Thursday, July 21 was a rough day for me. I went to bed at 3am after the Media Junkyard get together and woke up at 7:15am in a panic that Jay and Jana had gone downstairs to register for passes for next year without me. I basically jumped up and flew out the door – glasses and all! – to try to meet them in line within 5 minutes of waking up. I couldn’t find them because the line was such a shit show but, I did find the lovely Katie so we walked around trying to find the end of the line. We were misguided at first to the end of the line for Ballroom 20, which sorta sucked to be honest. I was exhausted from not sleeping much but waited with Katie once we found the end of the correct line. We were soon joined by Ryan, Alirio and Moira (I think). I waited for a bit before I just couldn’t take it anymore and went back upstairs to shower and wait for news. Jay, Jana, and Michael got back a little bit before 10am, having been fortunate enough to be one of the last ones to get 4 day passes with Preview Night for Comic Con 2012.
[Side note: Although I understand that the Comic Con organizers are trying to make it fair for everyone to have an equal chance to attend SDCC in the future, there has got to be a better way than to turn preregistration into an event of its own. I know a lot of people got stressed out over making sure they got passes for next year that it took away from the event this year…]
Michael and I headed down to the Convention Center at 10am to get in line for Ballroom 20 to make sure we could get into the Psych panel this year, which began at 12:30pm. Since 4 day passes with Preview Night sold out at SDCC last year, I’m pretty sure that was a contributing factor to the longer lines to get into certain panels this year. Most of the people were repeat attendees and therefore knew how to play the game. Do I think SDCC was anymore of a clusterf*ck this year than in previous years? No. I really don’t think it was any different than in the past. My first year, 2007, we waited in line for quite some time just to get in to get our badges and that year you could still buy day passes the morning of the Con. Last year, Jay and I waited in line for the Pysch panel for 2 hours and didn’t get in. Jay joined Michael and I in line at about 11:00am, maybe 11:30am?
We waited inside about 150 people away from getting into Ballroom 20 for a good hour. Some people sat down, myself included. At some point during that last hour before the panel started, I started to really not feel well. I was shaky, my heart started pounding, and my head started to have sharp pains by the base of my skull where head meets neck and I was alternating chills and sweating. I thought I was going to faint and therefore began freaking out. I did NOT want anyone to know because I was NOT going to be the girl who fainted outside Ballroom 20. I knew that by not calming down over feeling shaky was making it worse. I also hadn’t eaten anymore more than a granola bar, was running on little sleep, at the very least mildly hungover, and the caffeine from the giant coffee I had between 10-10:30am was wearing off, causing me to crash. I’ve felt like this before and it’s usually been due to low blood sugar, so I figured I just needed to eat. We got into the panel about 5 minutes before it started and my first order of business was to get a bathroom pass and 1) Relieve my bladder from said giant cup of coffee and 2) Get food, immediately. The bathroom line was too long so I waited in line for a pretzel dog and joined Jay, Jack, and Michael just as they were introducing the actors for the panel.
I made it through half the pretzel dog and 50 minutes of the hour long panel before I started to panic about not feeling well again and had to get out of there and go lay down for a little while. However, I must say that the panel was AWESOME. I love the Pysch panels at Comic Con and was really bummed last year when we missed it. You can tell that all of the actors really have fun with each other and with the fans. Dulé Hill is one of my favorite people to see on a panel. He’s hilarious and was Tweeting the entire time, sending messages to the audience as to things to say when they asked questions. All of the actors were into it and so funny. Really had a great time at the panel despite not feeling my best and I am so glad that we got in this year!
I headed back to the hotel with the intention to nap for an hour during the panel for The Ringer (new Sarah Michelle Geller show) and hopefully returning for the Game of Thrones panel at 3:00pm. I got back to the hotel at like 1:40 and didn’t fall asleep probably until almost 3:00pm. I think. At one point, I looked at the clock after feeling like I’d been awake for hours and it was already 3:15pm. I didn’t think that 1.5 hours had passed but maybe that means I did doze off? I finally fell asleep from 3:30 – 4:20pm. I woke up feeling much better because my headache had disappeared. I paid the Media Junkyard boys a visit to catch up on what I’d missed after I left the party the night before (you’d think at 3am, the party would’ve been winding down but nope!).
Everyone reconvened for dinner in Mike’s room where we compared who had trendier jeans: Clif or Rob? A group of us then went down to Seaport Village, which was behind the Hyatt, to grab some food. A big group of people met up that night to see Captain America, but we in The Looking Glass aka Room 2284 had a much better night: We got all cozied up and were sound asleep by 10:30pm. That was one of the best night’s sleep I have had in a long time. Man, I wish I could’ve taken that bed home with me.
Friday was a MUCH more active day and my favorite day of the Con, so stay tuned because I promise that post will be filled with good times!
