My Comic-Con Twilight Bonanza

Marcie, Season, and my Twilight Mom friend Jessica, and I left for San Diego, Wednesday afternoon. We arrived at our hotel around 7 PM, and then drove to downtown San Diego to eat dinner, and visit with some other Twilight Moms that were going to meet us there.



We ate at Hard Rock Cafe. It was the first time I've eaten there, and the food was pretty good. I got a BBQ bacon cheeseburger. Not the best I've ever eaten, but nothing to complain about either. I liked the atmosphere. They played a good variety of rock music, and seeing the memorabilia on the walls was neat.


Because you all know how fond I am of taking pictures of my food

Channeling my inner rocker. lol
After dinner, we headed to an Irish Pub and Grill down the street, where a bunch of us Twilight Moms were going to meet and eat. Only two TMs were there when we arrived. We wondered what in the world happened to the "tons" of TMs that were coming. We found out the next morning, that a bunch of them ended up not going, because they decided it would be wiser to go ahead and wait in line. I understood, I mean Twilight ALWAYS comes first. ;p lol We did enjoy meeting Jenny, and her friend Veronica. They both were sweet girls and a lot of fun.

We didn't stay too long, since we knew we'd be getting up really early. 4 AM, to be exact. I got about an hour of sleep that night. We stayed up talking and giggling a little too much. Yes, completely girlie, but we didn't care. It was fun.

We left our hotel at about 5 AM, and got to the Convention Center at 5:30. Our game plan was to split up, because we had to wait in two different lines. One to get our badges to get into everything, and the other to get into Hall H. Which is the big hall where they have the major movie studios present the up and coming movies, and panels to answer questions about the movies. This is where the Twilight cast and Stephenie were going to be.


So Jessica, and I decided we would stay in the badge line, and Marcie & Season went to wait at the Hall H line. Then our plan was to switch places. Thankfully Jessica and I found some of our friends to wait in line with, so we were pretty close to the front. Then Marcie and Season made friends with some people in their line, who said they'd save our spot in that line. So that worked out nicely. Then to make it even better they opened the badge line extra early, so we called M&S to come get in line with us, and we'd all make it to the other line in time. It worked out well. I'm thinking next year, if I go again, I am buying a 4 day pass even if I only do the one day again. It takes the stress of trying to make it to everything on time away, because you can pick up your badge the night before. Plus you get a ton of extra goodies that Preview night, and it is only like $25 more.


The lines for badges went really quickly, and we headed back to the Hall H line on the other side of the convention center. At 9:30 AM they were doing a lottery drawing to meet the cast and get autographs from them, in the Badge hall. Unfortunately that was at the same time that they started letting people into Hall H. So trying to win a ticket to the autograph session, could've possibly kept us out of getting into the panel interviews. Because once the Hall is full they do not let anyone in. We didn't want to take the risk of that happening, especially with no guarantee of actually getting the winning tickets for the meet and autographs. And anyway on August 7th, I'll be meeting Stephenie at the Breaking Dawn concert. So we all passed on it.


Jenny, myself, Marcie, Season, and Jessica waiting in line
Our line buddies were saving our spots in the Hall H line, like they promised. They were really cool. They had no idea what Twilight was, but they thought we were fun and liked our enthusiasm. ;p We waited in that line for another hour and a half (there was a lot of waiting at Comic-Con, but you know you are with awesome people, when it is even fun to wait in lines).


Our line buddies

Penguins, lovely
We saw quite a few people dressed up in various costumes. Marcie told her hubbie Chad that she'd take a ton a pictures of all the dressed up people for him, since he didn't get to come with us. I had to take pictures of some of them too, just because they were interesting to see. People get really creative with their costumes.



We got free donuts from the Mexican Donut





Girls with flying toasters on their heads? *scratches head*
We were let into Hall H at about 9:30 AM. We were in the first 75 or so to get in. We didn't get front row seats, but the section we were in, was still pretty close. Especially considering the fact that there were 6,500 people in the Hall. We were happy with our seats.

There was a bit of drama, about an hour before the first movie panel was supposed to come out. The drapery on the back wall decided to start toppling down on people. Thankfully, no one back there was hurt. So the movie studio panels were delayed a little bit, while they fixed the problems, and prevented any of the other curtains from falling down.


The Drapery Fiasco of 2008
Once that was fixed, it was time for our first movie panel. It was a remake from the 50's classic; The Day the Earth Stood Still. We got to see a couple exclusive scenes from the movie. It looks very good, and intense. In the panel from the movie, were Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly, and the director, and producer. I have to say that it was very surreal being right there in the audience with famous people, while they talked about their various movies.

Sorry, my camera doesn't take the best pictures, in semi dark rooms.




After that panel, the next one was the movie Max Payne, which I guess, is based on a video game. This stars Mark Wahlberg, Mila Something or other (The brunette from That 70's Show), and Ludacris, plus the director of the film was there. This movie looks very good too, but very very violent. I have a feeling that it will be R rated.


The extra Marky Mark pictures are just for you, Linny! :)

When that was done, we got a surprise guest. He was not on the agenda. It was Hugh Jackman! Everyone got on their feet and cheered, when he came out. He was there to promote the newly finished X-Men: Origins, Wolverine. Oh my goodness this looks amazing. I've been an X-Men fan, since my brother collected the comics, when we were growing up. I was never a big comic book reader, but I always loved those comics. And I am super excited to announce that Gambit, will be in the new movie! Laaaaaaaa! He is my absolute favorite character in X-Men, and I was always disappointed that they had left him out of the past three movies. A ton of people screamed when they saw him in the film. And Hugh said afterward, "I bet a lot of you are happy to see Gambit in this film!". The audience, including me, hooted and hollered.




Once those Q & A's were finished, it was time for the Summit Films panels. Which is the whole reason we were there. It was funny, because between the different studios panels, they have 15 minute breaks to let people leave if they are finished seeing what they wanted to, and so new people waiting outside can come in and find seats. Well after X-Men, practically no one left. The announcer kept on saying, please move to the center of your rows so people coming in can find a seat. And there was no where to move to. Even those that weren't Twilight fans, were curious, and stayed, because of all the buzz they were hearing around them, about the movie.

Anyway, Summit Films came out to announce the order of the movie panels, and people were already going crazy. Before Twilight though, they had two other films.

First was a movie called PUSH. This looks really, really good. Seriously every movie that we previewed looked so good. I don't know if this was just from all the excitement of the situation, or the huge movie screens & surround sound, or what. But every movie, I was interested in seeing after watching the exclusive scenes they showed us.

This movie stars Dakota Fanning, Camilla Bell, the "Human Torch" from Fantastic 4 (sorry I can't remember his name), and Djimon Hounsou. Everyone was there except Dakota. She was still stuck in traffic, so missed the panel.




When that was over, the director from the next movie came out. The movie was called Knowing. It stars Nicolas Cage. Unfortunately he wasn't there, just the director. This looks good. It is a premonition/numbers type disaster movie.

Now I don't have any video or pictures of the exclusive movie scenes we were shown of all the different movies. They asked us not to video tape that stuff. I respected their request.

After that, the Big Moment of Truth had arrived.....

Stay tuned for the next installment.

I know, I am so mean. But I don't want to make the post too long. I promise Twilighty goodness in the next day or so.