle for the morning’s first tour. We didn’t get the one we wanted (Tour 2) because it didn’t start until 9:20, and we wanted to get to San Jose by 5:00. If I could make one change to their website, it would be to list actual tour times. We got rained on a bit, but it was a good overview of just how eclectic the house is. Basically, if William Randolph Hearst was traveling and saw a piece of a building that he liked, he’d buy it, ship it back to California, and have it built into his house.

After stopping briefly in Cambria, we took highway 46 across the hills to catch up with the 101 and head north to San Jose. Partly I wanted to avoid the long, twisty, cliffside stretches of PCH, and partly we wanted to avoid getting caught in the bike race. The route goes past cattle ranches, empty hills, and wineries. At one point there’s a fantastic view of Morro Bay off in the distance. (Update: We took the same drive a year later and caught the view in the sunlight)

View of Morro Bay and Morro Rock from Highway 46
We made it to San Jose around 4:30, and managed to get tickets for the last tour of the Winchester Mystery House. Yes, we toured two big, rambling mansions in one day. It was interesting to compare the way the tours treated the two places. With Hearst Castle, it was very much a museum tour. Everything was preserved as exactly as possible, including all the furniture and decorations, and they admonished you not to touch anything. And the docents were walking encyclopedias. With Winchester, it was much more casual. The speeches felt more canned, and the tour guide wasn’t concerned with anybody touching anything except for a few places where the floors or tiles were still original.

After the tour, we met up with our friends for dinner. I don’t remember the name of the place, but it was a tapas restaurant on Santana Row. Also quite good. Edit: Katie points out that it was called Consuelo.

Tomorrow: On to San Francisco. Not sure whether we’re going to WonderCon on Friday or not—it depends on what else is available (since they keep promising massive downpours of rain)—but we’ll definitely be going on Saturday. For one thing, I’m hoping to get to the premiere of Justice League: New Frontier. I really liked Darwyn Cooke’s original mini-series linking the dawn of the Silver Age and the dawn of the space age, and what I’ve seen of the animation style looks quite promising.

OK. It’s 11:30. Time to get some sleep.

Update: filling in a few pictures.

Continued in: Saturday/WonderCon and Friday–Sunday

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The Beat has a couple of follow-up posts on the San Diego Comic-Con hotel issue: first, a wrap-up of the experience, then a post that puts San Diego into perspective, what makes it different from cities like New York or Los Angeles, and why just moving to Las Vegas won’t solve everything.

GTD In Space: Seven Habits of Highly Effective Spaceship Captains ranging from James T. Kirk to Malcolm Reynolds. (via ***Dave)

And, for the WTF-worthy, there’s Computer Love Day. As Mandriva puts it in their mailing:

Valentine’s Day is nearly here… February 14th, 2008. But think about it, who do you hang out with, who shares the good times and the bad ones, who drives you crazy but keeps your life together?………..Your computer, and it’s time to say it out loud: I love my computer!

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Tomorrow morning at 9:00 PST, rooms in the convention block go on sale for this year’s Comic-Con International. I was going to write up a bunch of tips last week, but CCI beat me to it by launching their own blog, Staying In San Diego. Visit it today, because it’ll probably be swamped tomorrow. (Though if it’s actually hosted by TypePad, direct visits may not take it down.)

Update Wednesday Morning: Well, I made it through. Oddly enough, in exactly the same amount of time as last year. I had the confirmation number at 10:04. Weird.

Once again, I was completely unable to get through by phone. The website was hit and miss, and actually crashed at one point, serving up only a “500 Server Busy” error. Right after I entered my name and address for a reservation. Nice. The current blog entry is filling up with complaints from people having similar or worse experiences.

Update 2: The Beat has a growing comment thread as well, and notes that the con hotel blog is making noises about trying to get Travel Planners to fix the problems. I think having an official place where they can read exactly what people are going through is helping convey the fact that the reservation system is broken, and that it’s not just the imbalanced supply and demand for rooms. (end of update 2)

I’m going to repeat some of my criticisms about the actual website, which seems designed expressly to make it bog down under this load: Continue reading →

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Spent a good chunk of last night looking at travel websites. Accomplished 2 things:

  • Arranged for a hotel to stay in San Francisco next month.
  • Arranged for a back-up hotel for San Diego Comic Con, just in case we can’t get a room through the convention desk.

