Friday: Lucky duck Alexander had it off (again). I only worked a half day. I came home and we ate lunch and Alexander finished off some laundry before we headed out to Calgary to attend the Comic Expo. Considering it was snow/slush earlier in the morning by the time we left everything had melted and while it was overcast it was a nice drive down to Calgary.
We stopped off at the new Cross Iron Mills Mall to check it out. I was a little disappointed in the shopping, it has everything we have in Edmonton. I was expecting some cool outlets or something. The only cool thing about the mall is each wing, or neighbourhood they like to call them, is decorated differently. We parked and entered the mall in the fossil section so outside there was a big dinosaur rib cage at the entrance. They have a Bass Pro Shop at the mall that is HUGE! We just did a quick walk in, look around, and walk out. They had a pond with a waterfall, stuffed animal diorama displays everywhere; the attention to detail was amazing! You could wander the store for hours checking everything out!
Because we booked things so late a lot of the hotels downtown where the Expo was being held were sold out so we stayed at a hotel near the airport. The nice thing about that was it was free parking. We got checked in and checked out our room and then we drove down the street and had dinner at Chili’s. After dinner we went back to the hotel and watched My Big fat Gypsy Wedding (that is the only thing I miss about not having cable TV, watching shows like that!).
Saturday: We got up a little before 9am and got ready and grabbed a quick breakfast at Burger King before heading downtown to the Expo.
The new and HUGE Bow building downtown Calgary:
The presentations didn’t start till 11am and the one we wanted to see was at noon but we wanted to get there at 10:30am to give us time to find our way and explore. Man, there was crazy traffic trying to get to the convention! We finally were able to grab parking and make our way in. It was busy, busy, busy! We ended up standing in a long line that we found out was to buy tickets, we had already pre-purchased tickets online so we continued on our way trying to find where we get in. We finally found the right line and finally made it in. We didn’t have time to check out any of the vendors because by the time we made it in it was 11:30am and we wanted to get seats to watch LeVar Burton, Will Wheaton and Brent Spiner talk.
I don’t think I’ve ever watched a full episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I vaguely remember catching bits and pieces on TV. I just know LeVar from Reading Rainbow and Will from Big Bang. It was still neat to hear stories about filming and how they all laughed and joked with each other. Will spoke about how social media got him the gig on Big Bang - he Tweeted he liked the show and they got into contact with him that way and one thing lead to another.
After the talk was over we headed out with the rest of the crowd trying to make it over to another theatre to watch Adam Baldwin. It was crazy busy and we ended up not where we should be and locked out basically. We were told to walk all the way around and to the front where we got in and wait in line there to get back in. While walking we saw this BIG long line and were wondering what it was for (it couldn’t be to get back into the Expo!). We managed to find an employee who was helping other people out so we listened in on the conversation. Turns out that the fire marshal had shut down the event and was evaluating things. At the time we thought they over sold tickets. He didn’t know when we would be or if we would be allowed back in. It was super sucky. Some people had pre-bought online photograph and autograph sessions and they were missing them because they couldn’t get inside. After standing around and listening to the employee and others talking and knowing how the long the line to get back into the Expo was (if we even could) we decided to leave. It sucks because all I really wanted to see was Adam Baldwin and I missed him. We decided to head to Chinook Mall and check out Williams Sonoma (a place we wanted to check out anyways). I kept checking the news to find out what was happening at the Expo. Eventually it turns out that they didn’t over sell tickets it is just that everyone came at the same time and jam packed the place. The fire marshal re-assessed the situation and eventually they were letting groups of 50-100 people back inside every 15 minutes. I read some people waited 3 hours to get back inside (I believe it because the line was literally thousands of people long!). But the time they got back inside it was almost closing time.
We spent Saturday afternoon when we should have been at the Expo back at the hotel room relaxing and watching TV.
Sunday: To follow.
