Mood:
caffeinatedTopic: Comic Cons
TODAY'S FEATURE IS BLOG #3821 - It is Monday morning... The day after the End of the 2013 WonderCon that was held at the Anaheim, California, Convention Center! There will be three blogs on 'Our Take' on this convention... Today is 'My Take' Part 1, tomorrow is Part 2, and after that will be 'Tina's Take' on the Con. Here's my thoughts on the Con, and I may be a little long winded since I want to put it all into two blogs: 1) Location: The Con moved to Halls A & B this year, versus last year's Halls C & D. I'm not counting the lower level's Hall E, where registration was held. This move was for the better, as it had a straight path to the Arena building, where the largest panel room was at. The Halls A & B were closer to the parking lot 1, and to the con hotel, where there were the Games room, Anime rooms, and the Hospitality Suite. Much better location for 2013 over 2012! 2) Parking: At first I thought... They had to be kidding! We arrived 1 & 1/2 hours early on Friday, and the parking lot structure 1 was already sold out! We were directed to go to Car Park 4, which was already sold out also! We were stuck, and were forced to go to an area that wasn't a WonderCon parking area. However, Saturday and Sunday were better, as we arrived a little more than two hours early. Those two days we were able to park in Car Park 1. 3) Registration: The first day was a madhouse! The long, long line in the court was just was too long! Since I was a panelist at the con, Tina and I went to find the line for the Professionals. It took a couple of event persons to answer where that line was. The lines for the Professionals was very long also! However, there was no line for the panelists / guests, so we picked up our badges immediately. Please note: The 3-day badges and the Saturday badges were already 'Sold Out' online before Friday arrived. I didn't check the lines on Saturday or Sunday, as Hall E was under Hall D, at the far end of the Anaheim Convention Center. 4) Program Book & Schedule Pamphlet: These two items were merged together, which meant using the hi-liter on the schedule grids. Kind of strange, as it destroyed the 'Near Mint' status of the program book. The front cover with artwork by Jim Lee was pretty good though. The program book was well laid out and presented everything I needed to know, with the exception of NO Parking Lots layout. Good thing I had gone to the Anaheim Convention Center web site and downloaded their parking lots map! 5) Small Press Area: Located at the far left of Hall B, it was easy to find, and kind of quick to walk through. I did that on Friday, and didn't return to the area the other two days. Picked up a couple of publications I hadn't seen before. 6) Autographs: Walked through this area twice during the three days. Both times the guests were not at their tables for the most part... 7) Artists Alley: Walked through this area once each day, briefly. Amazing to me how many artists weren't there on time, after paying for the table... 8) Fan Groups: Briefly walked through this, and saw the San Diego Comic Fest table! With a nice hello from Ed Cormier who was manning the table! 9) Layout of the rest of the Exhibit Halls: This area was pretty large, it took all three days to walk the entire hall, as Tina and I attended many panels upstairs and at the Arena. I liked that the majority of comics dealers were in the Hall A area. 10) Panels: I liked the way the panels were spread out over levels 2 & 3 of the convention center. Plus the short walk to the Arena building was fine. I found that the halls the panels were hosted in pretty much had the right amount of chairs for those wanting to attend that panel. I think I'll end here at point #10 and come back in the next blog on my reviews of the panels that I or Tina & I attended together. Oh... My rating for the 2013 WonderCon? Well, I've got to admit that the smaller scaled down convention was a 'hit' in my book! I'm going to give it a Near Mint Minus (NM-) 9.2 out of a possible 10.0 comic book grading scale. But the Con people have got to figure out the parking status before 2014's event! Be back tomorrow for blog #3822 with 'My Take' on the Panels that I attended at WonderCon! Until then... I'll be posting the photos that I took at WonderCon at my Facebook Fan Page: Michael D Hamersky On Comics! There will be at least four photo albums uploaded, which may take a while.
~ Michael
BTW, You can 'follow' this blog by clicking the 'Follow' Button at this NetworkedBlogs app link! Thanks to ALL of YOU that have already clicked that button! And for those of YOU that haven't yet... I would appreciate it if YOU would!!! Note: My online 'Local' Comic Book Shop (LCBS), carries many different genres of comics, magazines, graphic novels, and comic con promotional items. Possibly even copies of the item(s) that was mentioned here today...! If I have it, you'll find under the BIG TOP of Comics, at Comic Books Circus.com! Web Page Note: This blog post is written per the IE Browser standards. Chrome, Safari, Netscape, Firefox and the other browsers serve the page up slightly differently, sorry about that! The screen display resolution is best seen at the setting of 1024 x 768 on your laptop or desktop computer. Note: Your computer's resoulution may be set differently, but the above resolution is the most commonly used resolution at the time of this blog post. NOTE: All images and characters within this blog post are copyright and trademark their respective owners. Comics Creators: If you are breaking into, or already work in the comic book industry or other pop culture productions, you are welcome to email or mail us press releases, news items, and updates that you feel would be of interest to our blog readers. Including YOUR own works! To mail printed items to us for possible review, send to: Make It So Marketing Inc., PO Box 130653, Carlsbad, CA 92013  Also, if you are a Facebook member, I would have liked you to send me a 'Friend Request'. However, I have reached the maximum limit of 5,000 Facebook Friends and Fan pages already, so I've added a New 'Facebook Fan Page' so that even more of YOU can 'Like' what I am doing, and be interactive with me and others there. Here is the link to that 'Facebook Fan Page': Michael D Hamersky On Comics! Please click the 'Like' button on that page!---------------   In Addition, I started a YouTube Channel just before the 2011 Comic-Con International, where I am slowly uploading videos from conventions or other events that we attend that are also pop culture related. You are invited to 'subscribe' to that channel also! As found at 'HamerskyOnComics'! |
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