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Thoughts From Sunday/Reflections on the Weekend


Count Fooku
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Quick day for me today as I only wanted Autographs from two people; Dave MacKay and Bruce Grobbelaar. It was good to meet both of them, Dave Mckay still has a real hard man glint in his eye!

 

I don't know if it was just me but there seemed a bit more buzz about the show today, maybe it was because Barrowman was due to be there. I was thinking today was going to be manic with him being there but it all seemed to be very well controlled.

 

Although both days were relatively brief for me this seemed like a really good weekend show, the venue was good and location wise for me was quite easy to get to. Look forward to the show next year!

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excellent event

 

my visit today was more brief than yesterday, I had only planned to come in get john and leave as i was there almost all day yesterday but I was one of the first for john barrowmans afternoon shoot which gave me time to get rene's photo also.

 

waiting for the pics I decided to go to the star trek talk which was very good!! thought the crew member with the mic had a bit of a torrid time getting to the ppl speaking though. but good talk, over all to quickly though but very good talk.

 

john was great, said hello, said to me your a bulldog then he saw my ben shirman british bulldog t shirt and went, yer british bulldog and thanked me, great guy! it was brilliant meeting him

 

rene was good also, very smily and polite.

 

great weekend

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I was going to skip this show because of Christmas coming up, but I couldn't keep away and I'm really glad I went.

 

I arrived just after 10am and there was a really calm atmosphere. Even with Barrowman there, it was nothing like the manicness I'd braced myself for. The queues were being kept under control and though it did get much busier once the standard entry people arrived it was still fine for me. I met everyone I wanted to within about an hour of getting there and the only mishap of the day was being told to wait in the wrong place for the Nightmare On Elm Street talk - luckily when I insisted I was only waiting there because I'd been told I could, they let me go in with the real queue and I still got a good seat. Otherwise it might have soured the day since it's one of the main reasons I went, but things turned out fine.

 

The guests were great. Billy Dee Williams was quiet, but polite. He greeted me and seemed pleasantly surprised when I mentioned Batman (I think I was one of the few who wasn't seeing him for Star Wars), and shook my hand when I left. Montserrat Lombard was great; very enthusiastic and smiley and happy to chat. Heather Langenkamp was awesome. She was really attentive, asking me questions and asking if I wanted her to write any quotes (I went with "don't fall asleep") and just generally very kind and sweet. She also looks amazing. I can't believe she's 45 - she really doesn't look much different to her Elm St days.

 

Pleased I dragged myself out in the cold. Even if I got rained on on the way home, it was worth it. Great show, guys! Really loved this venue too - more room to move around having things spread over a couple of floors - and much better lighting than Earls Court/Milton Keynes so it's a shame it's not permanent.

Edited by Princess83
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Just to say what a GREAT DAY !! this was our first ever event like this and we really did not know what we were missing, Brian Kraus is the most charming man and Jason Momoa is just a dream....no queues at all anytime today except waiting for photos to come back, but JB seemed to have hundreds of photos so I expect they were busier than usual. Wanted to get JB autograph, we were number 700+ in the VQ and could not wait, so missed him. Hopefully he'll be around again next year. Thanks to all who organize this event, everyone seemed to be having a great time !

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Just got back from the event. Despite the weather and the travel problems conspiring against me I thought it was a very pleasant day. Liked the venue which was spacious and well lit. Thankfully it wasn't anywhere near as manic as I thought it would be given that John Barrowman was only there for one day which was something of a relief. In fact guests that I had expected to be manic like Misha Collins were actually quite quiet!

 

Sadly as expected due to John's limited signing time he stopped personalising autographs very quickly although thankfully I managed to sneak in before that decision was made. Not too impressed with the way his queue was controlled early in the day - I understand entirely that you shouldn't let people go through if their ticket number hasn't been called but it is important to keep the queue flowing. We should and watched as the queue was allowed repeatedly to dwindle to almost nothing but the numbers were still only going up in 10's and 20's - very inefficient and probably contributed to people not getting items personalised later in the day. The gentleman in question was also really quite rude to me - it was only out of respect for Jason and co that I just brushed it off and didn't cause a fuss.

 

By contrast full credit should go to the photosession team who handled massive queues really quickly and efficiently - I was enormously impressed.

 

Thought some of the questions in the Torchwood talk were pretty dire (especially the awful "what's the strangest thing you've ever put in your mouth" question) but it was lovely to see Kai, Gareth and John on stage together.

