7/22/18 to 7/26/18 – San Diego
Crew – John Orta, Lily Orta
7/22/19 to 7/26/19 – San Diego
Crew – Grace Charron
Abstract: I want to do a short little post of conventions, because they can be the greatest and worst thing on the planet and the only difference between those states will be how well you prepare for it. Therefore, I wanted to write up my survival guide and the stories that go along with each part. Every weird example I use was something that happened to me personally over eight (long) days.
Before the Convention:
“Why would I spent a ton of money to see a nerd convention for a weekend..?” – Mother
A great first thing to hear from your own mother, but she has a point. The event can be expensive. A somewhat decent and close hotel room will cost $300 a night, the event itself costs $400 for four days, flights for $150 roundtrip, surge-priced ubers and foods add up quick for a weekend.
So save money! I mentioned in my Australia post but for comic-con I my second year I managed to stay with my uncle for all four days, use his tickets for me and my friend Grace for free, got rides to the convention and used miles for $11.28 for a roundtrip flight from San Francisco. Obviously, that was a stroke of luck involving the right connections, but most people can pull off a similar deal when they start looking.
Face Value: $2000
Connections Value: $150
Ok but why go…?
You won’t find an event like Comic-Con. It sounds weird but the sheer scale and people there create an atmosphere I’ve never found at a music festival or more normal event. Everyone there has something they love and care about and want to see and you can talk to anyone.
Where to Sleep:
Hotels are expensive, this will be the largest event in San Diego every year. You can be thirty minutes out from the convention floor and as I mentioned earlier, lose $300 a night on a hotel. So your options include bringing a party with you (five man band archetype for the win) or staying with someone you know in the city. If you have any friends at UCSD they make good options.
What do I need in my Triforce backpack?
First off, they do give you massive backpacks for free but they are unsurprisingly cheap and rip easily plus you can lose them in a crowd, bring a computer case or a small backpack which I find works well.
Items to Bring (from most to least important):
- Costume!
- Small backpack, they give you swag bags for free so you don’t need a large one
- Good walking shoes! I will stress this to the point of building it into your costume!
- Backup batteries for all devices. You want to be able to call that uber home
- Water bottles
- $100-200 in cash. Some venders only accept cash but venom, tiles and ATMs all provide solutions to that problem
- Sandwiches, bars, fruits, anything that isn’t junk food. The convention refuses to sell anything remotely healthy.
- A power strip, makes friends in line.
Costume…?
Cosplay! I’ll get to that later.
Where do we start?
Just start by getting to the convention, and don’t even dare try and find parking. Take the bus in, comic-con runs its own fleet or call an uber.
Cosplay:
I’m skipping this section. Bye!
Before you go, Cosplay gives you an excuse to recreate Halloween on more days of the year, get some creative spirits out and have an easy talking point for four days.
First year, I went as an imperial officer from Star Wars. Easy to make, comfortable, cheap and everyone got the reference instantly. Plus it had been years since I started sewing so a simple costume was fantastic, progress was painfully slow!
Second year, I went as a tech-priest from Warhammer 40k. I’m guessing maybe two people who reads this blog understood it because it’s a hell of a lot nerdier than Star Wars and that meant that way less people got it. On the other hand those who did would yell different sayings in Latin across the convention floor that (rightly) confused the hell out of Grace when I responded with more Latin. In the weirdest twist, my old boss at Peets Coffee was a huge Warhammer fan and he excused all my shifts for comic-con when he saw my costume. Which went over better then when my last Peets boss saw me in a stripper costume… another time.
And as an engineering nerd, there will always be something cool about watching a costume come together from even finding a costume to initial sketches and printing out wiki-how guides for each individual part.
I find a find a weird satisfaction of sorting through Piedmont Fabrics and Ace-hardware for the necessary parts and crafting it together over weeks. It takes time to acquire each part and the people at the stores are always curious and want to help
My last costume couldn’t be counted as complex by cosplay standards but still was one hell of a timesink. I had to buy a crimson monk robe and a meter of white fabric then cut the fabric into the desired gear pattern and sew it together.
