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Well, due to popular demand here it is, Wrong Name’s Wround Up LFCC Summer 2019 Edition! Another exciting tale of standing in queues for hours to let strangers scribble on pieces of paper for me! (We love it though!). As per usual I want to start off with a warning here, that I’m writing this for myself. Selfish, yes, but I like to do this now to have a memory of what I go through at these events, and writing it allows me to try and re-live what I just went through. If that makes sense?! Who knows? Anyway, people have said they enjoy these things so I hope I can keep you entertained for the 100,000 word essay that I’m planning to lay out here Usually with these things, I’ll start from the Thursday before LFCC due it being pass collection day, but this time I want to start a little before that to the Sunday. I’m the type of guy who likes to be prepared for things (if this is a surprise to you then I’m pleased I’ve managed to hide my OCD!). For months before the con I will be checking all the travel arrangements to make sure I’m ok, and will look at the weather etc. in the hope I already know how things will pan out. I’m not the type of person who will wing things, although it has happened on the occasion due to necessity. By the Sunday I had everything set and was pretty confident in my plans to travel up from my home to Olympia every day, and back again in the evening (I only live roughly 1 hour away by public transport). Of course this is when my train line decides to announce full on line closing engineering works for the weekend ahead! I had to re-plan everything. I looked at all the different lines trying to work out timings. I looked into driving to the next town over to see if that would be quicker. In the end nothing seemed to work and it looked like it was going to take 3 hours to get there at the time I as I wanted to be, which with all the socialising I wanted to do, would leave me with a total of 4 hours sleep or less per night. That wasn’t gonna work. There was nothing else for it, I was gonna have to find a hotel. Of course my brain decided this when I randomly woke up at 3am on Monday morning. That was sleep over for me that night. The next several hours were spent researching which hotels still had rooms, how close were they to Olympia, and due to the weather reports, did they have air conditioning! Reviews were read, other booking sites were checked to see if they had it cheaper, and eventually I found one that ticked nearly all the boxes I require and still had a room for me. With that booked, I could relax, and I actually became more excited for the weekend ahead as it gave me a lot more freedom for the social side of things. We’ll skip ahead here as this is meant to be about the con and I’m sure you don’t want to read about me sitting round watching YouTube and movies while job searching, visiting relatives and trying to decide if I should go to the cinema that evening or not. So here we are at the usual starting point, the Thursday before LFCC. I was packed and ready the day before. I woke up to many message for people coming to the con with them saying they had started their long journeys to London (and for some, the UK) to get to the con. This made me instantly jealous, as I would not be leaving until several hours later as I couldn’t check into my hotel until 3pm. The clock moved the slowest I’ve ever seen as those hours ticked by and I started to see them all posting about being in their hotels (earlier check ins for them it seemed!) or being down the pub. Looking back now, the pub would have been a good idea, but I did have a massive suitcase that I would have needed to store somewhere, but it doesn’t matter now. Eventually, the hour came and I left to catch my train. Now, you may well remember that Thursday was not a normal day for the UK. Thursday was the day that our country SET ON FIRE!!!! I’m a big-ish guy and I don’t do well with heat. Stepping outside my house was like walking into a sauna and was even making me question if LFCC was worth it! It wasn’t and I stayed home. THE END Ok, I obviously didn’t stay home. There were a lot of issues with transport on Thursday, but I was mostly lucky with my journey. My train had air con, as did the tube I needed, so really it wasn’t much different to a normal journey to Olympia, which was great! Until I had to step outside to the fiery pits of Mount Doom, where I melted faster than Gollum but without the smile from winning my precious! Finding the hotel was not a problem but when I did arrive, my room was not ready. “No problems” I thought as they told me it would only be 20 mins or so. After an hour, with no sign of my room, I headed out and bought some water and snacks to just generally kill some time. This worked as on returning I was given my key, along with a free breakfast voucher for a day as an apology. I also found out that the hotel had only been open for 9 days and that explained why things were not working as well as they could yet. My room was small, but comfy and modern. The “mood lighting” setting was cool and felt like a party was going off! I didn’t have much time to play though as I was meant to be meeting people so I changed to get rid of all the sweat from my journey and headed out to Olympia to pic up my passes. Stepping back outside I found that a shower had been pointless as after 30 seconds in the heat I was back to the same state I had been before I got into my room! I shrugged it off, as everyone must have been the same that day. I was thrilled to see a few people at pass collection including Teskothemad and whitewillow. It’s always great to see people who have become my friends thanks to LFCC. The collection queues were none existent on the Thursday again this year for which I was grateful as I remember having to queue for a couple of hours in the past. Showmasters (SM from here on out) have really gotten this down now and the Thursday collection just makes life so much easier. My entry this year was a standard three-day pass and I had diamonds for Jason Isaacs, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Hayden Christensen. I collected them all and was out of the collection area within 5 mins! So finally it was time for the pub. As I was walking over to the Hand and Sceptre, I saw a police bike drive down the road with it’s lights on. It stopped the traffic, and I saw two Land Rovers coming up behind it that had to move to the wrong side of the road due to where traffic had stopped. As they approached I assumed they’d have the blacked out windows you often see when these VIP convoys come through London, but I was a bit surprised to see the clear windows, and Her Majesty The Queen sitting in the back seat as the cars rushed by! My first celeb siting of the weekend! As per usual with these write ups, I’ll save you the details of my nights out drinking! After starting at the Hand and Sceptre, a bunch of us made our way over to Latymers for the usual meet up which mainly just consisted of drinks, catching up, and excitement about the weekend ahead. Eventually I stumbled my way back to my hotel to try and get some sleep before having to get up early for the real work to begin! Swearing at my alarm clock, I made it out of bed at roughly 6:30. I was feeling the effect so f the night before but remember thinking that it definitely could have been worse! After getting dressed I headed downstairs to use the free breakfast voucher I had been given the day before. Cereal and yogurt was all they had laid out, which was not exactly what I needed at that point but as it was free I just ate as much as I could before grabbing what I needed for the day from my room and heading over to Olympia. The queue was smaller than I expected when I arrived which was good. I met up with Raylenth and only had to wait about 20 mins before the gate opened and we were allowed inside to queue. Already having my wristband made the entry easy so it was just a case of walking up to near the front of the queue and finding our spot for the next 2 hours. Looking around I spotted a lot of the usual faces for these events though I‘m not sure if many of them are on this forum or not. The only forum regular I recognised was Chris1970, sitting in the next row over, a little way up from us, but just far enough away that we couldn’t shout to him without looking weird. Queuing is as queuing does in these situations and there’s not much for me to say about during this time, other than we finalised our battle plans for the day. Once we were in we ran as fast as our feet could take usslowly walked up to the signing area, and collected the VQ tickets we needed for the day. Once this was done and we could relax and took a quick tour round the auto area and photo booths to see the layout changes for the year and familiarize ourselves with them. This was when we first bumped into Queen_Sindel and StuartG2198. I have met Stuart many times before but this was my first time meeting QS, and I’m so pleased I have now! It was great chatting with both of them and hearing what their plans were for the weekend (I won’t divulge too much for them on here!). Before the show I had joked with QS about getting her to sign something for me, and I kept to my word: (Me, Raylenth, QS, StuartG2198) Once we had parted ways it was time for serious business as the guests had started arriving at the signing desks and my first of only 2 photo shoots for the day was a while off, so work was needed to be done! I headed over and saw Jason Isaacs was at his desk and joined the queue. Not much of a problem for me as I had the diamond, but a while into waiting, Adam Baldwin suddenly appeared at his desk a few places over with no queue at all. I hopped out of line and managed to make it over to Adam with only a couple of people in front of me in the queue. I was really glad to get his auto so early on as I had taken with me the biggest mistake in my autograph-collecting career, my Firefly Celebration book. This book is big and heavy and every time a guest from Firefly is announced for a con I’m equal parts happy that I get to meet them, and upset as it means I have to lug this stupid book with me again! It was awesome to meet Adam and he told me how much he still misses the show as he added a quote along side his cast mates to the book. Adam's Auto top right It was after this I discovered that Gina Torres had been delayed and panic started to set in as I had hoped I would only have to carry the book for one day of the con, and if I didn’t manage to get her on the Friday, I would have to wreck my shoulders for the Saturday as well! I got back in line for Jason and was happy to see him chatting away to everyone further up the line from me. This does make queues take longer, but it usually leads to better interactions with the guests all round. When it was my turn, I had brought my Event Horizon print for him to sign. This first led to him telling me how his daughter is a fan of horror movies and has told him that he should do one some day. “I have” he replied, “Event Horizon”. He then proceeded to tell her the storyline of the film, to which she replied “it sounds rubbish!” and she still hasn’t seen it! He then told me how much he loved all the sci-fi/gothic architecture in the film and that they had been to the butchers to add a lot of the organic matter that was spread over the ship so the whole set stank for the day, especially when all the hot lights hit it. It was a total pleasure to meet Jason and it was great to see him interacting so much with people. Definitely a highlight guest of the weekend. Jason's Auto top left After Jason, I headed I took a wander round some of the non-vq guests I had planned to meet over the day, only to find that both Robert Patrick and David Naughton had both had vqs introduced since I’d last checked. Luckily I was within the first 100 for both, but with how much they seemed to be chatting with people, this still seemed like more of a risk than I wanted! With them now out of the question for a while and other guests not at their tables for various reasons, I headed over for my first photo shoot of the day. This was for Robert Patrick. The golds were already lined up in photo area A when I got there, as were the batch 1’s. It wasn’t much of a wait before they all started going in and the shoot began, meaning the batch 2’s were soon in line followed by us in batch 3. The shoot went smoothly, with Robert greeting everyone coming to see him, shaking hands and seemed to be having a great time. I grew up with the first two Terminator movies so it was great to meet him and I’m really happy with how the pic came out I moved on from the shoot to join the queue for an autograph from Leslie Easterbrook. I had bee surprised just how long her queue had been, but took my chance to join it as I had a while before my next shoot. If you have met Leslie, you will know, she is a talker! That meant this queue took a while. Unfortunately for me, the couple standing behind me did not agree with my thinking that a talkative guest is a good thing, and constantly moaned for the 45 mins that I was in the queue about why it was taking so long, but then was saying that they hope they get to speak to her for a while?!! The entitlement of some attendees at these events really does blow my mind. When I did eventually get to Leslie, she was an absolute delight! She told me how she hadn’t had anyone bring her The Devil’s Rejects pictures/posters all day and then three of us had turned up at once! She gave me a few stories of being on set including how painful and physical some of her scenes had been to film and then signed my poster for me which I have had to censor here (but she had asked if I minded the swearing). She was happily posing for selfies too and was very upbeat throughout the whole experience. A really lovely guest. Leslie's Auto top right After Leslie I returned to the photo area for my second and final shoot for the day, which was with Jason Isaacs. Again, the man was a real pleasure to meet as he kindly greeted everyone and thanked us for coming in the photo area. I really can’t say nicer things about him! With my photos for the day covered, I could focus purely on the autos I needed and headed straight round to find that my number had been called for Robert Patrick’s auto. As with Leslie before, Robert is a talker so his queue was very slow moving, but it was totally worth it as his energy and the way he was engaging people was something else. He was nothing but complimentary for anyone who brought their own pictures for him to sign, saying that each one was his favourite scene from the movie (they can’t all have been!). With me, he loved the Terminator poster I had made and was telling me which other members of the cast I needed to get to sign it and where each of them should do it. Chance and money would be a fine thing (come on SM, you can do it!). Meeting up with some friends, they told me that not only had Gina Torres arrived but also she had already moved on to vqs and my number had been called which was a HUGE relief! I trundled over to her queue with that *#@&^$! book in my hands, so happy that I wouldn’t have to bring it back the next day. Gina was such a sweetheart to meet too. I could see panic in her eyes when I handed her the book, as the signed page was now totally full after Adam had added to it earlier in the day. I told her that she could sign on the blank page next to it and she thanked me and I saw the worry in her eyes drain away. She must have been having a rough time before getting there as she looked a little tired but was still so grateful to everyone coming up and meeting her. I was looking forward to seeing her again for a photo the next day. I’m not 100% sure at what point this happened in the day, but it was really nice to finally get a chance to properly meet Broo on Friday after only waving at each other last year. As she approached she asked if I’m a hugger, and in reply I just threw my arms round her! We had a nice chat about how are days were going and who we were meeting, and we were joined by the Blemmings as well for similar conversations. I love meeting people from on here and am happy to say that we all bumped into each other several more times throughout the weekend. Reaching this point in writing the day, I’ve realised that there is one guest I have forgotten to mention up to this point, Bob Gale. Bob had been due to appear at 1pm on the Friday, but was unfortunately delayed. Throughout the afternoon I kept popping over to his table to see if he had arrived yet, to no avail. Eventually I saw that they had started handing out vqs for him, so I grabbed one and was told he would be there at 4pm. 4pm roles around, and again, no sign of Bob. I think it was about 4:30pm when I checked his table to be delighted to see him sitting there and signing away. This was where things got confusing, as the crew had implemented a “priority” system with the vqs, but seemed to be confused among themselves as to how it worked. What they should have done is just hand out vqs normally and those that had been waiting the longest would have had the low vqs and called first, but they had written a silver “P” on some tickets giving them priority. I did not have the “P” but I did have a low ticket number. Some crew said that this was priority, others said it wasn’t. In the end I managed to join the queue 4 times, only to be asked to leave again by a different crewmember. This was incredibly frustrating. Finally one crewmember took pity on me and I joined the queue and was allowed to get my auto. I had brought my Back To The Future poster for Bob to sign, that I had started in 2015 with most of the cast’s autos now on it. Unfortunately my knowledge of posters was not what it is back then and the cheap ink and paper used by the eBay seller has meant that many autos have now faded, but you can still read them for now so I keep adding to it when I can. Bob was happy to sign it and promote the new Back To The Future Musical coming to the West End and despite the ‘No Posed Photos’ sign, he was happily holding up anything he had signed for people to take a picture of him with it, but no selfies. Bob's Auto middle left on the DeLoreon After Bob, I made my way over to the last auto I needed for the day, David Naughton. David had had a long queue all day, and finally my vq had been called so I joined the queue straight away. Although he had been talking, it didn’t take too long to get to the front, and he seemed very honoured to be asked to sign my ‘Legends of Horror’ poster that I had created and started last year. As he looked at the picture, he noticed that Kane Hodder had already signed it, and asked me if he had done so that day at the LFCC. I replied that no, he had in fact signed it last year while he was in