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Unusually for a signing event I went on both days due to unmissable events on each, which meant a bit more waiting around on the Sunday in particular, but I got to see Misha Collins, George Takei and John Barrowman, and they were all lovely. I got to make random Twitter references to Misha (who gave me the best personalization ever on request); George was as friendly and courteous as he was at CMK; John was a complete trooper doing two photo shoots (the sold-out one was huge, but he still took time to say hi and hug people) and trying to get through as many autographs as possible on top of that in one day. There were some good anecdotes on the Star Trek talk and the paid Supernatural talk was hilarious; Misha and Julie did a great job together, especially with some of the questions they got! Worth every penny.

 

My thanks to SM and the crew - they had a lot of organizing to do (especially for John Barrowman's queues) but they managed it well as always.

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Just out of interest what was the venue like acoustics wise for the talks? From memory the talks at LFACC were pretty hard work due to the echo and background noise, this venue seemed like it might not be so much of a problem so I was quite curious as to how they went

I can only speak for the Supernatural talk on Saturday -which took place at 4.15pm and the acoustics were very good. I was sitting about 7 rows back and had no problem hearing Misha or Julie. no echo or outside noise.

Edited by casm
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Me and my cousin went today (Sunday) and we both enjoyed it. This was only my third event and it was the best one yet.

Everything was well organised and the queues short, which meant we both got the autographs and photo shoots we wanted. We also managed the Star Trek talk which was amazing!!

John Rhys Davis was my highlight of the day. We had a nice chat about cars!! Which is my favourite subject, and appeared to be his!! Sorry to the people behind, who were listening in anyway!!

 

Thanks Showmasters for another great show!!! :YAHOO:

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Must have had one of THE best weekends, ever.

All thanks to Jason Momoa! He remembered me from last time, gave me his ring AND proposed to me in the photo shoot x)

What an amazing man!

All the guests were lovely and great to talk to, not one disappointment.

 

Plus, Olympia's quite a nice venue :) bit out of the way though..

 

But all in all, one amazing weekend, thank you showmasters :YAHOO:

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One name: Julie McNiven. One of the sweetest, bubbliest, genuinely nice girls I've met at these conventions. Reminds me of the warmth and genorosity of Torri Higginson. She was a pleasure to meet and my only regret was that I didn't have something else to get signed to see her a second time. I popped by after seeing Katharine just to thank her for being so lovely. And incidentally, I told her that she inspired my hair, haha. She seemed more surprised by that than expected - I imagined I wasn't the only one!

 

Katharine Isobelle - A joy to speak to as well as to be photographed with. She also seemed genuinely interested and I loved to meet her, hope we get her back some other time :)

 

Misha Collins - So warm and funny, but makes my brain hurt, LOL! I have a maths brain so when he goes off on his abstract tangents my brain starts to tie itself in knots. Funny though.

 

Heather Langenkamp - Saw her for the photoshoot and she was very friendly too, I wish I'd had the money to meet her for an autograph.

 

 

 

EVENT/VENUE: Great venue, very well organised, a nice amount of space. Great dealers, and all in all very enjoyable.

 

 

 

NEGATIVES:

1. The crew member who INSISTED on stamping my hand so that I could go to the organiser's booth for five seconds. She was standing FOUR FEET away from the org booth and wouldn't let me past her even though she could see I wasn't going anywhere, and even though I told her that I can't get it off and it hurts my skin. I showed her that yesterday's hadn't come off yet and she stamped me without asking. I wanted to grab that goddamn stamp off her and throw it out onto the street. If it was house rules that you can't go to the organiser's booth without a stamp, arrange it differently next time.

2. Shannon Doherty - Ignored us for about five-ten minutes when we stood there, with no word of why, and then the signing lasted all of three seconds. They were a very nice, very polite three seconds though. It wouldn't have hurt her to look up at us and say that she wouldn't be long. Katharine Isobelle had to talk to her agent for a bit but she looked at me, said hi, apologised, said that she wouldn't be long, and then apologised again when she was ready for me.

 

All in all, a very positive event, made all the more positive by Misha, Katharine, and especially Julie.

Edited by Psychosis
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oh and another thing- marcus from the last big brother was in there sellin autographs without a table so obviousley wasn't legit and walkin around swearin, i wasnt inpressed

 

omfg yes, he came over to us and said "I just wanted to say: I approve of your costumes. That's all I wanted to say. And I've said it." And then of course, he just had to continue with "You know who I am right?" -___-

 

How desperate can a guy get?!?

 

Luckily, a guy from the local newspaper came and saved us XD; He was really disappointed that the reporter/photographer wanted us and not him XP

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Really liked the venue at Olympia the 2 floors were used well and it never felt cramped. Enjoyed the guests they all seemed pleasant enough! Chase Masterson was lovely she made a special effort at all times even at the photo shoot asking people's names and shaking hands. Jason Momoa was funny and was doing some crazy things at his photo shoot such as proposing. Barbara Nedeljakova was really nice and beautiful too and at £10 her auto was great value. Shame she wasn't doing a photo shoot though as I like those as well as posed photos across the table which I have to say she was very happy to do. Thanks to Cinema Store for getting in Ray Harryhausen it was amazing to meet him on Saturday.