Hotel rooms during Comic-Con have become a scarce commodity over the last few years, as attendance has shot up by thousands (it actually sold out before the doors opened last year!) but only a few hundred new hotel rooms have been added to Downtown San Diego. Rooms in the convention blocks have been selling out in a matter of hours. The con website has crumbled under the stress, and the phone lines have caved. Last year it took me over an hour just to get through. This year, they haven’t even published a list of which hotels are involved, and it looks like they’ve dropped fax from their options. And booking downtown hotels directly isn’t an option: either they’re sold out, or they want $350/night-plus.

So, just in case I can’t get a room downtown when they go on sale next week, we can at least stay someplace near a trolley station. And if I can get a closer room, even if they charge me $25 to cancel the first reservation, it’s worth the peace of mind.

(Originally posted at LiveJournal. Brought over here to fit with the rest of my convention posts, and as a snapshot of the days when you could get a backup hotel. Not downtown, but in…it might’ve been Old Town? In any case, I cancelled the room once we got our confirmation from the convention block hotel sale.)

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Night EyesOur first night in San Diego, we picked up our badges for Comic-Con, then went out to see Avenue Q. We took the trolley back, and as we walked up the hill from the Little Italy trolley stop, we saw a pair of giant cartoon eyes looking out over the city from a balcony near the top of a nearby building. I thought they might be satellite dishes with convenient lighting, but then I remembered the number of odd publicity stunts connected to the Simpsons movie. No idea whether it’s related or not.

The shuttle route from our hotel to the con passed by this mural, which plays with the nature of the constructed reality. The wall is a newspaper page. The face is a sculpture, a painting. The hands holding the chisel and paintbrush, of course, are just as artificial as the face being created.

Mural on a building

We noticed an interesting coincidence at Horton Plaza. Just a few doors down from the Post Office was an Aeropostale clothing store:

Aeropostale and Post Office

Bench: Sit. Stay. Heal.This bench was in front of a hotel, probably the Hilton San Diego Gaslamp. I suppose that makes the pun on dog training more appropriate, since it’s a block away from Petco Park stadium.

Quiznos DrinkI’ve always figured standing out on a street in a mascot costume must be miserable, especially in summer. But how much worse to be dressed as a giant soft drink? I suppose this would go with last year’s walking sandwich.

Now, you have to wonder about AMN Healthcare. It’s clearly a set of initials…but how often do people complain about health, insurance, and the healthcare industry? It’s just one letter off from “Damn Healthcare.”

AMN Healthcare

Awning: Sin NiteclubBack to the shuttle route, next to (or possibly connected to) the Martini Ranch spotted in a previous installment of this series, was this nightclub that made no pretensions about what people are going there for. Also note that it’s a “niteclub” — is that a nightclub with fewer calories?

Then there’s this place, which employed the ultimate euphemism:

F-Street: San Diego's ultimate sensual well being adult store

That’s got to be the most convolutedly delicate way of saying “sex shop” that I’ve ever seen.

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I wanted to call this “Oddball Comic-Con,” but decided that might be a little too close.

Stormtrooper Elvis poses with SauronStormtrooper Elvis has become such a fixture that I almost didn’t bother taking a picture of him when I saw him this year… but then I noticed his pose, and the Sauron statue in the background.

Free Hugs

There were a number of people walking around with “Free Hugs” signs, most of them women, but a few men. I never actually saw someone take one of them up on the offer, though.

Man holding up a book and a sign saying "Free!"On the subject of “Free” signs, I found it amusing that the Bantam Dell booth was trying to attract people with a hand-lettered cardboard sign proclaiming, “FREE!”

Circle of lights with cross-bars.
At one point I looked upward at the ceiling of Ballroom 20. With The Dark is Rising being made into a movie, I saw this lighting fixture and cross-beams and immediately thought of the Sign of Fire.

Flyer Man: FrontThis guy had the ultimate cheap costume: A roll of tape. He just took every freebie flyer that was handed to him, and taped it to himself.

Baseball cap: (fu) CKY (ou)

There’s apparently a band called CKY. Some of their merchandise manages to work the name into a rather rude saying…

There was a group of women in identical red dresses, with identical hairdos, and identical shoes. I saw a few of them wandering the floor on Saturday, but didn’t realize just how many there were until we left the convention center for dinner, and saw them crossing the street.

30+ Women in Red Dresses

Edit: Milla Jovovich in Resident EvilMystery solved? The Resident Evil panel featured 17 Milla Jovovich doubles wearing her iconic red dress. This looks like more than 17, and the dresses don’t seem to be ripped in the right place, but this could be them.

Continued in Strange Sights of San Diego.