Tales from Comic-Con 2011: Day 0

I have returned from Comic-Con fellow bloggers! I knew for a fact that I wouldn't be able to blog during the trip because I'm out all day and then I sleep and repeat the process. So what I'm going to do instead is tell you everything about my trip over the next few days. Today I'm going to tackle Wednesday, the day we flew out. I also played a few new video games that I will make some separate posts about. This will simply be about the events that took place during Comic-Con, and the panels that I saw.

Day 0: Wednesday


Wednesday morning I woke up at 4 AM. Our flight was at 7 AM and my dad wanted to be at the airport at least an hour and a half before the flight. I should probably explain now that I went to Comic-Con with my sister and my dad. Now after waking up and getting ready to go, we made our to the airport. We didn't have to wait very long before we were able to board and get going.

A few details to mention here before I continue. The first is that a normal flight from Virginia to San Diego is a little bit over five hours. This time around we had a connection to San Fransisco, so the flight was about four hours. The second detail is that I hate traveling, especially flying. I hate long drives, I hate trains, but most of all, I hate flying. It's extremely boring and cramped. I also get super motion sick while traveling. So I can't read books, I can't write, and I can't watch movies or play games. I'm literally confined to my iPod and whatever I've brought on that audio-wise.

Thankfully our flights to San Diego weren't all that bad. We had a bumpy landing at San Diego, but after that all was well. After we gathered our bags we took a cab to the hotel. The hotel we stayed at the last two Comic-Con was the Manchester Grand. It was a fine hotel, but last year we heard that most of the stars attending the show were staying at the Hard Rock Hotel. Naturally, we had to stay there this time and as you'll see later on, it was worth it. On Wednesday we did spy two stars as they arrived at the hotel. We saw Game of Thrones' Nikolaj Coster-Waldau who played Jamie Lannister, as well as True Blood's Deborah Ann Woll who plays Jessica Hamby. 

Wednesday was all about three things: 1. Flying 2. Badge Pick-Up and 3. Dinner. We'd already accomplished the flying aspect of the day, so next on the list was picking up our four-day badges. Every year Comic-Con allows people who have bought four-day badges (and Thursday badges) to pick them up the day before. The only annoying fact is that the badge pick up is at the Town and Country Hotel, which is a bit of way's out. So in order to save on time my dad decided to get a cab. It seemed like a good idea at first, but as we found out pretty soon, everyone was on the road headed to the Town and Country Hotel. So what should have been a fifteen minute ride at most turned into a half hour ride in traffic.

Finally at the Town and Country, we strolled right in and got in line. After a two hour wait, we had made it all the way through the line and got our swag bags and badges. As we left we noticed a very large line curled around the hotel. The farther we went, the longer the line got. We started to realize that this was the line we were supposed to have gotten on in the first place, and had in fact cut in line originally. Here's the thing though: when we walked in the door there was a hotel staff member standing there, watching the line. He saw us walk in and didn't say a word, he just kept ferrying people in. Whatever the reason though, I'm not particularly sorry about it because a two hour wait could have easily turned into a much longer wait and we were already cutting our dinner reservations close.

Speaking of dinner, that's where we went next! After taking a long train ride back to the convention center, we dropped off our bags and got changed. The restaurant we had reservations at was Ruth Chris Steakhouse. For those that don't know, Ruth Chris Steakhouse is a very expensive, but well worth it restaurant that serves - well - steak. They have the most tender meat I have ever tasted. Attending Ruth Chris Steakhouse is actually a convention tradition of ours, so I've been there a number of times over the past few years. It never gets old.

After that we went back to the hotel. We had never stayed in the Hard Rock before so my dad and I were a bit curious about what was in the rest of the building. They had a few clubs that weren't very active and the second floor is mostly made of conference rooms, so nothing spectacular yet. Once we were done we went up to our rooms. We were wiped from the flights and ready for some rest, especially since we had to wake up early the next day to get into the convention center.

Tomorrow I will blog about our first official day at Comic-Con and how I met a ton of celebrities!