We went to the Expo at the weekend. It was okay. The only way I'd go back to one of these really would be if I could afford the VIP passes which cuts the queueing times dramatically. So, on the Friday, we set off to go to the Expo. On the way, we stopped off at the hostel, which is literally across the road from where the Expo was held, to check our mail as we were waiting for our Social Insurance Number cards. They were there so we hung around for an hour or so just chatting and catching up with the people we knew there. Also, Moyne called me from Pav Friday, but I couldn't really hear him and felt quite self-conscious shouting down the phone to him in the quiet common area of the hostel. But it was nice.
We went into the Expo and there wasn't too many people around which was good. Of course, some of the people who were there were dressed up in costume. Some of them looked deadly but I couldn't really get pictures of them. Other costume-less people stopped them to take pictures of them which I thought was kind of weird. We went up to Aaron Douglas' desk to ask for an autograph (he plays Tyrol in Battlestar Galactica) and his agent was like yeah, it's $20. We just kind of went oh and Douglas was like ah here and took my little notebook and signed it for me. He was really nice. He asked us where we were from and we told him and when we mentioned that Ciaran was from Monaghan, he did the stereotypical American thing of oh, my great-great-great (to infinity) grandfather was the sheriff of Cork. Dunno how he linked Monaghan with Cork but there you go. He told us that he has his whistle.
This is him.
Then we went and had a look around all of the stands. There was some pretty cool stuff, all of which you had to pay for of course.
The Batmobile. Probably something $15 to sit in it and get your picture taken.
Lego city.
Some swords and shit that you could buy.
The DeLorean. Again, $15 to sit in it and get your picture taken.
Albino python. $5 to hold one of their reptiles and get your picture taken.
The amount of money being made at these things is ridiculous. Like in terms of autographs and photos, the likes of Stan Lee and Patrick Stewart were getting $75 per photo and autograph. If you wanted a photo with the whole The Next Generation cast it was $495. Riiiiight.
We also went to this Martial Arts presentation thing which was good enough. The four year old kid doing the tumbles and kicks was very cute.
I forgot to take a picture when they were doing something interesting.
So, that was Friday which was enjoyable. Saturday was a disaster. We got up and into the Expo by about quarter to eleven in order to make the 11 o'clock talk by Max Brooks, the guy who wrote World War Z and The Zombie Survival guide. It was the only thing Ciaran was really looking forward to. We walked straight in to the Expo arena flashing our passes we got the day before, skipping all the people who had yet to get their passes, walking straight to the room where the talk was and when we got there, it was full. Instead, we went to this talk on the Steampunk culture which was alright. Nothing amazing. After that, we went and queued up an hour in advance for the Sanctuary panel with Amanda Tapping and Christopher Heyerdahl. I never really watch Sanctuary but knew Amanda Tapping from Stargate, so I really wanted to go to this. The queue was pretty long by the time we got there but Ciaran walked up the line and estimated there were 250-350 people ahead so we were bound to get in to the 500 people capacity theatre. Nope. We got to the top of the line when they said it was full, we were literally about 10 people away. We figure that people who came out of the theatre next to it had skipped the queue. Also, apparently people had stayed in the theatre from the talk before. So, bollocks to that. We had nothing to do until four o'clock (it was one at this stage) so we got some food. I had bought a photo op with Amanda Tapping for $40. They asked if I wanted a digital copy for an extra $10. Eh, no thanks.
We queued for the photo op at three. We were there until about five when they said that was the end of the photo op. So, we charged straight up to the desk where we got the ticket for the op to talk about refunds. They told us we could use that ticket for the 12 o'clock photo op the next day so we thought we'd give it a shot. We left straight away after that. Very disappointing day but we probably weren't the most disappointed people there. At about one o'clock that day, the Fire Marshall arrived to the Expo and said the place was over capacity so they stopped letting people in and if you left the Expo, you wouldn't get back in. So, there were people with weekend passes and Saturday passes in the queue outside who couldn't get in. Such a shame. They clearly over-sold the event.
Example of the crowd there. I saw two girls crying because they were claustrophobic.
They seemed a bit more organised on the Sunday though. When we got off the train at about 10.30, we were pretty disheartened by the queue to get in. It was about half a kilometre long and there was two of them. They made everyone queue up to get in, weekend passes or not. Despite that though, it was only a half an hour before we got in which was grand. We went straight to join another queue for the photo op. Surprisingly, we got the photo.
I cropped it so we don't look fat.
I went and bought two volumes of The Walking Dead comics and then left. When we were outside, we sold our passes to a tout for $10 each which wasn't bad as we paid $40 each for them and there was only half a day left on them.
So that was our experience with the Expo. As I said, I would only do it again if I had the VIP passes. They barely had to queue for anything.
Richard Hatch.
Wil Wheaton.
Stan Lee and some silly people who paid $75 for the autograph.
Wall-E.
Oh, also on Friday, we met up with a guy I know from home. We went to the Irish Cultural Society and had a few drinks. It was a fun night and it was nice to meet some of the Irish that are over here. Pain in the hole getting a taxi back though, it was in the middle of nowhere.
Thank you the Calgary subreddit who provided me with a way to retrieve a digital copy of the photo, even if I didn't pay for the digital version. Me Hacksta.
