girlingray

I only got a photo op with Jeremy, so it was a brief meeting - but he was excellent. I asked for a hug in my photo which he was clearly happy to do. He was full of smiles, gave an amazing hug and consequently it's my favourite photo of the weekend. He didn't feel like a 'big' guest in his manner - he was friendly and so obviously pleased to be meeting us - I could not have hoped for a better experience.

I love Stranger Things, finished watching it last weekend. Lovely announcement. That's 2 Sunday only guests I would loved to have met. Really bummed I can't do Sunday as well as Friday and Saturday this year. Enjoy those who can meet her!

How am I supposed to work when I just want it to be 2pm already!?!

Thanks for the schedule. Please can someone remind me of the current procedure for getting access to the free talks? Thank you

This sounds good to me. Walking for 15 minutes to join the end of the queue and then standing in what shouldn't have been that hot yet sun for the age it took for the massive queue to walk back to the venue and get in wasn't much fun last year. I found the queuing in the hall to work really well on the day SM did this last year. And this year sounds like it's going to be even more efficient with earlier ticket scanning. I'm optimistic this will be a good start to my LFCC weekend on Friday!

Photo op tickets have served me well as a makeshift fan in the photo op queue! I still print my tickets out in case my phone battery dies during the day, so last year I still had paper tickets for fanning.

Noooo! I can only go Friday and Saturday! Great guest announcement anyway. Pleased for everyone who can meet him

Brilliant! Big Person of Interest fan over here!!! I'll sit trying to stay calm, whilst eagerly awaiting the Friday photoshoots to appear in the shop!!

Norwich - bus, train, then underground. Will be almost 4 hours door to door after work on Thursday. Great opportunity to start a new book!

Absolutely brilliant! Wish I could afford a diamond ticket for this guest!! But I'll make do with a photoshoot - bought now! Thanks SM

Both of my experiences were with guests I wasn't planning to meet initially. Firstly, Elizabeth Sladen - I wasn't so into meeting Doctor Who guests at the time and I was also far stricter about not adding to my list of people I'd planned (and budgeted!) to meet than I am now! But I was in a long, slow moving queue just down from her table so I had a while to see her meeting other fans. She seemed so nice, particularly with all the families with young children meeting her. So I decided that if her queue wasn't silly long by the time I was done in my queue I'd say hello and get an autograph - luckily she had no one in her queue when I was done, so I did meet her - I got a personalised autograph and an over the table photo and had a nice little chat until someone else joined the queue. Secondly, Leonard Nimoy - I had 3 other guests I desperately wanted to meet at that Collectomania and I was fixated on getting virtual queue tickets for them when I arrived, so I didn't get a VQ ticket for Leonard. I had photo op with him and decided that would be enough. But then by the end of the day, just as I was leaving after picking up all my photo op photos I noticed he now had an open queue - and there I was with my Leonard photo op photo in my hand. So I met him and got my photo op signed. It was just a brief meeting, but I'm glad that I didn't miss out.

I like SM's policy on over the table photos and I'm glad to hear that charges for selfies won't be introduced. I love getting photo ops - the photographers are great and the instant printing is excellent. But sometimes being able to get an over the table photo with my autograph is a nice bonus - it's a minute of extra time with the guest and I've had a couple of fun encounters. Like Andrew Clover from Ashes to Ashes wanting to loom menacingly over my shoulder. And Dean Lennox Kelly putting in his fangs from Being Human, which he had with him in a pot, for the photo. I really like the signs - 'no posed photos', so I know that I'm not going to be asking for a selfie but I'm allowed to take photos from the queue versus 'no photos and videoing' etc. Use of the signs make me comfortable to ask for a photo where there's no sign present. I still decide whether or not to ask based on whether the guest has been happy to take photos with fans in front of me, but use of the different signs gives me more confidence to know when I'm okay to ask.