London. Instantly, David picked up the poster and shouted over to Kane to show him. Kane seemed (understandably) confused but was insistent that he had signed my poster that day. I tried to correct him and remind him of when he signed it, but he said he had no memory of being in London then and that all conventions were blurring into one with him! It was a bizarre little interaction, but it was nice to say hi to Kane again as I hadn’t planned to meet him this weekend. David then signed the poster for me and was also happy to take a photo at the table too. David's Auto bottom right With my meeting with David complete, I was done for the day. After the night before and an exhausting first day, I decided to skip any social activities for the evening and slunk back to my hotel with a take away to try and get as much sleep as possible before doing it all again on Saturday! I felt much better for having more sleep on Saturday morning. I was awake at the same time as the previous day but felt more motivated to get things done. Today was going to be much harder than the Friday as Saturday is always the busiest day at LFCC but also I was planning to try and get the autos of 4 diamond pass guests, but just using vqs. I didn’t have breakfast to worry about at the hotel so once I was dressed I headed straight towards Olympia. I popped into Tesco to grab a bite to eat in the queue and headed round to the venue. The queue hall doors had not long opened by the time I arrived and most who were there early were already inside, but I was still there early enough to be near the start of the second full length row in the queue so I was happy. Being by myself this time I sat with my headphones on for the duration listening to podcasts. Once inside it was almost a copy paste of the day before. “Carefully walking” and collecting my vqs I managed mainly low numbers so once again I was happy, but whether or not the guests would make it past their vqs was yet to be seen. With the tickets collected I once again did a full sweep of the auto area to see where the new guests would be sitting and what changes had been made from the day before. It was while I was doing this that I bumped into DCGIRL 1987 and her friends. We had very briefly met before but it was good to finally speak properly and have a chat about how our cons had been going. After we parted ways, it was time to hit the first auto queues of the day. First up was Hayden Christensen. I was pleased to see he was out so early and was happy that they had managed to sort out the massive queue I had seen at his booth earlier on. It turns out this was because they had not sorted out any vq tickets for him or they had not arrived to the booth on time, so a queue had formed to collect them once they got there. When these had been handed out the queue shortened and was just filled with diamond pass holders. Once in line I was doing my usual job or trying to sort out the paint pen I was going to use (these involve some prep time to make sure they are working properly before being used), and getting the poster I had made ready. Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder. As I turned round the girl behind me was waving at me yet I didn’t recognise her at all. She then said, “I’m VikingGrrrl!” to which my response was similar to what Broo had experienced the day before and I gave her a huge hug! We chatted all while going through the queue until it was our turn to meet Hayden. Although not the chattiest guest I have ever met, Hayden was a really polite and sweet guy. He was greeting everyone, making sure they got what they wanted as their autos and was personalising for those that wanted it at that time. I was happy with the auto I got but realised later that as I was using a new type of pen for his auto, I hadn’t given it quite enough time and unfortunately it did smudge a little. Not much, but you can see it when up close. Annoying, but not the end of the world. Here’s the poster (and a close up on his auto). I’ll speak about the others who signed as I got to them. I designed the poster to match my original trilogy poster, which I had bought in 2014. I’ll make one for the new trilogy at some point too, but there’s only one official poster for The Rise of Skywalker at the moment and it’s not in the style I’d want. Hayden's Auto top middle Moving back into to the main auto area, I saw Carrie-Anne Moss was at her desk so I joined the queue to grab her auto on my new Matrix poster (I didn’t design this one). I’ve heard others say she was very chatty, but my experience was very quick. I wasn’t disappointed or anything, she was very polite and kind but it was a “hello, nice poster, thanks for coming” job. Although she did try to steal my pen! That was my two diamond pass autos for the day done, so everything else from here on out was going to be a bit harder. John Barrowman had a sign up on his queue saying that he was only going to be there form 11am which worried me a little as I wasn’t sure if he would get to diamonds, and all other diamond guest’s queue crew kept telling me to come back in half an hour. I kept thinking throughout the day how busy I would be in half an hour as this is when they kept telling me to come back each time! I walked over to the balcony to see some of the smaller guests out there and took my chance to meet Hugh Quarshie. Hugh is a lovely guy. He made sure I was happy about where he was going to sign and like Hayden, complemented me on the poster I had designed. I pleased to see him taking selfies with everyone as well. I won’t post a pic of the Star Wars Prequels poster again here, just look above and Hugh’s auto is on the left by Episode 1. After Hugh it was time for my first of 5 photos for the day. I was at the shoot area a little early, but the previous one had already finished and I more or less walked straight into the booth with my Carrie-Anne diamond pass and was one of the first 10 or so people waiting for their photo. Carrie-Anne ended up running late however, but before she turned up we had a surprise visit from Jason Momoa and his team who came into the wrong photo area! His agent did not look amused. Once Carrie-Anne arrived, the queue moved quickly, and again she was very lovely to meet. I’m not overly pleased with how my photo turned out as I hate my face in it and Carrie-Anne seems to almost be facing up for some reason, but it wasn’t bad enough to warrant a re-take so I’ll live with it. After a quick check where the diamond guests were up to with diamonds or vqs (for the most part, not mine) it turned out that Christina Ricci had started on her vq tickets. I was excited about meeting her, as the soundtrack to the film Black Snake Moan is one of my all time favourites, so I had brought with me a poster of the film for her to sign. I paid for my auto and was happy, as there was only one person in front of me in the queue. As I took my poster out of my case, the crewmember sitting with Christina looked at it and said, “I’m sorry, she won’t sign that”. I was gutted. I had known that Christina had some issues with some of the marketing of the film, but had researched online and found that she had signed items from it in the past and as there was no warning from SM I assumed everything would be ok. It had taken me a lot of time and more money than I would have liked to source the poster so this was a real let down for me. I hope in the future SM will double check with all guests if there are anything they will not sign so it can be announced beforehand and situations like this can be avoided. I went back to the payment table and selected an Addams Family 8x10 to get signed, which was ok by me as I do like those films, but obviously I was still a little disappointed and due to that, the experience of meeting Christina was vey quick yet still friendly. Next up I went for Daniel Mays. I had tried his line earlier in the day but got called away when Faerie Tanith arrived to go and say hi. I didn’t mind as his line was never massive and it didn’t take long to meet him when I went back. He seemed like a genuinely lovely guy, and we chatted about the idea of him appearing in a prequel of some kind, including the Cassian Andor series that Disney have announced, but as of yet he has not been contacted about it. After he signed my Rogue One poster for me, I told him I enjoyed his film Fisherman’s Friends that came out earlier this year, for which he was grateful. Nice guy. Daniel's Auto top right After meeting Daniel I was back to photos and was facing the closest thing I could call a clash for the weekend. Five minutes after Hayden’s shoot started, Adam Baldwin’s was due to start, yet Adam’s shoot was only 30 mins long whereas Hayden’s was an hour. As the usual rule of thumb is to go to the one that finishes first, first, that is what I did. As I went up I saw my friend Fred was the red shirt running the shoot so I went to say hi and had a very quick chat as he was obviously very busy with everything going on. The shoot with Adam started on time and ran smoothly. Adam saw my T Shirt and said “Rust City, I like it!” before taking the pic. I am 100% sure he had no idea what Rust City is and 100 points goes to anyone who can comment below what it is without having already been told by me, or looking it up on Google! As smooth as things went for Adam’s shoot, the same cannot be said for what was happening over at photo area C for Hayden’s shoot. As I say, this was meant to have started 5 mins before Adam’s yet when I arrived no one had gone in yet. There didn’t seem to be many crewmembers around and the one I saw seemed to be overwhelmed with all the people trying to find out what was going on. It was clear Hayden hadn’t arrived yet, but for some reason they hadn’t called the diamond pass holders in batches, they just called all diamonds. They probably hadn’t realised how many there were for him because not only was the queue area for the shoot full, there were still a load more of us diamonds who hadn’t managed to join it yet. I spoke VikingGrrrl who had been there longer than me, but she was just as confused as I was about the situation! After about 30 mins, the line began to move so Hayden had arrived, but also 2 new crew members arrived and started to properly organise the crowd. They tried to get anyone with a normal batch number to move away for a while and as the queue slowly went down and had some space, they added the remaining people with diamond passes in in batch order. It really should have been obvious that for a guest like Hayden, this is how it should have been done from the start. Just before I went into the booth, they started calling up the gold passes. The shoot itself seemed to run smoothly, but I could see some people were trying their best to spend as much time with Hayden as possible, going for hugs after the photo was taken and the security guys having to peel them off him from time to time to speed things up. As I got up to the front, the red shirt who was the “step up to the line” person in the booth was telling people that there were only 8 mins left of the shoot and they can’t over run. No way were they gonna get that done! I warned her that they were still on diamonds at the moment and there were still a bunch of batches to do after us. She shook her head and I went up for my pic. Hayden was just as sweet as earlier but I moved along ASAP to try and help them get us all through. As I was waiting for my pic to print, some of the crew had taken Hayden and his people off to the side for a chat. I think they were saying that they need to do things quicker as all I heard was Hayden saying “I’m going as fast as I can!” but then I left the area to get out of the way. I have no idea how things were handled after that. I hope that everyone got their photos. As of writing this I haven’t seen anyone say they didn’t. It may have been a little frustrating having to wait around for Hayden’s photo but it did help out in killing time for my next vq number to be called. I was well aware of a lot of the health problems Val Kilmer has had over the past few years, so was not surprised that they had kept most of the queuing out of his booth, to allow more space inside. Once in, I was still a little shocked to see his condition though. The man did not look well at all and it’s a real testament to him that he had turned up to see his fans. He was my first on-screen Batman and I was really looking forward to seeing him but as I approached his desk, I could see he was obviously very weak, and not quite with it. Some crew were behind him trying to sort out some power in the area and he obviously didn’t like it. With every small click or bang they made, he flew a mile and in the end he asked if they could just stop and leave. He was wearing a big scarf and after seeing him touch it and hearing the electronic voice come out, I’m fairly sure he now uses a voice box to talk. His assistant had to remove the pens from his hand and place the new one in to change colour for people. It did make me feel sad, but again, I was so happy he’d made the effort to be there. I had noticed that he had signed fairly small on some people’s posters but I was glad that when handed mine he went a large as he could across the middle as that was what I wanted. He pointed to my pen and gave me a thumbs up (it was metallic blue and looks great!). After handing me the pen I got a double thumbs up from him, I thanked him and left the area. I spoke to a few other people who had also met Val and they agreed that he was not in a good way but made the effort to make it a great experience for everyone. I even convinced StuartG2198 to go and get an auto as he was saying that he’d go next time Val comes. Unfortunately, I do not think Val will be returning. I moved onto my photo with Christina Ricci, and I had gotten over my disappointment from earlier. She was really sweet and engaging in the shoot (as much as you can be in these things!). I was also surprised just how tiny she is! This was not something I could tell from her being behind a table earlier. With the shoot over, I headed back to the signing area and into the queue for John Barrowman. I had been looking forward to this one! I’ve heard many stories about John over the years but never had a chance to meet him myself. I’m not a fan of Dr Who/Torchwood or Arrow, so he wasn’t an important meet for me, but would be a fun one. His queue was fairly sizable but moved quickly enough. As I got up to the front desk I had my pen and poster ready, and the lady sitting next to John let out a huge scream of excitement when she saw my poster! It was for Shark Attack 3: Megalodon. Now, I’m a fan of bad shark movies. And I don’t mean films like Sharknado, where they are trying to be bad (though it’s not without it’s charms). I like films that are trying to be good, but just fail miserably, and Shark Attack 3 fits that bracket perfectly. The effects are terrible. They used real shark footage, then green screen the people to make them look smaller, and shrink them further to try and make them look like they are falling into the shark’s mouth, but you can tell the shark is regular size. I’m fairly sure there’s been a few memes from scenes in this film over the years. I asked John to write a certain quote from this film on the poster for me (which he was happy to do) but I can’t tell you what that quote is due to it’s content (18+ people, just Google it!). As he was doing so, the security guard behind John started laughing, John heard this, and began telling the story, as there were no kids around us. They’d had a particularly difficult shoot, with no small part being that his co-star had not exactly been the best actress in the word when it came to emotions. The director took John aside and said to him to just come out with some insane line that would shock her into a reaction. That was where the quote came from. She still didn’t react in any way but they kept the line in the film! With John done, I only had one auto and one photo left for the day. The auto was from Ian McDiarmid and he was proving to be the hardest of the diamond pass guests to get without the pass. Many times throughout the day I had tried to find he was still just on diamonds. Eventually, around 3:45 they opened it up to vqs, but it would take a good half hour more before my number was called. I felt really sorry for the crew member working his queue (sorry, I didn’t get her name) as she was doing an amazing job, especially in that heat, and was trying her best to keep everything organised and upbeat all day. Unfortunately, there were some idiots who obviously didn’t know how things worked as there was one woman who was practically screaming at the crewmember because her vq number hadn’t been called yet. I just quietly moved over and mentioned that maybe she should have gotten there earlier to get a lower number and she stormed off in a sulk. Again, the entitlement of some people amazes me! Once in the queue we did have a small hold up in a large number of Funko Pops were brought out for Ian to sign for the Preorder service, but that’s all part of these things and it wasn’t long before we were moving again. I had met Ian back when he started doing events back in 2014, so this time I asked for him to sign my Star Wars Prequels poster and he insisted on adding ‘Emperor’ when I asked him to add ‘Palaptine’, which I didn’t mind. Ian's Auto bottom right I was happy that I had collected all the autos I needed to for the day. Then I looked at my watch and realised I had two and a half hours until my final photo of the day!! I was glad to see that Adam Baldwin had just started his free talk though so I went and sat in the main stage to rest my feet and listen to his stories. Adam has had some great roles over the years so it was great to hear him talk about them with such love and passion. One of my favourite moments was when someone said to him that he was well known for his tough guy roles, to which he just replied “Acting!” I have watched Adam in Firefly, then Chuck, and more recently The Last Ship and I was pleased to hear him tell stories from each and praise all his fellow cast members in those series as being professional and fun people to work with. I then spent the remainder of the time walking round stalls talking to different people, including several forum members and found the time passed quicker than I expected and I hadn’t even managed to look at the comic artists and artist alley stalls yet! I knew I’d get a chance the next day though. Gina’s shoot was at the end of the day but you wouldn’t know it to look at her as she still looked stunning and was just as sweet as she had been the previous day. I know she has not done many cons before (or possibly any?) but you wouldn’t know it, as she seemed like a con pro with how she handled herself and all the attendees there to see