All Hail Emperor McDiarmid ! and my thoughts on Sunday

[andeedee]

First of all let me just say how nice Ian McDiarmid was I had 2 photo shoots with him and got an autograph and he was basically my reason for coming this year.
After the fiasco of last summers LFCC and especially the Back to the future talk I promised myself I wouldn't come this year but after going to the spring one here I kinda half changed my mind and after the dangling of the emperor carrot I was sucked in like a tractor beam.
This year I could only come on the Sunday as me and my friend are both humble postmen in North West England and as this years was a couple of weeks later than usual its school holidays so both of us couldn't get the time off so we agreed to do a mad one day pilgrimage so after a 2.30 am start we were safely in the queue at about 7.50am.
We had both packed quite a lot in to one day I had 6 photo shoots booked and needed 11 autograph guests and my friend had 3 photos but 15 autographs to get and we were planning all this without the aid of gold passes etc.

Let me just say we BOTH managed everything so it proves even without gold passes with planning and a bit of dedication you can get what you want at these events.
It helped that we both had been here before and knew the venue.
I will now just highlight a few niggles I had this year overall this was a vast improvement on last year space wise and organisation wise, last year I was running between floors for photoshoots to then find they had been moved to another part of the building. This year you could see all the photo areas and they were nearly all next to each other. Five of my six shoots ran like clock work and apart from quite a high number of people who were having to get reshoots against the green screen emperor throne. These shoots were all called up in order Gold pass first then batch 1 etc. Then for my final photo with Carl Weathers it was running a few minutes behind which was fine but probably as it was 4.45 on a Sunday the queue system went out of the window and became a free for all not a massive issue as I still got through ok but just a let down otherwise I would of given a perfect score for the photoshoots.

Now for the autographs as me and my friend had got in at 9.01 and knew where we were going for our autographs and we picked up all the VQ tickets we needed including a number 3 for one of his guests!
We then went round the guests who you didn't need VQ tickets for and had boxed most of them off by 10am apart from a minor speed bump with Donald Sumpter but he did arrive late which probably caused all the issues with his queue and we noticed in the afternoon you could walk right up to him !
We were both then waiting about for Ian McDiarmid I had no 79 and my friend was 80. Ian's VQ was only upto no 30 by the time he went off to do photoshoots which was fine as I was getting a normal shoot and the throne room with him. He came back from his shoots and the VQ no was upto 110 so we both just decided to wait it out now as he was both of ours last autograph and sometimes you have to take it on the chin a bit.
Everything would of been fine apart from that Gold Pass people kept getting brought to the front of the queue but not just one or two but loads of people were being brought forward but one of these was a guy who is probably some of dealer who got at least 5 of the same poster signed.

Am I mistaken but I thought a Gold Pass allowed you to join the back of any queue regardless of VQ number but got you called first for photo shoots.

Apart from these minor niggles we both had an amazing day and are both now well up for next year.

LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR!!!!

THE NORTH (WEST) REMEMBERS!!!!!!!!!!

 

I WOULD ADD PICTURES BUT CAN'T WORK OUT HOW TO DO THAT

 

[andeedee]

[Chazzley]

I met Ian on Sunday and he was great, complimented my Star Wars tee and then had a chat about what his favourite film in the series was to work on. Revenge of the Sith if you were wondering

 

Would definitely like to meet Ian again.