Agreed, though I probably won't meet him for Stargate. £25 is a bit steep for me for appearing in 1 episode. Ducks potatoes thrown by Tanith. I can totally understand that. If it was just Stargate I knew him from I'd likely be the same. He'll be one of the many Stargate guests I've met over the years (and my photo op with him will be stored in my massive pair of Stargate folders!), but with 24, Kill Point, Alias etc (just started re-watching Alias from the start a few weeks ago - there he was, hunting out the SD-6 mole!) also on his resume he's very worth a meet for me, even though I am a big scaredy cat and have never seen a Saw movie

Not a big horror fan, so I've never seen the Saw movies. I know Tobin from his guest roles on various US dramas over the years - where he's always great, if usually playing a villian!. But I'll be meeting him for Stargate SG1. I actually can't believe how well I remember him and his character from that one episode all the way back at the start! Thanks SM for the opportunity to meet Tobin

Another Lost guest, aces! Harold is a key reason why Constantine's cancellation was such a disappointment for me, he was great

Last summer on Sunday the standard (I don't know about the Gold or YALC) queue was inside in a big empty hall. I thought that worked really well for a few reasons but mostly because it saved the time spent walking to join the end of the really long queue, which was streets away from the venue by 9am opening the previous two days. Whatever, it sounds like SM have made some space-use improvements for this year which will be great to see.

It has already been stated many times that this issue has been rectified for this year.I appreciate this confirmation from you and Queen_Sindel, as I've been keeping an eye out for any details about the photo areas since that caused me problems last year - but aside from info about taking on another hall posted ages back I hadn't come across any of the mentions about photo op layout you refer to. So now I can stop worrying about the number of photo ops I'm buying and just keep spending!

Excellent - my first Blacklist guest. I look forward to meeting Amir

I'm mainly hoping that the extra space they're taking on this year will mean that the photo areas can be closer together. That was my main problem last year due to the crowds and congestion on the stairs I couldn't get between the photo areas on opposite sides of different floors to make clashing photo ops. Luckily I was there 2 days and the guests were too, so the Sales team kindly swapped 3 of my photo ops to the next day when I missed the later of 2 clashing ops because I was stuck trying to get up and across the building as they were happening. Last year was the only time I've ever missed photo ops in all my years of SM events - so I'm hoping the new hall will allow for closer placement of the photo areas so it doesn't happen again

Lovely! Big fan from Haven

Lovely announcement! Aaron was great in Nikita and I love him in 12 Monkeys

Excellent announcement. Photo op bought!

If you sign up with an account to eventbrite then as long as you are logged in, all that information will be filled in every time you buy a ticket so you only have to select the batch, click on the waivers and accept.As Wrong Name says this should be the case, you shouldn't have to repeatedly but your address in if you have an account registeredI haven't found this to be the case. I buy my tickets logged into my Eventbrite account and whilst the details are already completed with my info for whatever the first ticket is in the stack I'm buying, I still have to complete all the details from scratch for the other tickets.

I was surprised that there wasn't an 'as above' or similar box to tick when I purchased tickets recently. It did feel quite pressured typing in all my information repeatedly for each photo op ticket with the countdown running - which I couldn't actually see without scrolling back up the page, thus adding to the time wasting and general feeling of panic! It would be good to have something to select if the details for all the tickets are the same, so you only have to type the details in once (I was using the Eventbrite webpage, rather than the app, on my tablet - I don't know if it's easier to do if not on a mobile device?)

Meeting Brian J Smith. No offence to the other guests who I'm also looking forward to seeing (again, in the case of Alaina and Jacqueline - and who are both really lovely guests), but I wasn't able to make it to the previous Chevron Brian attended so I'm really pleased to get this opportunity. Update - well, it's a good thing meeting Brian wasn't the only part of Chevron I was looking forward to! I'm sorry to hear Brian has cancelled, but Gary's a great guest, so funny, and I'm looking forward to meeting him again.