Flights go down in price on Tuesday and Wednesday, so every Tuesday and Wednesday I've been scouring all my apps and airline websites to see what it's looking like. Because while I've so far been talking about Disney here, my other all-encompassing vacation is San Diego Comic Con.
While I'm an unabashed geek, I'm not really a convention person. Friends took me to a couple and it's not really my thing. But while I was living in LA, a whole two hours north of San Diego, I had friends from Illinois and DC going, and I hadn't seen them in a long time. So on a random day in February 2010, I looked at the website and saw that there were still a couple Sunday tickets available, so I bought one. Then in July I took the train down on a Saturday, met up with my friends at the hotel, and spent Sunday mostly walking the floor and taking pictures of cosplayers (to this day, my favorite thing to do there). That day one of my roommates dragged me to buy tickets for next year onsite. At the time I was a little upset that I missed hanging out with another friend for a while, but it was a damn good thing I bought my ticket then, because it was the last time I'd ever be able to do that.
The very next year, a convention that had started getting bigger and bigger started getting massive. The Twilight fans ruined it for everyone by lining up days in advance, making the 6000-seat Hal H extremely difficult to get into for high-profile panels. Registration now meant going into the website to buy tickets in two waves: presale for returning con-goers, and open registration for newbies or for people who didn't get everything they wanted in the first go. There is no guarantee you'll get anything anymore. Everything is bigger, the crowds are awful, comics get outshined by big Hollywood movies...
And I love it.
I have two groups I go with now. I room with the friends I originally started going to see, and spend a lot of time meeting up with others. I've also met people there who fall into the "my life is better for knowing them" category. If I didn't have all of them, maybe I wouldn't go. But maybe I would.
SDCC is not for the faint of heart. Recently I mentioned to a friend that I train for SDCC and she was stunned. But dude, it's a lot of walking, a lot of time either sitting or standing in one place, it's a lot of stress and trying to make a schedule and you spend more days than not waking up at 4 am after going to sleep at midnight. So yeah, I train. I'll spend a solid hour on the treadmill in the weeks leading up to the con, I'll slowly cut back on sleep so it's not as much of a shock when I get there. I'll also drink every bit of orange juice I can get my hands on because I try really hard to avoid con crud (the clinical name for the cold you get after sharing smallish spaces with 13,000 other people for five days). It's a lot of stress, and I try to make it as easy on myself as possible. I'm sure there are people who can have a low-key con, but they have to be people who don't mind if they miss things and don't get overwhelmed easily.
The weird thing is that I have to do it differently this year. In the past Sarah would come visit a week before, and then we'd either take the train to San Diego. The last couple years I sent Sarah on ahead and would leave my car at a friend's house, then stay there a couple days to save money, then drive back up alone while Sarah flew gack home. This year I don't live in LA. I'm planning on flying out there Saturday before and spend a few days catching up with people in the area before either taking the train or bumming a ride from a friend headed down there. I'll stay in the hotel the whole time, and then fly back home from there. After six years of doing this, it's going to be so messed up for me.
You'll hear a lot more about this over the next few months. The general sale and dreaded Hotelpocalypse is coming up, and there comes a point where it takes over my brain. Good thing I have a public outlet now!
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