Fan Expo - Intro

A quick note: I apologize to anyone reading this if you are a big stickler for grammar as I am terrible at it and since this is mostly for me to put down my recollections of my time it is going to be more train of thought then structured prose although I will try to not make it too horrible however you have been warned.

A friend of mine recently pointed out that it had been quite awhile since I had last updated this blog with anything and was just wondering why.  Which was a fair point part of it is that I honestly hadn't given it much thought, the other thing is that for the most part not a whole lot had really been going on with me to write about.  However at the end of August I did go to my first large convention in Toronto called Fan Expo and after reading another friend post their experiences at SDCC earlier in the summer I figured that would be something that would be worth writing some entries about and so I will write a post for each of the four days that I was there.  I figured I'd put all the intro stuff into this entry so that for the next 4 at least I can just start out with how that day started.  This was actually only the second convention I've been to as I went to a small one with a friend in February I think it was, however that one was very small compared to Fan Expo as it was one smallish hall and it was only 1 day so in a sense Fan Expo was my first exposure to the real Con experience.  I honestly don't know when or how long it will take me to write these up but I am going to try to get at least a couple up before the end of the week.

   I guess the only thing really left for this entry if it is really to be an introduction is to talk about how I ended up deciding to go to Fan Expo in the first place.  As I had mentioned for most of my life I have paid very little to no attention to most conventions the only one I ever recall going to would be the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition) with my family and as I have mentioned before on here awhile back I started to get more involved in online communities which lead to the original restart of this blog.  As I got know a group of people online and started to communicate more with them I started to hear more and more about different conventions and was the first time I really was connected with anyone that regularly attended them or was even really interested in them.  As they started to talk about and make plans for SDCC this year it got me to look into them more and I discovered a growing interest and curiosity about them as they all talked about them with such warmth and enthusiasm.  So I started looking into any conventions that might be closer to home that I could check out which is what lead to going to the small convention in February.  It was interesting in it's own way and there were a few interesting celebrities there but nothing/no one that I was really excited or interested to see.  So while it was nice I definitely did not get that sense of love and excitement that my online friends seemed to have for conventions, I figured that might be because it was such a small convention so I started looking around to see if there were any larger conventions that were held that wouldn't require plane trips or hotel rooms it was through this that I first learned about Fan Expo.  I learned that Fan Expo was one of the largest conventions in Canada and that it was held in Toronto every year and after looking at some of the guests and reports of previous years it seemed like it would be much more interesting.  At this point I figured I'd keep my eye on it and see who and what was planned for this years show before making any decisions about whether I'd go or not as I wasn't sure if I'd really enjoy it or not since I would most likely be alone, I'm not a big fan of crowds and long lines and I've always been more of a TV and Games kinda geek then a big comic book geek which seemed to be a large part of these conventions.    So I kept a bit of an eye on it until they started announcing the guests for this years show, now Fan Expo is a combination of 5 different sections: Gaming, SciFi, Comics, Anime and Horror and so they announced them a section at a time at different dates and so while I looked at them all the main one I was interested in was SciFi being mostly a TV geek as I mentioned (and I didn't really recognize many of the Gaming guest names from previous years) and so once they were announced I saw there were actually a few people there that I would actually be very interested to have the chance to meet them so that definitely increased my interest in attending the convention although at this point they were all tentative and there was no idea who was going to be there when as with the increased interest in going I started to debate while which day should I go, just one day or a few or all weekend.  I debated this on and off for awhile ( I don't really remember when the guests were announced maybe around May but that is just a guess) it wasn't until SDCC actually started that I started thinking about it more seriously as alot of my online friends were going to it and so they would be talking about it on Twitter and other social media sites and hearing their excitement and enjoyment of it got me thinking about it.  So after all this and after seeing a few more people I would be interested to see being signed up as guests I had pretty much decided that I was going to go but I just wasn't sure when or for how long so I started looking up how I could get there and where it would be and what were the ticket options etc.  I debated this for awhile before finally just deciding that I wanted to really give this a good go and so I was going to go for the whole weekend so that I could really get the full experience and make sure I could see as much as I could so I decided to buy a weekend pass as it would mean I could go for the full weekend and it included early entry for the first day of the convention, I further decided to pay extra to have it shipped rather then having to go there to redeem it when it started after hearing about how long lines were for that sort of thing at other conventions from some of my online friends.  So I got my ticket, which ended up being a wristband and as the convention drew closer they released schedules of what was planned and so I went through and picked out all the things that peaked my interest and then from that figured out what I could reasonably expect to do and in the case of any overlaps what I would rather do.  I had decided to take the GO train (city-to-to public transit) as the convention centre was easily walkable from the station in Toronto.  So after doing all the planning I thought I could I got everything ready on Wednesday which leads us to Thursday which was the first day of the convention.