by Sarabeth Pollock:
Day One at SDCC 2013 started out in the Exhibit Hall. Fans flocked to the Marvel booth for Captain America posters while others made a mad dash to the Lionsgate/Summit booth for the exclusive and elusive Hunger Games Mockingjay pin. The first few hours of San Diego Comic Con are always about swag. This year, Hasbro gave out line tickets so that there was a modicum of crowd control around their booth, which worked fairly well, although some collectors complained that they did not have a chance to get a ticket.
Every year I make a point to donate blood at the San Diego Blood Bank Blood Drive, sponsored by HBO’s True Blood. The ballroom at the Omni Hotel was decorated with red posters bearing the #SavetheVamps hashtag and the slogan “No One Lives Forever”. I don’t know about you, but I think that sounds rather ominous. With half a season remaining, I think the action is yet to come. After parting ways with a pint of the red stuff, I was given a swag bag that included this year’s shirt that said “My vein, their gain”. If you’re able to donate blood, it’s a great thing to do as part of your SDCC tradition. It’s always nice to know that you’re helping a good cause. (This year there are a bunch of kids here from Make A Wish. I met one man whose son had received a bone marrow transplant. The Blood Bank was offering the opportunity to register on the donor registry. Again, it’s a great way to be a real-life hero.)
After donating blood, we had lunch at Syfy’s Defiance Café. The SyFy channel takes over Mary Jane’s at the Hard Rock Hotel every year and fills the restaurant with props and photos from the series. It’s a fun place to eat.
Later on, my cell phone needed some energy so my sister and I hit up the CNET Base Station at Lou and Mickey’s Bar and Grill. The Base Station is a great place to recharge your batteries (Ha, get it?), and they have free food and drinks. They also have fun prizes for singing, dancing and trivia contests.
Thursday night we hit up the Nerd Machine’s Nerd HQ party at Petco Park. They had photo booths, game demos, music, and a fun environment to hang out. Across the ballpark, MTV had a huge concert in the Park at the Park, complete with fireworks.
At 10pm, we went to the Legendary Pictures Godzilla Experience. We watched Legendary work on this building at 7th and J for a few weeks before SDCC started, so we were really curious to see what they’d done. You had to have a pass to get into the Godzilla Experience. One it was our turn, we went inside and were welcomed to Tokyo, Japan. Neon signs in English and Japanese adorned the walls. A lunch counter was set off to the side with a Japanese man in a business suit seated in one of the chairs. Suddenly, alarms went off and actors rushed us off into a control room that was tracking the monster on its way from Japan to San Diego. That’s when all hell broke loose. I won’t spoil the surprise (DM me on Twitter if you want to know what happened) but it was probably the most unique SDCC experience I have ever had.
From there we moved on to the Insidious 2 Experience. This was a bit different from other events because you had to win tickets to be able to attend, and only about 300 people had tickets, making it very intimate. (Big thanks to my sister for scoring tickets to both Godzilla and Insidious 2) We started out in a line on the street corner, and then we were taken in groups to a building around the corner. From the outside, my guess is that it was once a small Downtown townhome. Inside was a huge staircase, and once we reached the top of the stairs there was a room with twelve chairs and twelve shrouded people sitting in them. At first I thought they were mannequins, but there were people underneath, though they remained shrouded the entire time. The sheets covering them were covered in drops of blood. Overhead, a DJ wearing a freaky gas mask was pounding out some house music while a strobe flashed behind him. It was the stuff of nightmares. There was another flight of stairs that led to a nursery. Inside the closet, a hidden camera took snapshots of unsuspecting guests. A stroller was filled with twisted and mangled dolls. Inside the crib, a video screen had a looping scene from the movie, where an old man kept shrieking “he’s not your baby.” Down the hall, a corpse wearing that same scary gas mask as the DJ sat at a table in front of some tarot cards and dice that kept spinning around on the table all by themselves. The staff kept telling people to be sure to stop by the bathroom. I went inside but chickened out as soon as I closed the door. Sorry, but the expression “scared the shit out of me” has a foundation in truth, and I just wasn’t going to go there last night. Upon leaving we were given cute little lanterns, no doubt a prop from the movie.
It was after midnight when I finally got home. Thank goodness I live in San Diego. Being able to sleep in my own bed after a long day at SDCC is a definite perk. And we get to do it all again tomorrow!
(Author’s Aside: I am writing this from the Exhibit Hall line on Friday morning at 7:30am. Forget about sleeping during SDCC unless you find a quiet corner of the Convention Center to nap in between panels…)
Sarabeth Pollock is a contributor for Dark Media. She covers The Walking Dead, True Blood, Doctor Who, Fringe and American Horror Story, as well as the True Blood comics and whatever movies and books happen to catch her fancy. Watch for her coverage of San Diego Comic Con 2013. She’s an avid writer, reader, and pop culture fan, with interest in everything from True Blood to Doctor Who to Anne Rice to Deborah Harkness. Follow her on Twitter at @SarabethPollock and check out her blog at http://sarabethpollock.wordpress.com
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