her. Great guest and all round lovely person. The relief and feeling of accomplishment overwhelmed me after the shoot and that meant only one thing, time for the pub! That evening was spent sharing stories and comparing experiences over many much needed drinks. A few people had been to the Sheen talk and came back raving about it, but said it was not without it’s issues, but that’s not for me to discuss. Having accomplished everything I had on Friday and Saturday, I gave myself a little lie in on Sunday. Nothing too late, but I got up at 8am which definitely helped after the drinks the night before! Gina’s photo the day before had been the last one of the con for me so Sunday was just focused on the last few autos I needed, and my first ever LFCC cosplay! It surprised no one that it was Ghostbusters related, but I left my flightsuit at home for a slightly different character. Louis Tully (or Viz Clortho/The Keymaster). I don’t exactly have the same build as Rick Moranis but I don’t care for these things as I just do it for a bit of fun. I got dressed into my outfit for the day and made my way to the con to arrive just as people were let in to the con from the queue hall. This did mean I still had to walk round the whole of the snaking area as we were let in, but there was no stopping and waiting as the queue moved the entire time. As I got inside, there were no vqs to collect straight away but the two main guests I was after already had large queues so I decided to return a little later. I spent much of the morning bumping into friends, many of which were unsure if it was me or not at first, which was quite fun! I then decided on having a bit of a laugh and took a couple of prop shoot photos. After that, I bumped into another forum member. The bear! I had seen him a couple of times over the weekend, but usually one of us were in a rush so there were just enough time for a few insults before moving on. Having a chat with him this time was actually really nice and he only threw in the odd grumpy comment here and there. He did offer me the chance to grasp his wood but I politely declined! I think I have the first Nate-selfie I have seen on this forum but forgive my hair as my cosplay had pretty much ruined it by this point! When I came back to the auto area, both the guests I had been after had been put onto vqs and I was lucky to get low-ish numbers for both. While I waited for my numbers to come up, I made a quick visit to Andy de la Tour, who seemed very confused about my cosplay but was still very polite. He made a great addition to my Rogue One poster (see below). After Andy I made a sweep around the stalls and went to visit my friends at the UK Ghostbusters. It was great to see a couple of us in GB cosplays that weren’t our flightsuits (as much as I love them!). The first of my vq numbers to be called was for Guy Henry. I had been a bit surprised that his queue had been so long and that he had been put on vqs but as soon as I met him, it was clear why. What a lovely man he is! I had to explain to him that my cosplay was from Ghostbusters for which he thanked me as he didn’t know, but he kept telling me how much he loved it! I asked about how he found playing Governor Tarkin in Rogue One to which he replied “terrifying!”. He then proceeded to tell me how much he’s always loved Peter Cushing and stepping into his shoes was a daunting task. After he too signed my Rogue One poster, he again told me how great he thought my cosplay was and I shook his hand and left. He’s definitely a great guy to meet, and I regret putting it off for so long. Andy del la Tour's Auto middle left. Guy Henry's Auto top left After meeting Guy, I noticed Ross Beadman was at his desk, after being absent every time I had checked up to that point. Ross was polite yet very quiet. He did write a long quote for me on my 8x10 though. I still had a while before I could get my last auto of the weekend, so I headed off to watch Carrie-Anne Moss’s talk. It was really great to hear her talk about her career, especially the Matrix. Where she explained that very little green screen was used to make the movies and she did as many of her own stunts as possible. There was more hanging around to be done but eventually I was able to join my last queue for the weekend to get the autos from Lisa and Louise Burns who were the Grady twins in The Shining. Now, I’m not a fan of Stanley Kubrick’s work at all, and although that does still include The Shining, I find it to be one of the more tolerable films of his. Saying that, it can’t be denied that the film is a classic horror movie and the Grady twins are more than an appropriate fit for my Legends of Horror poster. The Burns sisters were having a great time at their desk, chatting with everyone who came up and taking photos. So much so that their agent had to tell them to speed things up a bit as there were still a lot of people waiting to meet them. As with the other guests, my cosplay confused them, but I found their responses rather comical and they were very kind in making sure they wrote what I wanted on my poster. Lisa & Louise's Autos top right With the heat inside becoming too much while in my cosplay I decided that I would take the chance to slope off back to my hotel and change. I was happy that I had achieved everything I needed to auto and photo wise for the weekend and wanted to get rid of my poster case as well. When I returned in a much more comfortable shorts and t shirt, I finally managed to spend my time looking at all the artist stalls. I bought a couple of great prints from an artist called Kazaih. I loved the colours used in these as well as the overall designs. I also picked up a great Nightmare Before Christmas print off an artist whose name I unfortunately don’t remember (if anyone does know, please tell me as I’d like to give credit). One of my friends had purchased this earlier on in the con and I knew that I wanted a copy because of how cool it looked. After I paid, I was looking down to put my change away, when I noticed another picture of a very familiar character, Slimer! What then caught my eye is that this wasn’t just a print, but some original artwork and he was only charging £20 for it! There was no way I was going to let an offer like that go, so I bought it straight away. Very happy with these purchases. With my tour round the artists and comic areas complete I was finally done for the weekend. I took a final stroll round the building and said my goodbyes to any friends I bumped into then made my way down to the pub. We had a few drinks down there as we waited for people to trickle in as they had their last photos or got the last autos they needed for the weekend then a load of us headed into central London where we had our annual goodbye meal. The next morning, I woke up with the con blues already in full swing! It’s the social sides of the cons that really make it for me and I was already sad that I wouldn’t be seeing everyone everyday like I just had. As I packed up all my belongings in the hotel, I began to start planning this essay out in my head, although I didn’t manage it for too long as I’d left the door to the bathroom open, and although it had been a good 15 mins since I’d finished in the shower, it seemed there was still enough steam about to set off the fire alarm! It was localised to my room, but I didn’t want to go and fetch anyone as the room was a state, what with me being in the middle of packing! So I did the only thing I could and opened the windows, and shoved all by belongings into my bags as fast as I could and got out of there! Of course I did tell the hotel staff what had happened as I was checking out so that they could sort it. And there it is. That was my LFCC 2019 experience. Well done to you who made it this far reading, as I know that I struggle with large amounts of text like this! I hope you enjoyed at least some parts and it didn’t drag out too much. Looking at my word count I have absolutely smashed the length of any Wround Up that has come before this, and almost trebled the first one I ever wrote! I want to say thank you to all the guests I met this weekend, as they were all amazing and was a pleasure to meet them all. I also want to thank SM for doing a great job of LFCC this year, nothing’s perfect but the show has come on a long way since I first started coming in 2016. Thanks to all crew who were working this year as you were all amazing and may helped me in ways I can’t write here! A big thanks to all you forum people that I saw or met for the first time this year (including our amazing mods who never get as much praise as they deserve), you help make the build up to these events good fun and it’s so good to put faces to the names! Another thanks to all my other friends that I go to these cons with, some of you may read this and it’s you guys who really make the cons what they are for me, you’re awesome! And finally, thank you to you dear reader for making it this far, sorry if I wasted your time!30 points
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I started this last year and I thought I’d try to make it a annual thing, so here we are! I’m writing it now whilst everything is still fresh in my brain, but I apologise if I leave anything out (some bits have been on purpose!) or mis-remember things at all or even put parts in the wrong order. I’m trying my best! I had another amazing year at LFCC. With less guests on my list than previous years, I thought I would be less busy and maybe even bored. I was wrong! I had no problem finding stuff to do in the times between shoots and autos etc. and actually did some stuff I’ve never tried before! I worked on the Thursday this year, which was a mistake. My whole day was spent getting excited and going over in my head what was about to happen across the next few days. No work was done during the day at all. My boss could see it was pointless keeping me around that day so let me out an hour early and i rushed up to Olympia for my pass collection. Judging by previous years, I was full expecting a one or two hour wait to get my weekend wristband and diamond passes. Again, I was wrong! The way the pass pickups were organised was so much better this year, and i really hope Showmasters continue using this method from here on out as there were no queues when I arrived and had my passes within 10 mins! A bit shocked at how quick the collection had been, I managed to meet up with some friends in the old haunt of the Crown and Sceptre for a catch up over some food and drinks. After a couple of hours we made the move to Latymers for the Thursday meet up. On our way over we happened to bump into one Mr Lance Henriksen who was just hanging out out the front of his hotel! We stopped and chatted with him for about 15mins and not one member of the group asked for an auto or photo which just made it for a really cool chat with the guy who is just so nice. I believe a few of the group managed to spend more time with Lance across the weekend, but that’s not my story! The rest of the night was spent chatting with old friends and making new ones at the meet up (many thanks to smithy270492 for organising that this year, good job buddy!) but due to my lack of hotel it was an early leave for me to head back on the train. After a restless night of 2 hours sleep, my alarm got me up at 5am. I wasn’t feeling great. The heat had been unbearable in the night, and mix that with the excitement of the first day of LFCC and that just leads to trouble. I just about managed to get myself sorted and caught my train in time to arrive at Olympia at 7:20. By this time a queue had formed but isn’t wasn’t as long as I had expected and after a smooth bag search/wristband check as we entered the building at 7:50, I happily found myself in the first queue line, preparing for a nice 2 and a bit hour wait for the main doors to open. It was during this time that I managed a wave to Broo, and to be completely missed by both Chris1970 and teskothemad who stood near me, but I’m telling myself they didn’t do it on purpose! Opening of the doors went smoothly. No one was running or pushing that i saw and there was a general happy feeling in the air. VQ collection went without issue and I found myself with some great low numbers for the guests I needed. With that, I was off to my first shoot. As I mentioned earlier, I went for the general 3 day weekend entry pass this year, but what I didn’t mention was that this is the first time since my first LFCC in 2013 that I have had one of these as I had usually gone for the gold pass to help make things easier. Previous years have seen me meet 20-30 guests but this year I decided with only 11 guests on my list, that gold wasn’t needed. This time I was right. My first photo was with Jewel Staite. I have been a fan of Firefly for years and she is the 4th member of the main cast I have now met. She was so sweet and lovely in that shoot and I have to give a special shoutout to that dress she was wearing, because, wow! Jewel had arrived a little late to her shoot which meant I had missed the morning shoot for my only other one for the day, which was Meat Loaf, but it was fine as he had another one later in the afternoon which I would make it to. I had some spare time after that though so I decided to start on my autos. First up was Tom Vaughan-Lawlor who was a super lovely guy. I watched him explain to a kid how he wore a weird suit that a computer recognised and turned him into Ebony Maw in Infinity War and the kid was totally transfixed on every word. Such a great thing to see. He signed an 8x10 as well as my custom Avengers Villains poster that I have just started. After Tom, I made it over to Zach Levi’s auto table. The guy was already looking a bit warm (This was the hottest day by far across the weekend), but still enjoying himself with everyone meeting him. I realised after about 5mins of queuing that it was friend of mine standing in front of me in the queue which was great to have a catch up as we waited. As we got closer to Zach though, the guy in front of my friend had told him “When I heard you had been cast as Shazam I was worried”!! After he left, Zach was in fits of laughter, saying “At least he was honest!”. Zach was lovely to meet and told me a couple of quick stories about Chuck along with saying that he still hopes to make the movie one day (fingers crossed!). Next up was Matt Zimmerman. I loved Thunderbirds when I was a kid, so any chance I get to meet someone who worked on it, I jump at the chance. Matt seemed so happy to be meeting people and after calling me “another big guy” (I’m hoping that was a complement!) we had a great conversation about how both our names are shortened, but our full names is only used when we’re in trouble! Moving on from Matt, I saw that Jewel Staite’s auto queue had been cut off for her to go on a break. I went up to ask the crew member what time she would be back and was about to walk off when a lady (Jewel’s manager/agent?) shouted out to the crew member that she would sign for 5 more people as she still had some time! I handed over my VQ (which had been called) and managed to see her within a matter of minutes, even though she had had a massive queue all day. Once again Jewel was incredibly sweet and I basically melted in front of her. I asked about Season 2, I didn’t like the answer. I then spoke to her about her cameo in Alan Tudyk’s Con Man series and she was telling me about as well as how much she’d love to be on again. She happily signed with quotes my Firefly book (I hate that thing and regret starting an auto collection in it as it’s so heavy!) and an 8x10. I was doing really well for time and I thought I could fit in one more auto before having a rest. As I joined behind the few people at his table, I noticed that a blue bear was talking to Costas Mandylor and asking him to sign his wood. I gave natedammit a poke as he walked off and got the grumpy, annoyed reaction from him that I had hoped for and expected. He probably hasn’t bothered to read this far but if he does, it was nice to finally meet you Nate, even if it was just for a few seconds. I will try to annoy you for longer next time. Costas was as cool as cool can be. He had been chatting with the people in front of me about what a great guy Tobin Bell is and our conversation went from there and delved more into the Saw films and as to whether or not we will see him back as Hoffman (he wouldn’t say). Stopping for lunch is a new thing for me at LFCC, usually I don’t have time! I sat in the auto area with a group of friends sharing stories of our mornings so far and what autos we’d managed to get. Once we were done I went for a short walk around the stalls and stumbled on the Baker Street set where I had some photos taken. At the time of writing this, I haven’t received them, so apologies for not posting anything here. I did then also have a shot taken on the Stranger Things set, and although I do think it would have been better if the fairy lights were on, I do quite like the pic I got! After bumping into a few more people I know from various walks of life it was finally time for my photo with Meat Loaf. This was hands down the weirdest shoot I have done at a con! It started with everyone being given paper hand fans in the queue which were a godsend! We were then asked to turn and face a camera shouting “Meat Loaf” as they took what seemed to be an official pic of some kind. I’d like to know what this was for as I was close to the front and would love to have a copy. After that had happened, the queue started to move, slowly. Slower than any other photo queue I’ve ever seen in fact and had me worried that something was wrong. Once I got inside the booth I saw exactly what the hold up was. As we walked in, the man himself was shouting out that everyone has to introduce themselves to him as they come up for their photo and he was having short chats with most people as they did. For us attendees this was great, as I’ve never seen such interactions with a guest at a shoot before, but for the staff on the other hand… most of them were pulling their hair out! The photographer especially, who i saw crouched on the floor with his head in his hands a few times while Meat nattered away to people! The poor girl calling everyone forward was just laughing because if she didn’t she would cry as she tried to tell everyone to introduce themselves, because if she missed it, Meat would shout it out again! This was my favourite shoot I have ever done at a convention! After the shoot I went back round to try and see if I could get into Meat’s auto queue as he was the only auto I had left to collect for the day. Unfortunately, but after the photo experience not unexpectedly, it turns out that Meat hadn’t gotten thorough all of the diamond tickets yet. I walked up to find a group of low VQ ticket holders