So this was my first ever convention outside of London/The South (we attended Brighton last year), but is defiantly the first ever convention where I have traveled a fair distance to get to. I was talking with my best friend about coming up and seeing her, and I looked up conventions and saw that Em Con was on just after her birthday and had a great line up of guests including a group photoshoot with some Stargate Atlantis cast members. I was sold so made arrangements and booked tickets and as it fell over a bank holiday weekend it meant we got to spend 3/4 days with Laura and Sammi rather than the usually 2ish...
So Saturday rolled around and we got up early to try and get to the arena for between 9:30 and 10am. A you may well know with LFCC you are best to get there at least 1-2 hours before the doors open to get a good spot in the queue. However it really wasn't necessary this time and I am actually glad we ended up being a bit late as even the 10 minutes just standing outside was freezing. Sammi and Laura very kindly dropped us off, they had some things to do that day and didn't fancy the convention. So Matt and I headed inside.
It was quite an odd set up, because it was an arena there were stalls around the outside walk ways which you had to pass to get into the main arena area. Once down there we started to do some shopping and look around the stalls.
They had a few really cool exhibits too including the Tardis, Iron Man costumes and a StarBug Prop. What I really liked about all of these and a lot of the the convention in general is it was all based on charity donations.
I then decided to buy a photoshoot ticket with Walter Koenig as well. As I am meeting as many of the Star Trek crew as I can in October, I thought it would be good to meet Walter on the day and have less to do at DST! I checked the schedule and we had the Q&A talk with the Stargate crew at 1pm, Walter Photo at 3pm and Stargate group photo at 3:45pm. So we headed across the road to get a some lunch.
When we returned we queued up for the talk and around 1pm we were lead upstairs to a little conference room full of chairs. The guys came out and it was one of my favourite talks to date. It was really intimate and the actors were lovely and down to earth. They told some fab stories of what happened on set and I really enjoyed it.
At the end Paul auctioned off some scripts from Stargate for charity and he also had 'A Dog's Breakfast' one too. I am a huge fan of that film and had a chat a few years ago with David Hewlett about it so I decided to bid on it. I stopped around £35 but Matt kept going for me and won it. I was so excited and all the money goes to charity too so I was happy to pay for it!
It also meant that I could get it signed for free by the Stargate cast so I was really excited about that too! I went to Paul's table first and he also as a thank you signed a promo print from the film for me too which filled me with joy. I later got Alexis to sign it and picked up a copy of his new graphic novel which he also signed and then David signed it later on in the day too. It is something I will treasure forever!
I had my photo shoot with Walter Koenig and he was lovely! He asked me how I was and shook my hand as I left. Not long after that I also had my group photoshoot with the Stargate cast and that was great. David introduced everyone and Paul said we had already meet which was nice he remembered me.
I had to collect my photos a little later on as they don't print out straight away like the LFCC (it is like back in the day when I first started going!) but I was SUPER happy with the photos!
Of course I also managed to pick up some Pop funkos too and a lovely Walking Dead inspired necklace from an awesome stall where you custom make your own fandom jewelry. We also added another art book from Matt Dixon to our collection because his work is just stunning.
I have ventured in to the world of YouTube with my first haul video if you would like to see a close up of the bits that I picked up over the weekend!
I can't wait for the rest of the 2016 conventions we have planned!
No comments:
Post a Comment