For the gloves I tore apart more pieces of white fabric and glued them to a pair of extra ski gloves I had to make it look like ratty bandages. The chain I bought from ace-hardware and spray painted gold to fit with the costume. I also found black tubing at Ace and put it on my poster case to fit with the costume’s wiring.
For the binary scrolls and book I cut out a stencil of the Adeptus Mechanicus symbol and painted it onto white fabric and a random novel plus binary at random. Finally, to build the belt I bought costume foam at 4 mm thick and layered multiple layers on together using another stencil to etch the Mechanicus symbol into the front while attaching a belt to the back.
So yeah, it took a long-ass time. But I absolutely love doing it and really does help your creative confidence watching it come together. I 100% recommend to anyone to try.
Back to the Convention!
The Basics:
It’s overwhelming in all regards, so beforehand map out everything you want to see and don’t overbook yourselves
Let’s be clear here. There are 150,000 people at this convention. The first time I went I was in awe at just how sprawling SDCC was and Grace felt the same way next year. If you simply try and wander around continuously for four days, you will not come close to seeing every exhibit and that won’t even include panels.
They should release a brochure of everything that is happening on the app. Comic-con on the apple store.
I honestly believe that the weekend with the most phone use for me every year will always be comic-con. Their app makes a career fair app, whatever JSA uses and any other service look cute because the amount of data going through it on a given second blows any of those out of the water.
Panels!
That’s where the nerd’s celebrities are right…?
Correct! There are fifty rooms at any given time hosting different speakers discussing an assortment of topics for an hour each. You have an incredibly wide range of choices. Examples that I’ve seen:
A woman who wrote a cookbook in the Firefly, Warcraft and Elder Scroll’s universes. Trying to figure out why “moonberries” should taste like, how to make Norse cooking vegan (spoiler: not really possible) and how much content creators love it.
A panel of African-American artists redrawing race expectations in comic books and how to approach representation. Involved the first female African-American comic store owner in the US and first African-American writer for Star Trek.
The mythbusters discussing how to hijack someone’s nervous system use neuroscience and robotics to increase STEM knowledge! Add a few nerve optics and robotics to Grant’s arm and Kari used the same setup on her arm to control Grant’s movements and he had no ability to take back control. Hilarious until she dislocated his arm.
The entire cast of Critical Role – An oddly popular Dungeons and Dragons show, playing a party of all bards in real-time with the rule that you must never enter combat. Bluff, lie, intimidate, reason or seduce your way out of every situation. Have fun doing that with living blocks of Jell-o. By the way they were all comedians.
A literal astronaut… was the least interesting person. The other three people were the mission director of NASA, Mars mission director and head of the moon base team. I got there three hours early and barely made it in time.
Plus of course: The big announcements. I was present for the announcement of a new series from the creators of Avatar, Brooklyn 99 discussing the next season alongside Andy Sandberg’s sex life and the Clone Wars pulling out a surprise announcement for a revival of the show after ten years that caused the audience to go ballistic.
Brooklyn 99 and Clone Wars sound great, but where’s the big names at?
First thought of anyone at comic-con: Marvel, Star Wars, The Doctor, Stephen Spielberg. Those big earth-shattering announcements that get spread all over the internet all take place in Hall H which can sit 6,500 people, larger than Michigan’s largest lecture hall (which are massive mind you). But Hall H follows the basic rule of not evicting people, and the convention will always schedule the big names late in the day. So if you want to see a 5 pm panel, you have to be there at 7 am.
And to be there at 7 am…? On a slow day without any big names you should be in line the night before and sleep on the concrete outside. Last year the Saturday Hall H panel was “Marvel Announcements” which led to endless rumors. To get into Hall H on Saturday you had to be in line at 7 am on Friday, wait the entire day, then sleep outside, then go in. I do not have that sort of commitment, but I chatted with many people who did, so props to them I suppose.
The Floor
“Why go to comic-con unless you get the exclusive merch?” will always be a controversial statement because many people think that the event has become too materialistic whereas others just want a poster bought for $75 worth $400 that they will not sell for some reason…..