who like myself only had Meat’s auto left to get. The plan was to hang around to see if it was possible to get in the queue at any point but not to cause any trouble or get in the way and do everything asked of us. Eventually some crew members allowed us to join the queue but warned us that they would continue to add in any other diamond pass holders in front of us when they turned up. We agreed. We then spent the next hour and a half walking backwards more than we did forwards! Did we moan a bit? Yes, but we all understood the situation and were still very grateful to the crew for helping us out. Eventually, after waiting for 2 1/2 hours, we got our autos, and although Meat had been told to hurry things up, he still enjoyed a small chat with everyone who came up. Very happy to have my copy of ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ signed along with a Fight Club poster, where Meat drew Bob in as he wasn’t on it! The only thing I regret from this wait was that I did miss Jewel Staite’s talk, so I hope she comes back some day. After the long wait for Meat’s auto I was drained, but still managed to head down the pub for a couple of hours to join the usual crowd before having to slope off early again as I needed to make up for the sleep I lost the night before. I had a much later start on Saturday but still woke up before my alarm and just got on with it to get to the station quicker. After no hassle with the trains, I was hoping that the later start was going mean getting into the venue would be a breeze. Wrong again! It felt like everyone else going to the con that day had had the same idea as me. The queue went from the train station, to the main road, sealed a bit, then to a 3 lane split where two lanes were filled as one was emptied. This went back down to the gold pass queue, with more snaking, then round the whole building and in gate H. I will admit I was totally shocked by this but it actually only took about half an hour to get through as it was moving at a fast walk pace nearly the whole time. Bag check etc. was easy again but what did seem pointless to me was that we were then made to snake round the whole queue in the queue hall before just walking in. This seemed pointless to me. Once I was in it was time to get back to work. I had a heads up from some friends who got there early that loads of guests had moved auto table positions so I took a tour round the signing area to see who was where and gage some queues to grab an auto. I turned up just in time to David Duchovny’s queue to be let in straight away behind a few other diamond pass holders with him turning up about 15 mins later. As expected with a bigger guest like David, we were wanted to move through as fast as possible without being overly rushed. The man himself called me by name and thanked me for coming, which was about it. I was happy with this as I have heard and experienced worse from other guests and I was just happy to have met him, no matter how briefly. I was never expecting him to be like Meat Loaf or anything as he just doesn’t seem the type. With one of my diamond autos under my belt, and the other out for lunch and a photo shoot, I took a walk around artist’s ally and bought several prints and commissioned an ink drawing from Martin Griffiths of Peter Venkman from The Real Ghostbusters. Next on my list was to get an auto from Mike Quinn. I have met Mike before, back in 2016 where I go him to sign a Star Wars pic for me and we chatted about his work on those films. This year I wanted to move onto a different show he has worked on, The Muppets. I saw Mike performing with the Muppets in a live show just recently in London and was blown away to be able to watch him and all the other puppeteers work their craft in a live setting. Talking with Mike he told me all about how uncomfortable it can be rolling round on the floor and having to hold your hand above your head for long periods of time. He also told me that he has now been working with The Muppets for 38 years and is the only person to have worked Kermit will all three men who have performed him over the years. Now it was time for Zach Levi’s talk. This one was high energy! He is very charismatic and you could tell how much fun he was having with the Q&A from the crowd. Questions about Shazam were avoided but with an answer that satisfied without actually saying anything! It’s easy to see how the guy got to where he is. After a lunch break I went and joined the queue for Sam Neill’s auto and with my diamond pass, I didn’t have to wait for him to come back for too long and only had a few people in front of me. This was Sam’s first ever con and he was very cool and calm with the whole experience. He loved that we share our first name and was happy to see my Event Horizon poster, a movie he said really creeped him out. He was a very special meet for me and I have been a fan since I was 10 years old and he did not disappoint. After Sam I tried to grab what I assumed was going to be a quick auto from William Hope, only to find he had a massive queue and had been put on VQ tickets! I took one and thought I’d try again a bit later. Before I did, I took another walk around some of the stalls and ended up with some more art and a sticker of a Porg! (I love those stupid things, even if I’m not the biggest fan of the film they’re in). Returning to William’s table I was shocked to find the vq system had gone and only 3 people in his queue. It had been less than an hour! I took my chance and got to meet him to find he too is a very sweet and gracious man who was so happy to be meeting everyone. Meeting him is a great addition to my Aliens collection and I have heard he doesn’t appear often so well done to Showmasters for getting him. After meeting William I went straight into the Duchovny talk. I have to admit, this was not my favourite talks of the weekend. Some of his answers were interesting, but there were a lot of them that he refused to answer, but I never felt particularly bored and he was always happy to take a compliment from the crowd. After the talk I rushed for a photo with William Hope, only to find it was massively running behind, so I went and had my photo with Sam Neill before heading back. Both men were just as lovely and sweet in their shoots as they had been earlier at their tables. With all my autos and photos done for the day I headed out and joined the queue that had already started forming for the Ray Park Martial Arts Demo. This was a good fun evening. Ray said he had nothing prepared for the night but it didn’t show as he flipped across the stage and through the lightsabers around in a way that only Darth Maul could! Those that were there may or may not have recognised me as I went up on stage and showed them all exactly how not to do it! Ray doesn’t have to worry about me stealing his job any time soon. It was great to see him interacting with everyone on stage and always being positive to encourage us to do our best. If it didn’t work, we tried again until we got it. It was a proper master class! Even with some of the younger kids who came up were handled really well by all the guys instructing, whether they were shy or loud, they were helped to do their best. I’m not ashamed to admit that a couple of the kids were way better with the lightsaber than i will ever be! After the demo it was back down the pub for a bit to see the usual rabble. I managed to stay out a bit longer this time (a whopping 22:30!) but it was still an earlier finish than i really wanted! The Sunday started a little earlier than the day before to try and avoid the long queues, and it worked. I was in in no time, although I was a little bit wetter than I’d hoped thanks to the rain. I wish I’d remembered about my emergency poncho before I’d walked half way from Hammersmith! Once inside there was no time for looking around as I was straight into my Duchovny shoot. It was fist bumps around as we walked up for our pics, and I got the same level of greeting from him as I did from my signing session, so I left happy. After David’s shoot I said hi to a few people and went into Meat Loaf’s talk. After the past couple of interactions with him I had expected it to be good and he didn’t disappoint! His stories made you laugh and cry and realise what an amazing life he has had. He told us he’s been called Meat since he was 4 days old, and talked about his favourite songs and how he sees himself as an actor not a singer, in that every song he does he performs a different character. It seems unlikely but if he ever does manage to get back on tour, I have to go. After the talk I killed some time round the stalls again and met up with some friends I hadn’t seen over the weekend yet and bumped into others I didn’t even know would be there! I love how random comic con can be for stuff like that! Then it was time for my Zach Levi photo. David Tennent’s photo before us was running a bit late and there were further complications when a poor girl in David’s queue fainted. His shoot finished without her getting a pic but we heard people say that they would try to sort out a selfie with David at the auto booth as the medical staff took her away. I hope she recovered and got her pic. Zach was as energetic and friendly has he had been earlier in the weekend which is great to see from a guest on day 3 of a con. I only realised from standing next to him just how giant that guy is and he’s definitely moved on from his Chuck days to being in shape for Shazam too! With my final shoot for the weekend over, it was time to collect my final autos. I met Emily Carey and Barbara Coles, both of whom seem so pleased to be there and talk to everyone as they signed away and posed for photos at the table. My final auto was Ray Park and when I got to his table he remembered me from the night before and was telling what parts he thought I did well, and what I needed to work on more. I will follow his advice and either get a lightsaber or just practise with a stick to see if I can improve my skills. Ray is a gent and a legend and I still am amazed that I go the opportunity to get a short lesson from him! Photos and autos completed, I headed into my final activity of the weekend which was Sam Neill’s talk on the main stage. It was great to see how relaxed Sam was as he answered any questions people had. The majority were of course about Jurassic Park, but the was also a nice mix about some of his various projects, yet no one asked about Event Horizon or The Dish! I had my hand in the air to ask a question for much of the talk but as I finally got handed the mic, they wrapped it up! Oh well. Walking noticeably slower than normal and feeling both physically and mentally exhausted, there was enough time to head down the pub one last time before heading off to central London with a group of friends for a meal before saying goodbye and heading home. My mission was complete. I had everything I set out to get from the weekend, and more. I love meeting the guests, and none of them this year disappointed me at all, but as ever it’s my friends and other attendees that made the weekend for me, so thank you to everyone I hung out with or talked to no matter how long for as it’s you guys that bring me back every year. Thanks for reading! Wrong Name TL;DR - Went to LFCC, met guests for photos and autos and had fun.28 points
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A few folks might remember that on the Sunday I'd posted on the forum that I'd made a mistake with times and that I might have made my mum miss her photo op with Lee majors. As soon as I'd realised I'd told her where to go - and quickly - as there were still 5 minutes left of the session. I waited only 5 minutes for her to return saying she had indeed missed it. Of course I then started crying cause I cannot cope with letting people down (she wasn't annoyed at me at all I'm just a muppet). But she told me it was okay and to follow her. Apparently my mum had passed Lee major's table and seen he was already there and asked who she thought was his aide/handler if she knew if he were doing any more sessions, to be apologetically told no and then asked why. My mum explained what had happened and this wonderful woman told her she would arrange a photo of her and Lee majors at his table. Turns out she was his wife and when my mum brought me over to be able to take the photo she could see I was upset and was so kind and friendly and compassionate, she gave me a hug and held my hand reassuring me we'd get a photo, honestly she was *wonderful* <3 Lee majors then came over and shook both my mum's hand and mine, chatted with us both for a few minutes and then stood with my mum with his arm around her for a few pics. I couldn't thank them enough which they were both so lovely about and honestly they didn't have to do that??? I was completely blown away by their kindness and what started as an upsetting mistake turned into an amazing moment that we won't ever forget <324 points
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23 points
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http://celebpics.fics-n-pics.me.uk/lfccscheduler2018.html Yes I'm crew, yes I occasionally pop up here with a mod hat, but this is absolutely not official and just something I've been tinkering with. I will do my best to keep it updated as new versions of the schedule are released, but I have to do the data entry manually (and it's taken from the release until now to get the initial version in, even with my sister helping enter times) Just click the boxes next to your planned activities and it will give you a filtered schedule with just where you need to be. It is sorted according to the advice we give people on here with overlaps - ie go to the event ENDING first - but with long overlaps this might not be accurate depending on your batch number. Red background is the stuff currently missing (taken only from eventbrite listings so may not be 100%), green text is free talks If you have any feedback please let me know (my css and javascript are quite rudimentary so I won't necessarily be able to improve things but I'd still like to know!)23 points
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Hi All Just a reminder, whilst the mods will check in on the forum periodically over the course of the weekend, most of us will be at the show so we cannot guarantee an immediate response on here. If you have any issues whilst at the show, please speak to a member of the event crew, or visit the information desk. Most issues that arise can be dealt with then and there however, if you leave the show with an unresolved problem it is unfortunately likely to stay that way. We hope you have a fantastic weekend and look forward to seeing you there.23 points
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But details are still being confirmed. I will update this as soon as I hear more. Just wanted to post this in a prominent and obvious place as I have promised.23 points
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Excuse that this is short, I am on my phone and in a moving car. A guest announcement went up that should never have gone up. Some people played a cruel joke and someone fell for it. We are currently investigating. An official statement from the office will be up soon. For now please wait for this statement.22 points
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21 points
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OK, here are mine (I can't remember how many I can get in here at once, so will attempt the whole lot and split if required): Ian Whyte (7'1" to my 5'4") Gina Torres Brendan Fraser Ian Somerhalder Carrie-Ann Moss Zachary Quinto Peter Serafinowicz Peter pretending to feel up my bicep (tee hee) Iron Fist group shoot Tom Ellis Lucifer Wings shoot Ethan Phillips Tara Fitzgerald20 points
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My three photo ops from today - apologies for the quality, photo of a photo n all20 points
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I apologise for making yet another long thread with someone telling everyone about how their weekend went. To be honest I've never done it before as I didn't think many people would be interested to read about my experiences but I've decided to do it this year more for myself than for anyone that chooses to read it, just to allow myself to write it all down and in some way, take it all in. The forum just seems like as good a place as any to do that. Thursday For me LFCC started on the Thursday. Due to a busy week of being ill and going to a gig I had most of my packing done long before which saved me some time. I packed up the remaining items needed, had some lunch and headed out my door. Living in Kent and working in London means my journey to my hotel was not as magical for me as it can be for others. Sights like the Shard and Tower Bridge are a daily occurrence for me. In fact I can see the Shard out my office window as I'm writing this. So my journey to West Kensington passed without incident. Arriving at the tube station I was stopped by another forum user however, @only_jay who I have become friends with over the past couple of years through meeting up at several cons. I was pleased to find that he and his wife were staying in the same hotel as me, so we caught up a bit as we got lost trying to find the place! My room was small but had everything I needed but I more or less just dropped off my bags before heading out for my important mission for the day. After a 20 minute walk I finally found the party shop that I needed to purchase much needed items for the weekend ahead, and on the way back to the hotel I bought a tonne of water to have at the hotel and carry round the con along with some sugary snacks to keep me going across the weekend. Next job was to go and collect my gold and diamond passes from the Thursday early collection. There were a load more staff on from last year and things went a lot quicker. It took about 45mins to collect all passes, and most of my diamonds were low numbers with Natalie Dormer number 2 being the lowest, but no number 1's for me this year (I had Jeremy Renner diamond number 1 last year). My only issue was getting absolutely drenched by the rain as we queued outside, and I somehow forgot to collect my gold goodie bag! Then it was time for the first meet up for LFCC 2017. Organised on here and Facebook by both @Zonky and @PenThePirate, Thursday's meet up was going to be a small affair with around 25ish people meeting in the basement room of the Crown and Sceptre pub round the corner from Olympia. But that doesn't mean it would be quiet! I arrived as one of the first people and instantly began chatting to the other guys, most of whom I hadn't seen or spoken to since last LFCC, as if we'd seen each other the day before! The evening was filled with much