Hey guys, just thought Id share some of my experiences and photos of SDCC. And before you reach for the PM asking me to get you something, please don't, I will not respond...
This is sort of a brief diary or my days here.
July 20th:
After getting into San Diego, we took the shuttle to the convention. Our hotel is about 30 min walk, 15 min drive to the con center. After we got to the con center, we had to take another shuttle up north to pick up our 4 day badges. Traffic was killer, took us about 45 min to get there, 15+ min of that was just the bus trying to turn into the building. After we got off the shuttle we saw and endless line outside, it moved somewhat quickly though, took us about 15 min to get through this. We then got inside and man, one of the longest lines Ive even been in. Hundreds and hundreds of people. This line took us about 2 hours to get through...But we finally got our passes and headed back to the hotel and went to little Italy and got a nice ravioli with meat ball and sausage.
camping area outside the con:
Bus to pick up our badges:
outside line:
Inside line:
July 21st:
Woke up at 6, took the 7am shuttle to the con center. Place was already packed. Walked around trying to figure out where to line up for the Hasbro ticket line, you need a ticket with a time stamp to be able to have a chance to line up at the actual hasbrotoystore booth. We found the line and it took us maybe 2 hours to get through this. We managed to get out of this line just in time for the exhibition floor to open. Our ticket was for 10am, and the floor opened at 9:30, so we wandered for 1/2 hr, only to get to the Hasbrotoystore booth and the line was capped with tonnes of people floating around it wondering what to do. 1/2hr later they told us to line up against the far wall of the convention, and brought us up 25 at a time to the main booth when space opened up. Eventually I got all my purchases at about 1pm, and man was I already tired, it is an absolutely brutal process, I was actually lucky because I was early, others weren't so lucky and would have spent even longer in line. And for people who haven't experienced it, I assure you, it is worth buying these exclusives at the inflated prices to avoid all these hassles, it doesn't seem bad when you hear about it from forums and such, but it really is so draining, frustrating and tiring. I only was able to muster maybe another 1.5 hours of energy to walk the floor a bit before my legs started to give out and I had to go back to the hotel where I am typing this out now. My back kills, my legs are super sore from all the stuff I had to lug around and all the standing and walking, and Ive had no time to get food. If I come back next year I will defiantly consider just skipping the Hasbro Line, it just wasn't worth it, there were plenty of other things I missed out on while waiting line for these which I wont even see on the secondary market.
For those that were wondering, we were only allowed to buy 1 starscream/cc, 3 pink zaranas, and 1 variant zaranas per person. So its actually pretty damn hard to come by these. I also picked up a sentinel and man is it huge and heavy. I picked up a few more zaranas off my friends as well, they kept their starscreams. They had fedex there to help ship, but it was costly for me...230 dollars. Ill have to sell my extra zaranas at market price just to make that back...Ill post them here first to give you guys dibs, but I have to warn you I will have to charge market prices as I desperately need to make the money back, for those of you near me, it will be cheaper then ebay as you wont have to pay shipping, check my bst in a week or 2, Ill leave them there for a few days before going to ebay.
Anyways, I did enjoy seeing a lot of the new and old stuff on the exhibition floor. I didn't see everything yet, but here are a few pics, apologies for the quality in some, I had a very crappy camera and a very shaky hand.