 

The show seemed well organised and all the crew were very helpful and friendly. I only have one concern about the show and that's to do with bags at the photo shoots. I find this new system of bags going on to a table and being moved up a lot riskier than the previous raffle ticketed version as anyone could swipe the end bag off the table because the crew supervising won't know who's bag is who's. Having just bought a new SLR camera I was very concerned with leaving it on that table in that busy area especially when it was at the end just before I came out. Maybe I'm just more concerned about this due to having a new camera but I would wonder what would happen if someone's bag was stolen. I know it says you leave your bags there at own risk but you can't take them into the photo shoot either so what do you do? Is there any way of changing this system to make it a little more secure especally for people who can't put their valuables anywhere else?

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I know it says you leave your bags there at own risk but you can't take them into the photo shoot either so what do you do? Is there any way of changing this system to make it a little more secure especally for people who can't put their valuables anywhere else?

I don't like the ticketless system too much either. I'm always glad to walk out of a shoot and find that my bag is waiting for me. I had a nasty moment on Saturday when I thought that my jacket had been swiped, but it had become separated from my bag and was further down the table, underneath someone else's bag.

 

I've always made sure that all my valuables - I mean stuff like bank cards, ID, my camera and mobile - are stashed in my pockets before a photoshoot, rather than left in my bag, so at least if my bag does go walkies I'll have minimised my losses. But it's still a worry that the things I've bought at the show could go missing while I'm in a shoot. Raffle tickets would certainly feel safer - and, who knows, you might even go home with a box of After Eights and a tin of pineapple chunks. :YAHOO:

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I was at CM only today (Sunday). I thought it was extremely well organised, and have to say the John Barrowman was an absolute star despite doing TWO photoshoots and having easily the longest autograph queue of the day. The Torchwood talk was fun although I think that in future a better system of "roving microphones" is needed. John, Gareth and Kai obviously wanted to answer as many questions as they could, but there was too much time being taken to get the (single) mic from one person to the next.

 

One very good thing - the photos from the shoots came back very promptly (much better than LFCC).

 

All in all, great fun. Thanks to the Crew for their hard work :YAHOO:

Edited by Bev
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Man! woke up at 5.30am and just got back at 9pm, i am smashed!

that was an awesome day, had such a blast. it's my first collectormania and it was better than i imagened

 

first of all. got there for the opening, waiting in line for less than 5min and was inside without having booked in advance. within 10min i had already got Robert Englund's and Heather's auto, and the only reason it took that long was because Heather hadn't even got to her desk yet! thats how fast it all went!

 

Englund was a pleasure to meet, he was chatting to people who had unusual things to get signed which was cool, i myself just had a normal DVD so we didn't say much. Heather was SO nice! she has a lovely voice and very friendly, i saw the guy infront of me took a video of her saying 'get well' to his sick wife. hope to meet her again soon.

 

went downstairs to meet Doug Bradley, there was no que at his table which i was supprised about, i don't know if it was me but he seemed like in a bit of a bad mood but he was a perfect gentlemen just as well. got my sig and took a pic with him.

 

Met Barbara was lovely too, we spoke a bit about her role in Hostel and what it was like to work with Eli Roth, very nice guest. We also spoke about some Takashi Miike movies which was cool. good guest.

 

when the Nightmare talk came around it seemed like just an opportunity to promote whatever the guests were working on. every other sentence was Rob's book, or the webisodes they were working on. and for just a 30min talk it seemed it was kind of wasted.

 

after the talk i decided to go and get Katherine Isabelle's auto, but alas she wasn't there, the guy told me she would be away for over an hour so we decided to leave and go to the pub, WHERE SHE WAS!

we had a quick chat and i took a pic with her, she's a lovely person and really a delight to meet. when she left to go back to work i saw her again at her desk.

she greeted me and remembered my name which was nice, and said this was her 3rd ever convention so GOOD GUEST!

 

i also picked up a few DVDS and a Zombie Flesh Eaters poster, NOICE!

 

had a great day, look forward to what comes next!

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Amazing!!!!

I really dont know what else to say. I was hugged by an angel (Brian Krause) the biggest smile in any of my photo shoots EVER!! Shannen was ok, nothing overly special. GDL was pleasent, Kai as always on top form and Bronson???? well i think still drunk or something from the night before, but a very funny guy, shame he was the only one in the Twilight talk.

Shame to say i missed the Torchwood talk, for no special reason really, it sounded a blast.

 

I totally loved it! I am so in love!!!!!

 

Thanks SM

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