drinking and laughter as well as catching up with most people and meeting some new ones. This was also the night where my earlier mission took shape. I had earlier purchased a few red balloons and white sticks to hold them. The balloon was inflated and attached to the stick, then I very badly cello-taped on the face of our friend @timlux on to the balloon who was unable to make it to the con. I also added his name on the back of the balloon in sharpie. Tim Balloon was an instant hit with the group, and after creating him I set him free with other members to enjoy the con. Have a look for Tim Balloon's own thread to find out what he got up to over the weekend! More drinking then followed as well as a very revealing game of Cards Against Humanity which I can't go into on here in fear of being banned by the mods! Friday Surprised at how little of a hangover I had on Friday morning, I was up at 6:45, had breakfast at 7:30 and was in the gold pass queue by around 8:15. There were a fair few people ahead of us at that point but we were expecting that and it was by no means the length of the GA queue. Excitement and nerves were high in the queue, especially after previous years where there have been some issues with gold pass entry. There was no need to worry on Friday though as all the golds were let in on time with no issues I am aware of. Getting VQ tickets went well, but the gold queue does still suffer with being over the other side of the venue from the guests. With the early entry now cut to only 5 mins, it didn't take long before all the GA attendees were swarming in as well. Overall though, entry went well. I met up with a load of people, some, of whom weren't at the pub the night before so had a quick catch up with them before going off to my first shoot, the 4 Boba Fett. I wore my Boba Fett T shirt especially for this and was surprised to see a Han Solo in carbonite prop ready for the photo which I had somehow completely missed in the photos description. Apart from me having to crouch a bit so Han could be seen in the pic, this shoot can out well and all 4 Fetts were lovely. After the shoot I moved to start getting autos as I knew I had many to get over the weekend and wanted to get as many on Friday as possible with it being a quieter day. First up was Emily Kinney, she was polite but seemed quiet, which I was expecting but i wanted to catch her in case she cancelled again! (3rd time lucky!). Next up John Carroll Lynch. This man has a huge body of work so I got a Zodiac pic signed but had a chat with him about The Founder which I had seen recently where he plays one of the McDonalds brothers (of the fast food name) who basically lost their business as it became what it is today. After John I went straight to Benedict Wong who was absolutely lovely. Into another shoot after that which was with Tom Wilson. I was very surprised by the setup for the tombstone this year, in a good way! Having seen last year that it was just the tombstone and a black background I was very much expecting the same setup this year, but no. They had a whole western casino front setup which looked awesome!. Tom arrived for the shoot in great spirits and those of us chatting in the queue got very excited! I asked Tom for a certain pose in the shoot and he was very polite in refusing, which was fine and I'm very happy with how the pic came out. After Tom I managed another couple of autos with Alan Harris who was so sweet and told me stories of not being able to move when in full Bossk costume for Empire Strikes Back, and David Morrissey who asked me about me previous con experiences. Alan Tudyk shoot up next and I asked for a pose that didn't go so well (my fault) so ended up buying another shoot for the next day. Great guy though, he was one of my highlights!. After Alan I was straight into the Pamela Anderson photo. I'm not going to go off on one about how this pic turned out, plenty of others have. It's bright, but it's still a pic of me and Pammy. I was seeing circles from the flash afterwards though, and I only had the one pic. I bet she was almost blind afterwards! Manage to get in a few more autos from Veronica Cartwright who was a sweetie and amazed that people wanted to meet her still, also Steven Yeun who I had a quick chat about his make up from "that" scene! Tom Skerritt was not the most responsive guest I've ever met, but I was just happy to get a chance to meet him, but moving straight on to get Pamela Anderson's auto she was really sweet and lovely to everyone (which I was surprised by as I'd half expected her to be a bit of a diva!). More autos followed from Phill LaMarr, Tom Morga (He did stunts in Ghostbusters, so he was a MUST meet for me!) before going in for pics with Tom Skerritt (again, a bit unresponsive), Veronica Cartwright (again, very sweet), and Tommy Flanagan who took off his sunglasses at the request of one attendee before shouting at the rest of the queue that she was the only one as he was nursing a hangover (it was funny, he wasn't being mean!). Back to the autos and I had a great little chat with Alan Tudyk about Firefly and Con Man with him making me laugh about how Firefly "still hurts" (pointing to his chest) and me making him laugh when I told him I'd said to Lou Ferrigno earlier in the year that they need to take the "Of Mice and Men" musical out on the road! Grabbed an auto from Tom Wilson next on my BTTF poster I had signed by everyone at LFCC 2015, which now looks great, and headed over to John Rhys-Davies who gave me some job advise about working over in New Zealand (which is something I would love to do). Got an auto from Mark Boone Jr who was being shouted at by the other members of SOA, before my shoot with Emily Kinney. My next auto was with Dean Cain, and what a great guy he is! I asked if we'll ever see him in the cape again and he told me him and Terri Hatcher had been taking about it the other week as you never see a '20 years later' with superhero shows! I doubt it'll happen though. My final shoot of the day was Missi Pyle who I managed to grab an auto from straight after the shoot. She was lovely and very funny. After hearing from others that the SOA boys were back at their signing tables I managed to run over and grab one of Tommy's last autos of the day. Not sure what they'd been up to but those boys were starting to look a bit worse for wear! A few of us went out for BBQ that night but were really struggling with walking after our day, so had an early night. 9 photos and 19 autos for Friday. Saturday Saturday was known to be the busiest day so we were prepared and in line before 8 and not surprised at the longer queue than the Friday. Entry was not as smooth as Friday though. Security decided to let golds in 10 at a time which really slowed up the queue. I was still inside and up in the guest signing area before 9 though, only to be surprised by a load of GA people already in! Friends in the GA queue said that the doors opened for them at 8:54, meaning they were in before golds. Not cool. This led to my VQs for the day being higher than I had planned. I headed straight over to meet people in the queue for Bindybappy Flobberwhop's photoshoot which all went well and headed straight into to second attempt at an Alan Tudyk shoot which I was much happier with. I decided to skip out on the Alien talk just to start to collect some of my autos for the day as I knew it was going to be hard with so many more people around. I didn't mention before, but the lay out this year was great as there was so much more space in the guest signing area, and it was very much needed on Saturday! First up was Carol Cleveland as I knew she was Saturday only. Lovely lady, who started shouting "A spanking, a spanking" whilst she signed my pic from Holy Grail! Next was Natalie Dormer, who was so awesome. I wasn't expecting her to be as chatty as she was and we had a similar conversation as the one I had with David Morrissey the day before about previous cons. Next I jumped into John Cleese's shoot before going to watch Alan Tudyk's talk. This was great. His answers were as funny as you'd expect but he would give every person who asked a question an item from his 'bag of crap' and sign it which included 5 day old news papers, make up applicators from the hotel, and stickers, as well as a few dvds of shows he wasn't in! Out of the talk and straight in to Natalie Dormer's shoot and again she was truly lovely. Back to the main stage and into the only clash I had all weekend. It was Bampibadger Grumblewraps talk which I caught the first 5 mins of before having to run out for a shoot with Carol Cleveland. I had hoped to get it done quick to get back to the talk, but when I arrived I was told they were running 5-10mins late. Ok, I thought, the stage was over the other side of the venue so I would wait hoping they may catch up on some time. 30 mins later I finally got my shoot and got back to the talk for the last question . With more fast foot work (not running!) I made it straight into David Morrissey's shoot before he disappeared. Once again I decided to miss the BTTF talk in favour of some much needed autos where I managed to get Kevin Smith, who was exactly as I thought he would be (awesome), and signed my pic of him with Jason Mewes, that Mewes had signed in 2014. I also managed to fit in Bendlewap Garageband's auto (who was very impressed with my "idiot's guides" of where to sign, as he put it) and was VERY lucky to go straight in and get John Cleese's auto too. A quick photo with Mark Boone Jr was followed by meeting Alyson Hannigan for an auto after a bit of a long wait due to her photoshoot over running, where I witnessed QS's auto being signed! Alyson looked a little overwhelmed with it all but was still very smiley and cheery as I hoped she would be. My last 2 shoots for the day were with Tom Morga followed by the Iron Fist group shot that was my favourite shoot of the weekend just down to how much fun they were having. Ok, I nearly destroyed the backdrop by doing a stupid pose, but still, it was fun! 9 photos and 9 autos for Saturday. That evening was the Great Geek-off Quiz organised by @PenThePirate. Yet again the man did an incredible job of running the evening, the whole pub was involved, even those who didn't come for the quiz ended up joining in! My team did absolutely amazing in getting second place (well done guys!) and only lost by 1 point (still sure the winners cheated!). The quiz is a firm highlight of my LFCC weekend every year. Sunday Sunday, Oh Sunday. After getting a massive 2 and a half hours sleep, having drunk much but eaten very little the night before, let's say I was not in a very good way. My thanks goes out to Aunty @Zonky for feeding me cereal bars, Haribo, and caffeine tablets to keep me going throughout the day. Due to this, I can't promise I will remember 100% of the day! Not surprisingly we were a bit late to get to entry, but as the trains hadn't started running yet, we were still close to the front. Entry worked a lot better than Saturday, with security still doing their 10 at a time system, but starting it earlier so we were in when we were meant to be. The problem today was when we went to get our VQ tickets, we were told that we weren't allowed to have any until GA entered at 9 o'clock! This was fine for those who only wanted 1 VQ as they could queue but those who wanted more were in trouble. After VQs were collected I had some time to kill, which I think I mainly did by standing in one place feeling terrible and staring at the floor whilst pretending to be part of a conversation. Time passed. First item for the day was a photo with Alyson Hannigan and I'm actually surprised that it turned out ok! I was then straight into one with Mark Williams where I just about remembered to get out my tape measure for a 'suits you sir' shot which also didn't come out too badly. The shots even have some kind of energy to them so I'm thinking the caffeine tablets must have kicked in at those points because everyone kept telling me I looked like death in-between them! More time passed and I had shoots with Kevin Smith who came out to greet the queue before we started which was funny as hell, Benedict Wong who was dancing his way through the shoot looking like he was having the best time!, and Dean Cain, who was still as smiley and happy as he was on Friday. The Fatman on Batman talk was awesome. Just so so so funny and another highlight. Straight after I just made my Steven Yeun shoot before heading back to the main stage and Natalie Dormer's talk which I was really pleased had little to do with Game of Thrones as I don't watch it! I managed to get my last autos for the weekend in next with Mark Williams and Marc Bernardin. Yet more time passed. My final shoots for the weekend came in the form of John Rhys-Davies (who was tickling nearly everyone, except @Faerie Tanith who got a massive smootch on the cheek!) and John Carroll Lynch who was just as much a gentleman as he had been earlier. As upsetting as it is for a con to end, due to my Saturday night, I was ready for Sunday to finish! A load of us headed out for one final meal but that put the final nail in for me and I was back at my hotel as soon as I could where I packed and, couldn't get to sleep, of course! 8 photos and 2 autos for Sunday. Monday was a mixture of the usual leaving hotel, feeling terrible after lack of sleep for 2 nights and the start of the con blues which have set in even more today which is why I ended up writing this. Thank you for reading it if you have and I'm sorry if it's not the most interesting read in the world but as I said, this was something I wanted to do for me. Big thanks to Showmasters and all crew across the week, you guys were awesome as always. If I'm going to complain about one thing this year it will be the gold passes. These really need to be re-thought out. The introduction of the diamond passes have damaged them a lot (especially with so many diamonds this year) and the current entry system and loss of some features have started to make them feel less and less special like they did when I first started buying them a few years ago. Thank you to all who I was with/met/interacted with in any way across the weekend. It really was one of the best of my life and it was you guys who did that! There are parts I may have missed out or forgotten (especially Sunday!) but be assured they still mean a lot to me.20 points
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Holly wanted me to post her pictures so everyone could see them so here they are. Mathew Lillard. It was only my partner getting the pic and we went past with her chair after her pic. Mathew spotted Holly and high fived her. Just as we were away he called her back and asked to see her Pikachu (or however you spell the thing). He then scootched down, grabbed her in and got the photographer to take her pic. What a guy.18 points
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I have a lot more photos but wanted to post this one. Thank you so much for this Showmasters. Martin was an amazing guest and I'm so happy I got to meet him.18 points
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18 points
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I apologise as this has taken me a little longer to get round to writing than I planned but as my past two ‘Wround Ups’ have gone down well for the Summer addition, I thought I may as well carry on for Spring. I was only at LCC Spring for one day so I thought this would be shorter than my previous reports (or whatever you want to call this) but I’ve somehow managed to write around 3,500 words, so good luck! I’ve had a few days to soak up the experience, but also give me time to forget some details too, so please bear with me (no, not that bear)! Plus there are always parts I choose to leave out. If you were there for them, you probably know why! My con day started the same as nearly all my con days do. If you’ve seen my profile on the forum or have read my previous write ups, then you may know I live just south east of London and a lot of the time will not bother with a hotel. This does however; mean that I have to be up at stupid-o’clock in the morning to get to Olympia nice and early for a good place in the queue. On Saturday I was up at 5:20am. I was not happy. I am not a morning person. Most times in my life when I see 5am it’s because I’ve stayed up from the night before, but such is the life of a con goer and collector that we put ourselves through these things for what we enjoy. I had packed most of what I needed the night before and after the usual morning routine I was at the train station to catch an earlier train than I had planned. Not really sure how that happened! I don’t remember much of the journey up to town. I assume it was uneventful, but I mainly just shut my eyes at that time in the morning and wish I were back in bed. I’m usually quite good at holding things together though and have only actually fallen asleep on public transport on very rare occasions. I decided to go to Hammersmith (as my usual route to Olympia on the overground was closed for the weekend) so I could pick up some well-needed breakfast to prepare myself for the day. With that done I arrived at Olympia at around 7:30 to take my place in the queue. Walking passed the Gold Pass queue I got to say hi to @Shoalyn monk , then I met up with @Raylenth(who seems to be wherever I go at these things!) and @MarioVl and also got to meet @Kurdamoni along with a couple of others who I don’t believe are members of this forum. We weren’t talking for long when the doors to the queue hall opened and we went inside. I’m pleased to say the process was very smooth and similar to what we had seen in the summer with a bag check as you entered the Grand Hall and then tickets scanned as you entered the queue. Multiple bag check stations and ticket scanners meant the queue moved in fairly quickly. One issue I had here was as a day pass holder I had my wrist stamped, but as I was wearing a long sleeve top, that stamp smudged almost instantly. I was lucky that this didn’t cause me any issues down the line, but might be something Showmasters may want to look into, as there is potential for it to be faked. The next hour in the queue flew by with geeky chats and excitement about the con. Everyone had their favourites that they were there for but also were just looking forward to soaking up the atmosphere of the con, as for most of us it was the first one of the year. Once it was time for doors to open, we expected the large shutters that separated the Grand and National Halls to rise to let us in. We were a bit surprised when the queue was led by security back outside of the hall, around the building, and in via the main entrance of the National Hall. This solved an argument Raylenth and I had been having as to which way