| Star Wars Celebration is a curious beast and depending how you approach it, either the worst thing in human history or a reaffirming festival of a shared fandom. After firmly swearing off it a day and a bit into a four-day ticket back in 2017 I was not in the least looking forward to enduring it again.
The only thing to make me tolerate it last time was the presence organized fan groups who added a value and entertainment far beyond what the organizers provided (unless you take some sort of perverse pleasure in standing and queuing for 6 hours and rampant disappointment) so somewhat consoled by the thought of experiencing that again we decided to attend.
Oddly though the area set aside for this was minute in comparison to the space in Orlando. While I accept that the Orange County Convention Centre rather makes ExCeL look like a local church hall, there was so much empty unused space it seems on the surface like a missed opportunity by ReedPop to not take advantage of the fan groups presence but in fairness this is an area I’ve come to have thoughts on recently and maybe the very existence of some of those groups create a problem for them all.
Friday was the first day and having lucked out in the opening Lucasfilm Showcase lottery we elected to attend just as punters.
I’m a fan of Star Wars, I have been since I was four years old, but I make no claim to be its biggest. My consumption of it has reduced over the years from spin off comics and novels to only the films and TV series and spend very little on collectibles these days, a far cry from harassing the staff in the local Woolworths in 1995 to go into the stock room and retrieve the unopened cases to ensure I could buy the entire figure wave, not just the selection of half a dozen hanging on the peg.
To find myself then amid 4500 other people running an entire gamut from “I’m only here because my other half promised me a weekend break in London” to “I hope they announce a film featuring Therm Scissorpunch” and at least one of whom suggested that without their discovery of the franchise they’d have had no reason to go on living, was massively uplifting.
Unfortunately, the feeling wasn’t to last.
Squeezing our way through the North exhibitor’s hall reminded me of the worst of this type of experience. Quite why people were queuing for hours to get into the scant few shops for the possibility of buying merchandise freely available elsewhere is something that I find baffling.
The Lego stand was one of the most egregious, even as a non-local I can think of brand three shops in the vicinity that you could just walk into and likely make the same purchases. The Hasbro stand was entirely irrelevant and the appeal of the landfill that are Funko Pops almost entirely escapes me.
Oh, hey and it turned out there was a second vendor hall on the south side, which all the signage referred to as the Autograph Hall, which is why it was nearly 15:30 before I realized it existed…
As mentioned the fan area did not allow those groups to show themselves at their best with probably the Rebel Legion making the most effect use of their space. With so many overseas visitors lacking any sort of branding it was difficult to make any real determination, but I suspect the understandable downplaying of the changing area capacity had made many people think twice about attending in those regards. The space itself was satisfactory and indeed bigger than we get an many events, fairly well managed but seemed little used during the times I was present, albeit I ensured to avoid it as far as possible around photo time on the Saturday.
Following our short-lived attendance of the standing room only, no allergy friendly food options of the 501st Bash the night before we bowled up later the Saturday. While this masterfully avoided most of the crowds getting into the place, being the Saturday, the venue was at its busiest, thus it was something of a relief to head back outside to try and get near the group photo session.
Far better organized than our previous experience, by dint of organizing the costumers into relevant groups before marching them to the photo location instead of having a guy stand on the next floor and vaguely point to someone and gesture to a vicinity to which he’d like them to move but prone to the general public wandering into shot which led to the detachment photos being moved into the spare south halls where the area could more easily be controlled.
Thus, it was into the changing area us for easily the highlight of the weekend. During the 2017 expedition we’d chanced upon The Running of The Hoods, an event that I’d been aware of but never experienced in person, during which homage is paid to the “Ice Cream guy” who makes a brief appearance in Empire Strikes Back. Having mentioned as Celebration weekend approached that Julie and I had, moustaches aside, most of the requisite costume items to take part we embarked on a hurried exercise to be approved for the unofficial detachment and in my case manufacture a passable replica of the screen used prop.
The group (forgive me, I’m unsure the collective noun for a bunch of Willrows) assembled at the east end of the building growing some 40 strong before setting out to amuse and bemuse the assembled masses throughout the facility with our medium paced ice cream preservation agenda.
It was interesting to be a participant on our second and this tenth anniversary occasion of the run and frequently see members of the public explain the reference to their fellow attendees.
As a coda to this, afterwards we were asked to appear on and around the Celebration Live stage. The fluctuating schedule of the live event meant we were standing backstage awaiting our queue for longer than we eventually appeared, but it was certainly memorable, not least because of the damage to my right shin caused by a floor light which nearly took me out at the second corner. Despite having been warned to watch out for them I was glad to see that I clearly hadn’t been the only Willrow to run afoul of one of them as we reached stage right as a jobbing spark made a brave attempt to right another knocked over lighting unit as we passed.
We made a early departure back to the hotel to drop off the costumes, Camtonos (Camtoni?) and bags before heading off the farce that was the Rebel Legion Sail Barge event, almost literally setting foot on the deck before turning around and disembarking again as there was no space to stand nor sit and around 70% of the attendees were still to come aboard when we got to the front of the queue.
Sunday saw us attending the Look Back at Obi-Wan panel and in a startling stretch of odds found us seated two rows directly behind Lynn and Brian from the ISG.
I had volunteered to supervise the entrances and exits from the changing area late afternoon, which had the potential to be tedious, but conversely turned out to be a great opportunity to talk to various members of the costume clubs from across the world. The duty also allowed me the opportunity to determine how busy the space was and that costuming on the final day would be without complication…
Having dragged the Jawa costume down on the plane with me I was glad to get the opportunity to appear in it. With the vision issues of that outfit, I’m not going to pretend the walk from the changing area in the south halls to the 501st stand in the north across the packed concourse wasn’t a fraught experience due to having no peripheral vision, but the place was surprisingly well lit and having looked around a few times on the previous days it went off without any hitches.
My time in the vicinity of the stand passed quickly, more so than at some previous events and I found I was a lot more interactive than I sometimes am. Whether that was because I was a lone denizen, or the crowd was overly receptive to shenanigans or simply because my hands were occupied with the ion blaster which I’d left behind to avoid security issues at the airport. The only slight niggle was that I hadn’t expected to have any need for sound over the weekend because of the nature of the event and I really should have made more effort in that regard…
Although we managed to get into the closing ceremony, it probably wasn’t worth the effort. With the next event in two years being in Japan and no doubt back to the US before there’s any thought of it returning to London, it seems unlikely that we’ll ever attend again but at least this time it’s for better reasons than when we ruled out any return five years ago… | |
Mark’s ReMarks 