God, I have no idea who would own an infinity war poster worth that much.
Either way, the main floor of the convention has upwards of 10,000 vender booths involving comics, charities, Blizzard who runs their own corner of the establishment and every big name you can possibly think of.
Packed to the brim, the floor gives Tokyo a run for its money and lasting longer than an hour on it will be a feat. But if you got the willpower to make it around you will see and meet some amazing people. You get a great chance to see well-crafted or downright hilarious cosplay of all sorts and every vender has a story to sell. Sure, the big names like DC won’t talk to you but the small booth that has a woman who hand drew and wrote an original graphic novel can describe her plot that takes the magic system of All Metal Alchemist to an 11 or even the developers of the game company Behemoth that I adore that just wanted to chat with people.
My claim to fame on the floor was that I was casually hanging out at the Doctor Who stand trying to buy a pin and the 15th Doctor asked me how I was doing while eating an apple while wearing the outfit of the 14th Doctor.
Are those the only two big things to do?
Lord no. The biggest companies shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars renting out neighboring buildings to the convention center and running massive events through them. Mission Impossible escape room? Fantastic
South Park minigolf, one of the most hilarious things I have ever done, and I went in with absolutely no expectations besides free mini-golf.
Lily and I went to the Ready Player One exhibit two years and besides being able to see the models used for all the characters in the movies: Ex. Iron Giant, they put far too much geek detail into recreating an 80’s arcade and bar alongside some of the set pieces of the movie
Let’s remember, this will all be free too. There are dozens of these happening at a given time. You will never have enough time to see everything you want to and that’s ok!
Downsides:
It’s Brooklyn 99! Let me go walk into the room!
Except I’ve been sitting outside of that hall for three hours waiting to get in. Oddly enough, I did not even know Brooklyn 99 was in the room I waited three hours for, I was waiting for Critical Role that Dungeons and Dragons panel I mentioned earlier. Also, everyone from B99 might be funnier in person. But the point here stands:
Lines everywhere
Half of comic-con will be understanding what has lines worth standing in and what the line you’re staring at even goes to. There will be no way to avoid them at some point and you just need to stand there. Luckily, fall back on the SDCC maxim of “Everyone wants to be here” and make small-talk with the friend you brought into line with you or whoever happens to be standing next to you. Makes everything better I promise.
I’m hot and I need a drink
No alcohol sold on premise, the food overall will be overpriced and a scientific “meh” quality at best, and San Diego in the summer in a costume will be scorching. Water bottles are great also the convention center somehow always has a very pleasant temperature. The power costs are exorbitant.
Outside of Attractions:
Please help I’m dying and have been walking around for hours
If you need a break or want something relaxing, I recommend D&D, Magic or board games. All three have ballrooms reserved and are a lot more laid back than the main convention floor.
Sometimes it will be worth remembering that everyone at the convention with the occasional exception of a grumpy husband brought by their spouse and kids loves being a nerd and everything that comes with it. The tables for any of these games are a fantastic way to connect with other people at the convention and get recommendations on things to do. I got to play a game run by one of the artists of Dungeons and Dragons and unsurprisingly their descriptions of everything we fought was unparalleled. However, they also were willing to answer questions about their jobs and what drawing monstrosities for a living feels like.
I must go home, I got another three days of this
People leave the convention floor at all sorts of times. I’ve walked out at 3 pm on Sunday because I’m dead physically or midnight on Saturday because masquerade, the annual cosplay contest, was happening. If you want to go to a restaurant, reserve early as the closest ones will all be packed
Also, worth noting that San Diego might be the prettiest city in California and has beaches, a library running events of its own and overall a classic Californian vibe. Great if the event overwhelms you (and it does overwhelm me).
Plus, please sleep. The event will be four days long and you don’t want to be zombie by the final day.
Get to the point Sam:
Comic con will be an event that requires planning and energy. But I’ve gone two years in a row for a reason
Worth a shot. Check it Out. I promise it has value.
Best,
Sam
Dead Man Travelling 