round the floor plan was, and why the entrance was marked if it wasn’t being used. I lost! A quick showing of the smudge on my wrist to security and I was in. The one VQ ticket I needed was collected swiftly, yet safely (Robert Englund, number 10) and as the rest of my guests were not initially on them, I started a look round some of the stalls before the guests started signing. My plan for the day before I went was simple, I was going to get 3 autographs and one photo. I should have known that it wouldn’t end up that way! As I walked round the stalls I found a cool IT (1990) print and decided to buy it and get the cast who were there to sign it. That added an extra 5 autos to my list! Poster in hand, I headed up to where the IT kids were all sitting to find them all at their tables. My plan was to spread out meeting them as I knew I would have to wait a while, possibly even to the end of the day, to get Robert’s auto whilst he got through all his diamond passes. He is also known to be a slow signer but I’ll get to that later. First up was Ben Heller who was truly lovely to meet. We spoke about his favourite moments on set (a question he claimed to have never been asked before) and told me how much of a pleasure it was to work with Tim Curry as he was so helpful when it came to the performance and was a very chilled and nice guy. I moved straight over to speak to Brandon Crane who was joking around with the crew, and was also very nice to speak to, although he was quieter than Ben. I was notified by Raylenth that a couple of the main guests I was after had appeared at their desks downstairs, so I left the balcony to finish getting the IT kids later. Getting downstairs, I found that both Ted Raimi and Eddie Marsan were at their desks and decided to head for Eddie first as I knew he would be popular with his back catalogue of work and he was only there for one day, whereas Ted was there for two so hopefully people would spread out a bit. With only a few people in front of me it didn’t take too long to meet Eddie. The guy just before me did hand him 5 pictures to be signed along with full sentence quotes which took a while, but this was within the rules and I have been stuck behind worse. I added Eddie to my World’s End poster, which rarely gets to see the light of day (more guests please SM, especially Simon Pegg!): (His auto is hard to see on this pic but it is in the bottom left over the ‘E’. I promise you can see it better in real life!) I also asked him to sign my Deadpool poster which seemed to make Eddie very happy as although he had not been signing for long, it was the first Deadpool item he had signed. I was pleased to see that a lot of guests were doing table selfies at the show and there were a few guests I met that I now regret not getting them for (the IT kids) but I was very pleased to see Eddie doing this and even jumping round the table for everyone that asked. A really nice guy, and if you get the chance to meet him in the future, I say go for it. After Eddie I headed for Ted Raimi’s queue and was shocked to see it had trebled in size! Like a lot of people it seemed I had underestimated how busy he would be. I could see why the queue was long as Ted was deep into conversations with everyone he met and was also jumping up for selfies (again a regret of mine for not getting one). As Raylenth had finished getting her autos (in a record 30 mins or so!) she came and joined me in the queue, where we noticed we were stood next to @The Friendly Dalek. It was great having a chat with him in the queue but soon it was obvious that we were unlikely to get through before Ted had to leave for his photoshoot. We spoke to the crew about it maybe being a good idea to put him on VQ tickets, to be told that they had started them already. I would have thought that it might have been a good idea to hand them out to the people in the queue who were already waiting before anyone else, but that wasn’t what happened and I was lucky to get ticket number 22. I headed back upstairs and had a look at Robert’s queue to see how he was getting on, and as expected it was diamonds only for him. I went over to see the queues for the IT kids but decided there wasn’t enough time to grab any of the other 3 before my shoot with Ted, so I headed over to Photo Area A. The photos were laid out in the tried and tested way that Showmasters do and as I arrived I was able to already join the queue for Ted that was waiting for his arrival. After a few minutes, people started heading into the area from the queue and Ted made an appearance outside, only to disappear back into the crowd, not the photo area! I can only assume he was in need of a break or something, but I didn’t see him return. The line did start moving between 5 or 10 mins later and it was great to see Ted having fun with the photos. He’d do any pose someone asked of him and for many people was even making his own suggestions. I used to try for some interesting poses, but after being disappointed (mainly in myself) by some of them I try to stick to straight photos these days. Ted was asking everyone their names as they approached and was defiantly enjoying himself. After Ted’s photo Raylenth and I had a brief flyby from @Chris1970 as he ran walked in an orderly fashion for a photo and then I was back round to the IT kids and added Emily Perkins to my poster. She seemed very sweet but was very shy and I only really got a “hello” and “Thank You” out of her. I’m not sure if she was just overwhelmed or was generally a shy person, but it was not a bad experience meeting her, just a bit quick. I then moved over to Marlon Taylor, who could not have been more talkative! We mainly spoke about the more recent IT movie, and how both of us liked parts but found there to be too much CGI. He pointed out to me something I hadn’t really thought of, that kids these days love CGI. He said that some people have told him that the old practical effects can look cheesy and would have been better if it was made today. It’s a different point of view that I hadn’t considered, but I’m still old school when it comes to this stuff and will always choose practical over digital effects. The best results these days usually come form a mixture of the two, but I digress. I did try for Adam Faraizl, but he disappeared just before I made it to his table. I decided to head back down to Ted Raimi’s auto area as I knew it wouldn’t be long before he was back from his shoot. Once again I was surprised to see the length of his queue was just as long as it had been when I had previously left, and once again I was standing behind The Friendly Dalek! Along with a few other members of the queue, we had another great geeky chat about movies (Ghostbusters was a big subject and I’m always happy to talk about that!) which made the time go faster, but this was undoubtedly the longest I had to wait in a queue all day. I think it was probably just under an hour from when I joined the queue for the second time to when I go the auto. But Ted made it worth it. As before he was really engaging everyone who came up to him. We had a brief chat about his time on the Evil Dead franchise and liked the poster I had made. Definitely one of my top guest meets for the day. It was now lunch time but I headed quickly to Adam Faraizl’s table and managed to bag his auto as the last one on my IT poster, but he too was a bit quiet and I was ready to eat so it was just a short and polite experience. I had now managed to collect all 5 IT kids autos on my poster and it is actually one of my favourite posters I own. Would be great to add some more to it (Hint hint SM!) For lunch I sat down on the floor and chilled in the main stage area. A cosplay talk was going on in the background, which kept it interesting, and when that was over they announced a quiz would start in 15 mins. I messaged Shoalyn Monk as he had spoken about being interested in it before the con. We sucked. Ok, maybe not that bad, but we only seemed to get the really obvious stuff and our almost complete lack of knowledge of anime and Pokemon are what let us down (Is Donald Trump a Pokemon? We thought so!). What didn’t help was losing time for each question when a picture was involved as we couldn’t see the screen from where we sat and had to stand up and run over when needed! Shoalyn had to leave before the end and our other team member and I finished up as best as we could and handed it in. I know we didn’t win, without even knowing the result, but in the off chance if anyone who is reading this heard the result, we were called ‘On The Sidelines’ (so named for where we sat). Let me know if I need to collect a prize! Another check on Robert’s queue found that, unsurprisingly, he was still on diamonds only. To fill the time I ended up doing another walk round the stalls, but also met a couple of smaller Star Wars guests and grabbed a couple of extra autos. Oliver Ford Davies was very sweet. He was taking his time with everyone and it was interesting to hear him talk about his book and his upcoming appearance at the National Theatre with the lady in front of me. An excellent meet if you get the chance. I also met Leroy Golding who was a first time signer. He had a bit of a queue when I met him and seemed overwhelmed and humbled that so many people wanted to meet him. He was making sure that he put all the correct information on the pics that everyone wanted and seemed very happy to be there. Lovely guy. More wondering round the stalls followed, but I didn’t buy anything, as I was already WAY over my budget for the day! I sat back down in the stage area for a while and listened to some of Karyn Parsons talk. As one of the people who asked her a question stated, she really does look the same as she did back in her Fresh Prince days! Starting to feel the tiredness from the day, I headed back to Robert’s auto area to see if I could get an idea if it would be a couple of hours or so before VQs would be allowed in, to find that they already had! This is where it got a bit weird. I’ve been to a lot of SM shows now and am well aware how the VQ system is supposed to work. For Robert the crew were doing something different and although it helped me a bit, I didn’t like it. Instead of the usual ‘join the back of the queue when your number is called’ that you expect, the crew were trying to put all VQ tickets in number order. This was ok for me because I got to skip ahead of some people, but then they forgot where all the numbers were and people with higher tickets than me were placed in front of me. I wasn’t angry but did plan to speak to a red shirt about it, only to find them helping with this system! I hope someone from SM reads this, because I ask that this system is not used again as it was silly and annoying to anyone who constantly had people being added in front of them. Joining the back when your number is called makes sense and is fair. But anyway, I had a lovely chat with a guy who had to leave at any second to get his bus (hope you made it dude!) and at one point noticed Ben Heller from IT waiting to see if the crew could take him to the front of Robert’s line to get his Freddy chopsticks signed! (I’m not complaining here, I know he needs to get something like that signed quickly so he can jump back to his own auto desk). As he stood there, I spoke to him for a bit about the idea of a Pennywise/Freddy crossover. If anyone out there has the power to make this happen, the idea is yours, please run with it! Robert was his usual great self at the auto desk but I didn’t really see him talking much. I got the feeling his voice was giving him issues and he wanted to rest it. This is my second time meeting him and both times he hasn’t disappointed. Even without talking he has a great presence and made it a fun experience. I got him to sign my Legends of Horror poster that I designed and started last year. As I took one last stroll around the venue I decided to take make a quick stop in the prop shoot area to create this masterpiece that I call ‘How Does This Thing Work?!’ With that I left the con at around 4:30. Much earlier than I had thought I would be able to! I headed down to the Latymers pub and was there by myself for a short while before being joined by a load of friends once they had finished up at the con, and met some new people too. The evening consisted of much geek chat, con stories and alcohol as you’d expect but I’ll skip most the details of that. I left at around 11 and stumbled back to the tube and somehow made it home! I really enjoyed myself at LCC Spring. Comparing it to other events I’ve been to in the past 6 years, it was easily one of the most stress and problem free cons I’ve attended. The crowd levels were just right. At no real point did I feel it was too crowded for me. Everything seemed to run pretty much on time, and all the guests were exceptional. I would have loved to meet more of them if I could have stretched my budget even further than I did. I felt the same way after going to the Spring con in 2016. I hope this will become a yearly event as it being on a smaller scale to the summer show made a refreshing change. (Obviously, I still love LFCC though! Bring it on SM!) If you’ve made it this far, you should probably re-evaluate your life! But Thank You! It’s always nice to hear that people do bother to get to the end and in some cases even enjoy reading it! I’ve said before that I like doing this for myself to have a record of my con experiences and if you guys enjoy hearing about them too, then they become even more special! Thanks again. Sam (Wrong Name)18 points
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Tom Welling auto, he was really lovely and kind about the drawing, meant a lot <3 sorry for bad photo quality! I'll share a pic of the DC t-shirt when it's got some more autographs on it18 points
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Sunday No intro needed for Mr. Barrowman! Emilie De Ravin Tom Felton Ian Somerhalder. This next part I shouldn't need to do, but given recent circumstances. I do not give permission for any images I have posted here to be posted anywhere else. Ethan Phillips Nicole De Boer.17 points
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Sunday Stephen Gevedon Kaili Vernoff Curzon Dobell John Barrowman Emilie De Ravin Ethan Phillips Nicole De Boer Tom Felton Ian Somerhalder17 points
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Last one: Sunday First was Martin Sheen and oh my goodness I can only echo what others have said and that's he was so wonderful in engaging with everyone, asking for everybody's name and shaking their hand. I thanked him after our photo was taken and his response was "thank *you* Kim" which just to me showed that he was genuinely listening to what people were saying to him and taking it in, just, yeah, what an experience getting to meet such a legend who was kind and warm and seemed to enjoy meeting us all <3 Robert Patrick was just so at ease with meeting everyone, very friendly, he was recognising folks he'd met earlier in the weekend and just seemed to go the extra mile to make it a great experience for everyone :) And last photo, Brendan Fraser He was... The whole weekend he seemed repeatedly taken aback and tremendously touched that we were all wanting to meet him I honestly get very emotional thinking about his autos, talk, and photo ops because he truly is such a beautiful person inside and out. He shook my hand before the photo and I have a habit of calling men Sir so his response to my "hello sir" was a smile and "call me Brendan, please" :). When I thanked him after the pic he gave me another very touched smile and said You're Welcome with such warmth I genuinely left getting teary-eyed All amazing experiences, thank you Showmasters I am forever grateful to you <317 points
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This is a thank you post, but if anyone does have any other comments remember to phrase them in a constructive manner and don't be mean, remember to be polite and that crew are volunteers, they work under very trying circumstances and many have no customer/retail experience so aren't used to dealing with people in this manner I did 3 days at LFCC again this year and not once did I see any negatives about the crew, everyone I interacted with were polite and friendly, and remained that way even when having to deal with a lot of people who don't understand how events like this work and ask question after question that I would consider silly. Shout out the crew who rushed over to sort out Tennant's tardis shoot today and got everything working properly (no fault of the crew who were there) and back on track. You allowed my to get an awesome photo with David that will quickly become one of my favourites. Thank you to the crew running the sales desk in general and the Manager (My apologies, my brain is fried and I can't remember your name) for coping with grace when a mass of people descended upon them after Tennant's announcement, from what I saw whilst I was there trying to sort out our ticket oopsie you all kept calm despite you all having the same problems we were accessing the tickets, and thank you to the Sales Desk manager in particular for helping @evilfairieand myself sort our Duchovney ticket issue and refunding them with speed and without issue, you helped us go from an enjoyable but stressful day worrying we had massively overspent to being able to forget about it and marvel in the awe of meeting Tennant and Smith in particular. To all the crew who worked LFCC this weekend, from the ones I know, to the ones I see there all the time and everyone else, thank you. These events can't happen without you and you all worked your socks off this weekend. It really is a hard job to do, things go wrong because nothing in life is perfect and a machine as big as LFCC is always going to have issues here and there but you all work to sort it out, to help people with issues, and you put up with some s***ty attitudes whilst you do it. Thank you to the mods, especially those who have been on here when they shouldn't, as they should have been resting and recovering Thank you again to you all for giving us an awesome weekend.17 points
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Adding some personal thoughts. My boyfriend is currently at the Rock am Ring festival in Germany. I don't know how much of this has made the news in the UK. But yesterday the event was temporarily interrupted and the area was evacuated. A "concrete terroristic threat." I will spare you details because not much is really confirmed so far. It involves suspicious people using fake badges, that's pretty much the line everyone agrees on. Huge police presence, the area was searched extensively. But this morning they decided to continue. In any case, the evacuation was smooth and peaceful. Attendees were chanting "f**k terrorism" or singing "you'll never walk alone" or a German song which about translates to "there's one thing that no one can take away ftom me: it's the pleasure of life." This morning there were tons of sign repeating the chants in various variations or saying things like "they won't win." Don't get me wrong. I understand anyone being worried. I would also totally understand any event being moved. But I also understand the singing attendees. I was at an event after 9/11. One of the guests said on stage that he had considered cancelling due to that. But then he realized that "if we let them put fear in our hearts they have won." It's probably considered sad by some, but I still hear him saying this when I wonder "hey, should I really do this or that." Cause he's right too. It doesn't mean you have to run blind in the biggest and scariest scenario. But it doesn't mean you have to hide in your house and never come out again.17 points
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Friday Jason Isaacs Joe Flanagan Kirk Acevedo Michael Shanks Walter Koenig Robert Picardo16 points
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Good Morning from the mod team here in Olympia!! Looking forward to seeing you all throughout the day, if you see us please say Hi!!!16 points
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Got any pictorial memories you'd like to share with the class. Guest meets, photo sessions, talks, cosplay. Anything. Everything. Third time lucky for me. The wonderful Charles Dance. Worth getting wet for.15 points
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I loved loved loved meeting Val Kilmer <3 I wasn't sure what to expect (I say that with no negativity) but he was really wonderful and as said above, was conveying himself very well in his mannerisms and gestures. The two folks with him in the auto area were really friendly and chatty (the lady had the same name as me so we were joking about that and the gentleman sat next to him really liked the Willow print I was having signed, which Val indicated he also liked). There were smiles and eye contact and I came away from that on cloud 9. For photographs he put his arm around me and I asked if it was okay to put my hand on his shoulder which he indicated was okay, he then held my arm with his other hand to bring me in for a lil hug which was AMAZING. After I said to him Thank you so much, and he said Thank you back and perhaps it doesn't sound much but to me was huge. Wonderful all round15 points
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What a man. We almost missed his shoot as we totally forgot about it. We were walking past the oval office prop when we remembered about it and it had 15 mind left. Obviously because of Lynz' wheelchair we (or rather I) had to leg it all the way to the photo area (A I think). We had diamonds so no problem. Got there with 10 mins to spare, ushered in through the exit due to the throng of people waiting for the next shoot. They halted the queue to let Lynz get out of her chair onto her crutches for her shoots (which she always does) and Martin got up off his stool to guide her to the area, talking to her all the time. He then did the same to get her back in the chair, even picking up her coat that had fallen in the floor and her water flask just before she sat on it. Then had a chat to me as I got mine (much to the annoyance of photographer and his helper) but I didn't want to be rude. He was asking me things not the other way rohnd. Later I went to get his autograph alone and if you read my previous post in another thread he was may late mother's favourite actor and WW her top show. He remembered me and asked why my "wife" wasn't there and checked she was OK and that I hadn't just abandoned her. my Mum and I were never closer than when we talked about WE and she had a small ceramic tile with Bartlett for America on it which as I explained all this to him I broke down. Again. Nothing but love from him. Gave me a tissue and held my arm saying nice things about a lady he never knew. I have done literally hundreds of the guest interactions over the years but I have never ever been so emotionally connected to a guest. I cannot thanks this man enough for pretty much giving me closure over my Mother's death. My God I'm away again typing this. Thank you Martin with all my heart.15 points
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Most of my autographs were signing the photoshoots I got which I'll post in the other thread. Continuing my theme from last year some of you may recall: I got Tom Welling to sign my Chris Reeve letter, which he said he would remember for a long time. I had the unexpected bonus of explaining to John Schneider why I asked him about Chris Reeve in his free talk. When I showed him the letter he said he felt humbled and spontaneously posed for photo with it too. He may have died in 2004 but clearly the impact he had on Smallville's cast is still there, much as it is on me nearly 20 years after receiving this. Such was the nature of a brilliant and genuinely good man.15 points
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I think we should all take a minute to appreciate how amazing this years event was. first off showmasters got in an amazing array of guests and all the ones I met were so kind and amazing to meet which was made possible by the immense amount of effort by the people at showmasters to get them here. the organisation was brilliant and I will just say that a majority of staff that I dealt with were very nice and helpful. and to all the people complaining that guests weren't what you were expecting in real life (as in not too chatty or that) or that the event was very badly organised or you missed something due to inexperience, don't blame showmasters, compared to other events the information given on the website and here on the forum from other attendees is amazing, all you have to remember is showmasters can give you a map and a schedule but its down to you to plan around it. as someone who has attended quite a few a lot of showmasters events I'm done seeing them get accused of hosting a bad event so thank you And shoutout to David B, thanks for standing up for all of us15 points
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Cant talk, in training for Saturdays low VQ numbers....15 points
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Some photos of the week end Torchwood Gareth David Lloyd John Barrowman (i love this one :p ) Doctor who of course Christopher Eccleston David Morrissey Jenna Coleman John Leeson John Levene Nicola Bryant & Colin Baker Peter Purves Bernard Cribbins (always make me laugh ) Samuel Oatley Jamie Hill Andrew Cartmel Jessica Martin Paul Cornell And some Stargate Michael Shanks Joe Flanigan Robert Picardo14 points
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If anyone's been keeping up with the images and posts I've been making over the past few days, you'll probably know most of the story of my convention experience, but if you want a more in-depth recap or simply want to pass the time, I've got you covered! Also Wrong Name's round was fascinating, so I thought now would be a good time to jump on the recap train before I forget some of what's transpired last weekend. It's a bit surreal typing out this blog post. I've been anticipated my 3rd LFCC for a good while now after some disappointing convention experiences elsewhere. Unlike the previous two years, I planned on going to the convention two days this year: initially, Jenna Coleman (Clara Oswald from Doctor Who, Joanna from The Cry) was announced as a Saturday-only guest. Followed by Ian McDiarmid, my schedule was looking to be only Saturday which would break tradition from the usual Sunday-only experience I've had. Eventually, Jenna was scheduled for both Saturday and Sunday, and the cast of Iron Fist was announced. Specifically, Sacha Dhawan was announced as a Sunday-only guest, and given I missed out on meeting him at the convention 2 years ago, I wanted to meet him without fail this time: as such, this was my first LFCC across two days. Alongside Carrie-Anne Moss who I knew from the Marvel-Netflix TV series, my lineup was looking to be a little more diverse than my previous two visits to LFCC. Initially, I had my agenda of meeting Jenna on the Saturday, but seeing as I could move to Sunday since no batches of photos or Diamond Passes were filled up, I thought it'd be a wise move in the hopes of maybe getting a couple of seconds of extra interaction time. At one point, Alex Kingston was announced, someone else alongside Jenna who I really wanted to meet as a big Doctor Who fan. Sadly, she cancelled at the very last minute, which left my Saturday schedule cut in half as Ian was now the only guest I concretely would meet that day. It was disappointing to hear this at the last minute (literally, she had to cancel at 7pm the day before I was due to attend), but it opened up my agenda a bit more for Saturday and to run around with other autographs. As such, here was my agenda for the weekend: Saturday: Ian McDiarmid, DP Batch 1, Photoshoot Area E, 6:30pm Sunday: Jenna Coleman, DP Batch 1, Photoshoot Area E, 11am Carrie-Anne Moss, DP Batch 1, Photoshoot Area D, 10:30am Iron Fist Group Shot, Batch 1, Photoshoot Area A, 10:40am With the Iron Fist group (Finn Jones, Jessica Henwick, Sacha Dhawan) since only Finn had a Diamond Pass (which I wasn't planning on buying), I would try and fit their autographs in at some point when I was free, and with two days to go off of, Saturday would be the preference for when I could meet Finn and Jessica in particular. So, let's talk day 1. With Alex's cancellation late on, I decided to leave for the convention on Saturday significantly later than I usually do at 11:30am. Having collected my Passes for Jenna, Ian and Carrie-Anne the day before, the average journey time was 1.5 - 2 hours, so that'd leave me plenty of time before Ian's photoshoot at 6pm to try and get Finn's, Jessica's and Ian's autographs beforehand. Seeing as her queue was fairly quiet, I walked up to Jessica as my first autograph of LFCC 2019 at around 1:15pm. Amusingly, it took 2 or 3 minutes before I could actually get my chance however to speak to her, as the guy in front of me took forever talking to her - he had this massive book filled with tonnes of signatures (which was both impressive and terrifying), as he showed her a couple of big names that were at the convention. I'm not sure how long it took, but I stood there patiently as the man continued to proudly show off his book to Jessica. Eventually when he’d finished his long presentation, it was my turn. Immediately, Jessica lit up again and was thrilled when I presented her a copy of the drawing with red acrylic spray to make it feel a bit more than a photocopy. She was very gracious with it (with “wow” being said many times over), before asking if she should add a little message alongside my name. I’m always happy with extra messages; it makes my autographed drawing stand out amongst all the other signatures actors and actresses write (though I wasn't expecting the phrase straight out of Iron Fist for some reason, but I dig it). A handshake later and a parting to look forward to the group shot the day after, I left Jessica feeling positive that the first signature of the convention went very well. I couldn't jump straight into Finn's line who was stationed to Jessica's left: a. he wasn't back, and b. he was still calling Diamond Passes. I wasn’t expecting to get Finn’s autograph without a Diamond Pass - these days, Diamonds are the only sure-fire way of guaranteeing an autograph. But on Saturday, a.k.a. the busiest day, Finn got through all his Diamond Passes, and it went from virtual queuing to an open queue. Seeing this chance, I went to get his autograph whilst it was quiet approximately an hour after Jessica's, and I’m glad I did. When I gave him the drawing, he was real pleased with it, double checking that it was cool to personalise. Randomly, I noticed the fan he had on his desk and couldn’t help but comment on it, to which I got a flamboyant “thank you”, a minor amusing anecdote there. I did find it funny when he wrote my name on the drawing: you can see he started quite casually until he realised he was going to run out of room and sign straight past the face. The slow-down in his signature and the realisation on his face as he noticed was indeed a sight to behold. Before I left, I also gave Finn a copy of the drawing for him to keep, sprayed with acrylic red paint to liven up the copy. Hilariously, he suggested it was a “seductive choice” and I couldn’t help but laugh. It was quite a random encounter, but Finn came across as a genuine character who wholly was absorbing the entire convention atmosphere. In a fun way, he reminds me the guys from Class who aren't afraid to just speak their mind and have fun, what a chill guy. With these two autographs now guaranteed, I decided to return and try again to queue for Ian around 2:40pm. I'd tried earlier but he needed to go for a lunch break, hence why I jumped off to the Iron Fist cast to get their autographs. I’d heard that Ian’s quite a chatty man and that’s why his queues are always so long. I can confirm that report is true and Ian is a genuine guest who takes such an interest in his fans, always talking, always giving eye contact and always being positive. When I approached his table, he extended a firm handshake even though I had passes and bags and coats all over the place and patiently waited till I cleared my hands of all the passes before shaking his hand. I handed the drawing over and Ian looked at it for a while, showing it and talking about it to the stewards nearby who were impressed. He then joked that this is the first time he saw the Emperor smile, to which I jokingly gestured I was aiming for evil but that clearly didn’t work out. Ian then proceeded to sign, making sure to be as careful as he could and suggesting the name go above and the signature below. There’s been a precedent for that so I’m not one to say no by any means. Before I left his autograph table, he shook my hand again and once again complimented my drawing skill, happily praising my work to which I'm grateful for - often guests simply sign and pass back with some minor praise, so to have a name as big as Ian taking his time to look at the work was a sensation indeed. With this over, I had 3 and a half hours to pass before I could go to his photoshoot. With nothing on the agenda, I simply roamed the stalls for three hours in the hope I could pass time. I had no one else to meet as they were all scheduled for the day after, so time went slowly before 6:30pm arrived. As such, there's nothing really to report in these 3 hours. When his photoshoot began, I greeted him warmly as he remembered me from before, offering a handshake again and thanking me for coming by as I thanked him also. Ian is one of the friendliest guests I’ve met ever, and with his return in Star Wars, I do hope more people meet this kind man. Roll on day 2. Day 2 started off at 5:30am, as I left early to try and get an early spot in the queue. I'd sadly lost my copy of a drawing for Sacha Dhawan to keep, but despite this, I was prepped with everything else. That day, I was wearing a 12th Doctor cosplay for my photo with Jenna (ironically not Peter last year because Matt Smith, a.k.a. the 11th Doctor was in attendance so I had to choose). With my tieless smart look, Sunday was looking to be the more exciting day. I arrived approximately at 7:30am and managed to get into the second line right in front of the hall. Time passed and eventually at 9am, I was in the hall. I quickly took a scouting stroll around to see where some of the guests I missed on Saturday were, quickly identifying where Sacha, Jenna and Carrie-Anne were before I started to try and queue for autographs. Jenna wasn't scheduled to arrive till about 10, so the steward suggested I try and grab some other autographs in the meantime. At around 9:30am, Carrie-Anne arrived and her queue got underway real quick. As there weren't too many people there, I jumped in line to get an early signature under my belt. Out of all guests I was meeting that weekend, Carrie-Anne was the one who I had the least idea about in terms of what she'd be like and how she'd interact. Her convention appearances have been limited so I couldn’t gauge a reaction of what she’d be like or how she’d engage with her fans. It definitely was a surprise, and I could only find out on the day. Perhaps the queue being short contributed to this perhaps it was the fact that I was in her queue almost immediately as it opened, but I had at least a good 2 minutes of dialogue with Carrie-Anne - not even about her work, but about my drawing! Like Ian, she opened with a firm handshake and pleasant formalities, before taking a second to look at my drawing and show it to her son before guessing it was her character of Hogarth from the MCU Netflix series. I very rarely have conversations about what it’s like to draw or how I developed - the last time I can remember was at least well over a year ago, but to have a relatively big guest like Carrie-Anne show genuine interest was surreal to say the least. She listened as I talked about how it started to click, before saying that the “click” was similar to her son and how he too started to click with drawing one day. I wasn’t really expecting her to encourage me to keep drawing, but there we have it. I’d argue that this was among the highlights of the convention, and maybe of my run of conventions so far. Class act through and through, would absolutely love to meet her again one day. Immediately after this, I was allowed in Jenna's queue which was already starting to build up. She in fact arrived later around 10:20am, so I was stuck queuing a bit longer than I'd hoped, but given Jenna was my initial draw to the convention, she was the one I'd be most looking forward to interacting with. Despite the mixed reports I'd been hearing the day before about Jenna, I managed to finally meet her around 10:30am. Normally guests aren't the ones to carry a conversation, but in my small amount of time at the start of the day, Jenna was the one carrying the conversation! Whilst I was getting my pass clipped, Jenna decided to start with the general pleasantries such as asking how I was doing, to which I responded and answered in kind. As she became aware of what I was getting her to sign, she praised and complimented my print which was an illustration I made from the series The Cry. According to her, it's rare in terms of fan art as not many people have gotten her to sign art from that series. She quickly signed away before moving onto my sketchbook drawing, which again she gave praise for. Before signing, she specifically asked if she could sign in silver. I've had my fair share of problems with the colour silver on signed drawings, but I was willing to give it a shot. Jenna was particularly careful signing: she wrote down the letter "C", and gestured to me if it looked alright. It came out darker and hence better than I expected, so I was happy for her to keep going, before she signed away the rest of my name and her character name. Having heard the rumours that Jenna was stressed the day before, I gave an additional copy of my print for her to keep, to which she graciously accepted. For an apparent "frosty" guest, she surpassed my personal expectations. Normally a "hello" and "how are you?" are fine by me, but I do truly appreciate the extra effort of looking after my drawing and carrying the conversation when she signed away. . Having met Jenna at 10:30am meant I missed the morning shoot for Carrie-Anne, and in turn, that meant I was going to have a very long day at the convention. Alas, time would hopefully be less torturous than the day before as a collage friend Ellie would be attending, so I could hopefully kill some time by hanging out and seeing how she would be doing given this is her first convention. But before that, I had two more photos and one autograph to hunt before reuniting. The Iron Fist Group shot was in Area A. Having had Ian's photo in Area E, I was unfamiliar with where A was. For those unfamiliar, Photo Areas A-D were in a different room from E-G, so I had a mad dash to try and find out where I was going as their photoshoot was only a 5 minute window. Thankfully, I found it and I was in and out quickly. Finn and Jessica didn't seem to recognise me, but given the sheer number of people guests meet in a day, it was hardly surprising. It also was something that didn't bother me given how fun their photoshoot was, pulling amusing poses for some attendees and Finn and Sacha were yelling out random words which led to some genuine reactions from their fellow castmates and attendees. I haven't seen a fun photoshoot like that in years. With that fun photoshoot out the way, Jenna's photoshoot came. Honestly, I didn't mind that Jenna wasn't talkative during the shoot - I've come to expect that time for conversations aren't in the photoshoots: it's one of the reasons why I get autographs as there's more time there than in a photo-op area which essentially is a production line as people way to move into shot. As I walked up to Jenna, I couldn't tell if she recognised me from earlier or not, but given my cosplay, she went into an immediate Doctor Who-esque pose that she'd been using over the weekend: precisely the pose I was after. I immediately went and pulled a pose I'd seen Capaldi use in early series 8 promo images of having my hands central and crosses with a smile/smirk approach. Honestly, I'm pretty happy with the photo: part of me wonders if I should have mimicked Jenna's pose, but it works all the same as a Doctor-Clara photo so no complaints here. With Jenna's photo finalised, I only had two items on my agenda left: get Sacha's autograph and Carrie-Anne's photo. I went around to Sacha's autograph table close to 12pm, seeing as the queue was down to two people. This would give me ample time to have a conversation which wouldn't feel as rushed and I could take the moment in better. The nice thing about all this was Sacha was with his dad, taking him along to see what the show was like. And as I presented the drawing, both proceeded to admire it for a good minute. Sacha asked in surprise if I had drawn it, to which I happily responded that I did. He showed his steward next to him as well as Jessica who was next to him, before proceeding to sign slowly and asking me if he could take a picture of it: I’ve never said no before, last time someone asked was over a year ago! As his dad was taking the photo, I snuck into the back and photobombed the photo to which Sacha laughed and approved. His dad suggested I give my phone to get a table photo with Sacha, but my brain was still in meltdown mode and I thought he meant give my phone number (I didn't by the way, I asked if airdropping was an option! Silly me.). Sacha was happy to take extra photos on my phone so he stood up and held the sketchbook as I pointed quite amusingly in the background. To have a table photo like that for free just for coming by with a drawing is so rare in comic cons today, and I departed with a firm handshake and such a cool memory. This is the thing I like about smaller guests: it doesn't detract from their fame, but smaller guests are often more friendly and more excited when you present them drawings or fan creations like this. Like Carrie-Anne, this conversation came as a real surprise, given I'd heard he'd been somewhat reserved. Given that I'd have a few hours left before Carrie-Anne's photo, this left me buzzing with joy. After all this, Ellie found me hours into the convention as we walked around the stalls to pass the time, see the sites and catch up on how our convention experiences had been. We eventually bumped into another friend of Ellie's, Mason, who joined us briefly before the hours passed and we eventually found a place to sit as we waited for Ellie to meet Ian Somerhalder who had a ton of photo batches to go through (arguably one might say he was oversold on Diamond Passes). Admittedly, Ian overran a significant amount more than we'd anticipated, with Ellie not being able to see him till about 4pm if I remember correctly compared to when he should have finished by 3pm. Still, she was buzzing as she left, so I'm glad for her first time at a convention, she could meet one of her heroes - it's always a unique feeling meeting one's heroes, and it's different for everyone as each individual has their own hero. With Ellie heading home after that, I had an hour to wait around an extra hour for Carrie's PM shoot. At this point, I was significantly weak: my legs could barely stand, my arms ached, I was barely awake and dehydrated and was relatively hungry by this point. Time however moved faster here than it did previously. I continued to walk the stalls for any last-minute impulse purchases (which I didn't get), made conversation with fellow 12th Doctor cosplayers as we discussed jackets and ensembles of the costume before Carrie arrived. She came a little earlier than expected, and I remember she was casually leaning against the Photo Area with not many people noticing her presence. Eventually, 5 minutes later, we were in and out, greeting each other warmly, before the day's end finally came. I really wasn't sure what to expect going into the convention: at LFCC, I normally get 8-10 people to meet, and the activities are spread across one day. So to have only 6 on my agenda across 2 days was worrying, as I imagined I'd get blank periods where I'd be bored out of my mind. I was not wrong there. However, each and every one of the guests I met were beyond what I was expecting. Each conversation felt truly special, each interaction felt like there was genuine interest from both sides - from the guest, an interest in my drawings and my skill; from me, an interest in the guest and their work and talent. I normally suffer what I call "post-con blues", basically missing the unique experiences I had over the weekend. But whilst last year was incredible with a huge Doctor Who lineup, I've not experienced post-con blues quite like this. LFCC, for the 3rd year I've gone to this convention, you've left one hell of an impression. I'm already wanting my next convention, specifically LFCC given the calibre of the interactions this year. - Christopher Nguyen, 01/08/1914 points
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So Saturday photoshoots were fun. God, I wish every weekend could be like this! Tom said to me after “I was afraid I was going to crush you.” I’m thinking “Crush away!” I felt there was less risk of fainting in Ian’s photoshoot as I wasn’t tall enough to look into his eyes Noted what Queen S said earlier in the thread, I’ve made peace with the fact that a photo of me may get to go to France before I do With the lovely Tom Felton Manu Bennett was probably my favourite as he fixed my hair for me after this shot (little bit sticking up ) I wondered why he was stroking my head afterwards but just let him! I really appreciate actors who understand women’s hair problems. It’s like my respect for Chris Pratt shot up when I discovered he could hold an interview and do a perfect french braid at the same time. I’m a massive Game of Thrones fan so to sit on The Iron Throne with Alfie Allen by my side was a dream come true. Thank you so much Showmasters!14 points
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Saturday The Aimee Garcia and Tom Ellis photo ops started at the same time but since Aimee's was slightly shorter I went to hers first. She was LOVELY!! Really friendly chatting with everyone, so very warm in saying hello etc, I asked if I could have a hug for our pic which she was like Of course! and I got a lovely squishy one Tom Ellis looked like he was having a lot of fun at his photo session, very comfortable doing poses, very open and friendly, he's just wonderful. Asked for a hug, he was happy to do so :) Next up was Val Kilmer but I've already posted that pic (wonderful wonderful photo op I will never be over getting a hug from him ) so onto Bob Gales photo op. He was really friendly and recognised me from earlier that day :) Lastly, David Naughton. He was totally up for doing various werewolf poses for folks' photo ops, so when I asked him for a boring hug photo I think he was surprised! he immediately put his arms around me and I didn't realise he'd pulled a face during the pic and I love it! Cracks me up everytime I look at it14 points
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I'll divide the photo posts by days cause there's a fair few... Friday First photo of the day was with Michael Shanks, he proper squished his face against mine and it was glorious Next was Gemma Whelan who was lovely and down to earth. After the photo I thanked her and at first she was like You're Welcome but then laughed joking "You all keep thanking me but all I'm doing is standing here, I'm actually not doing anything" And last for Friday, actual goddess Gina Torres. She was super friendly with everyone and just all-round awesome. There was a technical problem which meant a group of us had to go back and have a second photo taken (oh the hardship! ) but it all felt relaxed and easy going and was a lot of fun :)14 points
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I'm assuming this is OK to post seeing as it's part of the new app, and yay me, I screen shotted, shot? something for the first time! Go me!14 points
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So in addition to the egg, I got these as well Added Amber RR and Tennant to this14 points
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Hi all Well that was a interesting night :-) Here are some of my thoughts the morning after :-) I think if you and others re read the post i made last week about this announcement you will see all that i say in it is true , and the "Hype" is very much of its own making by some of the fans and not ours, we just told it just how it is . Here are the words from the post we used to announce this big guests announcement "Ok we thought this was not ever going to happen and we just closed it…" Fact "On Wednesday we have a big guest announcement and it is legendary! "Again its a fact The fact that we had the guest announcement on this day and that the guests is in fact legendary , in the Dr Who community he is a guest that no one though would ever do events , he is not a background guest he is the first Doctor of the new show AND HAS NEVER DONE A SIGNING A COMIC CON ANWERE IN THE WORLD EVER "This will be something that people will talk about for years and look back and say this was the show where it happened." Again total Fact, the First ever event that Christopher Eccleston has agreed to attend to meet the fans and sign autographs and have photographs take with fans "So join us at 7 pm on Wednesday when we will announce someone that will make so many of you fans happy.” Again this is a fact many fans are happy people that love Dr Who and Christopher’s other film work which there is a solid body of work. This event is looking to be our best Comic Con “EVER” Again we feel this to be totally true , we know what offers we have out with guests we are hoping to close and the demand for the guests that we have booked this year are all showing that they will all sell out so we know the event is going to be a sell out event and the guests we have booked and are boing also look like they will all sell out also so we know we have the budget we need to go and book many more big guests for this years show and as such we do feel this years event will be our biggest one year , again all facts not “Hype" "Here are some clues:” "They are a lead;" Fact "They have never been to a comic con or signing event where they have signed or done photo ops anywhere in the world ever;" Fact "Its someone we never thought we would get to one of our events let alone any event anywhere;" Fact "This is a very important guest in our hobby and this will most likely be their only event that they will attend;” Fact we do think this is the case "Many many of the fans will need this person's autograph to complete their collection.” total Fact for all Dr who fans "Ok that’s it no more - its just too exciting :-D” Fact we are all excited here everyone of us as we all want to meet him 'As an extra bonus - the first person to have liked this post and correctly guess the guest will get a free autograph from this guest!” Fact one lucky person did win 'One last thing if we get 500 likes on this post which helps get the word out we will announce more than one guest on Wednesday :-)” Fact we did post up several guests last night "Get your guesses in now!” So nowhere do I feel we hyped it up where there is any untruths in any way We never implied that it was Harrison Ford or any guests in any way other than the facts at hand. Some call this "Hype” we call it promotion and also some fun , its how we get everyone that’s Into comic cons to know we have a big guest announcement and so no one misses that these guests are attending this years event. The fact that we have sold out around 50% of the tickets we have to offer for Christopher shows that the way we have promoted this and the pricing and the demand is what we would expect for a big guests announcement. Its not like we have not done this before its what we have done sins we have had forums and Facebook so we have not acted in any way different. One other thing and again this has been the same from day one , one fans A list guests is sometimes not another fans A list guest we are all into different things and that’s and that’s cool and expected as we are all very different , but this fact needs to be respected as just because you don’t feel a guest is what you might call an A list it does not make it a fact they are or not as again its all down to your thoughts so no one can say really what is or is not a A list guest. Its like saying whats the best all time film ever made there is not one answer and can never be. Last night we all saw some really unneeded comments and at one point when our mods could not keep right up to speed on every post it turned into a angry mob which was quite amazing and just disrespectful. This is a hobby and its meant to be fun, its what makes us the same in this world we are all fans , fans of Comic Cons and meeting guests , but last night was incredible when small amount of people did not get the guests that was in there head felt like they could just stay anything with out any respect or restraint And it was a very small amount of people out of the 80 to 100,000 that will attend the Comic Con this year ad this small group just lost there inner control of there thoughts and just typed whatever they felt like with no respect to the other fans and the guests them selves. Its not what I what to see on here and its not what we would except to see from fandom over the years and its not something we can let go or want to let go as it leads to bulling and where the fans that are not loud get drowned out by the few , so our amazing mods will hide posts or ban people that are dominating there views or shouting people down and are not respecting each other or the guests that they are commenting in there thread as this place is for fans that respect to others and that are open to all religions all people of this planet and for having fun and enjoyment with fellow fans and that’s what Comic Con is all about. I hope this helps to explain our position and a little of what happened last night. We should all be a tolerant understanding and forgiving group of people and that’s What we intend to protect so we keep what is so amazing about comic con safe for many years to come. Thank you for reading this and for you understanding and all your support now and over the many years. Yours Jason and the team at Showmasters14 points
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...my friend just messaged me saying "hey, did you meet Tobin Bell once?" I did at LFCC in 2016, yes. She comes back with, "well that's funny, he just posted this picture and I swear this looks like you!" So Tobin Bell has posted this to his Twitter and Instagram and I'm in a state of shock! I don't know what the appropriate reaction is when Jigsaw himself posts an old picture of you to his social media out of the blue. I wasn't trained for this. But I swear I'm okay! Absolutely fine!14 points
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Well I remember when I met Mark Sheppard a couple of years ago at a Supernatural convention and in his talk he spoke of his fond memories of Chocolate Minstrels and not being able to get them in the states. I immediately ran to the nearest shop and got him a pack before I got an autograph. Funny thing is he actually remembered me this year and yelled at me as he walked past me in the halls. "Where the bloody hell are my Minstrels peasant" Immediately I couldn't help but laugh, how the hell could he remember that? Needless to say, I got him another pack and all was right with the world.14 points
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Ok, my pics. Ufortunately I am not photogenic.... at all Alan Tudyk Alyson Hannigan Benedict Cumberbatch (who thought I was dressed up as Snow White) David Labrava Finn Jones #1 Finn Jones #2 Finn Jones #3 Finn Jones #4 Kristen Renton Mark Boone junior Mark Sheppard Michael Rosenbaum Natalie Dormer Phelps twins Sean Biggerstaff Tommy Flanagan Wil Wheaton Wil Wheaton and TBBT set TBBT set14 points
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