On Station At Celebration: Day 2

April 14, 2017 at 8:32 pm | Posted in Celebration, Conventions, Star Wars | Leave a comment
Tags: delilah s. dawson, phasma

It’s day two of Star Wars Celebration Orlando 2017 and here’s our recap.

With the line chaos of day one, I decided I’d try something completely different on day two. Instead of getting up early to hit the convention center right when they opened in the morning, I waited till around 6:30 AM. By that time, the line outside was only two blocks lock, pretty close to yesterday’s size when I lined up early. The security check went much faster as they had more gates open to transfer people through.

Once inside to the queue hall, a quick look at the panel monitor showed the pickings were going quick. I decided to get the wrist band for the Heroines panel and the Making of Rogue One panel. Both lines were short and it was just a matter of walking up there and getting the wrist band. Then, instead of queuing up for the show floor, I went back to my hotel and kill some time that didn’t involve standing in line for hours. I returned at 10:00 AM and the queue line for the show floor was massive. The line went from one side of the queue hall to the other and snaked around in two lines.

Today, my mission was to take some cosplay pics, so I tried to keep my eyes open, be polite, and snag some pics. There’s was a lot more cosplay today than yesterday.

Aside from that, I hit a couple author signings, got some free posters from the Del Rey booth, got another free card from Cardamundi (day two achieved, two more to go!), and went to some panels. One thing I did notice today is that the Celebration Store line was packed.

Things were also selling out. Del Rey ran out of their exclusive copies of Thrawn very early, and even ThinkGeek sold out of their tiki glasses.

I had entertained the idea of maybe catching part of The Last Jedi panel, but then I discovered how hard it was to actually see the screens or hear the audio of The Star Wars Live Show stage on the con floor. You had to be pretty close to hear anything, and the big TIE fighter blocked a huge vector of space from which to view anything. They definitely shouldn’t have put that there.

First up was the Making of Rogue One panel which was suppose to start at 1:30 PM but due to technical difficulties, they didn’t even let us into the room until 1:34 PM and it didn’t start until 2:00 PM. This means everyone was shorted a half hour of the panel. It really sucked to hear John Knoll say repeatedly that he had to skip over stuff in his presentation due to lost time. Seeing the full panel would have been awesome as he had some great content. From fully rendered virtual environments of the Death Star hangar and the Tantive IV hallways, to cinematics showing how Tarkin was created, and best of all, gags and goofs from Rogue One. One scene showed K2-SO playing with a stormtrooper and a death trooper action figure with Alan Tudyk’s dialog from Firefly. It was hilarious. The VXG people really had some fun.

After that, I immediately re-queued for the Heroines panel which started on time and seated early which cut down on the standing time in the queue. One thing I noticed today is that the staff for the Celebration/Galaxy Stage queue area were not allowing people to sit. They wanted everyone to stand in order to get as many people in there as they could. One one hand it sounds like a good idea, on the other hand, people were tired. We didn’t particularly want to stand four an hour and a half, especially when only one lane is full (this is what happened for the Making of Rogue One panel). There were a lot of people unhappy about it, and I was one of them. It would have made more sense to have everyone stand as the lanes were starting to get full. You have everyone stand up to clear out the space, then they can sit again. As time nears to getting seated in the actual panel, then you can have everyone stand. Making people stand for over an hour wasn’t just rude, it was downright unpleasant and put a sour spot in my day. I probably wasn’t the only one.

The Heroines panel turned out great. Dave had the whole crowd laughing, there’s was a good warm up to get everyone psyched for the panel, and they had some great discussions and content. I haven’t checked out the livestream yet, but during the panel they said they were killing the livestream for a portion. Some people videotaped it so it should be online somewhere. What we saw was an animated Rey story that takes place after she finds BB-8 but before she arrived back home at her AT-AT. It was short, probably a minute to two minutes, so it sounds like the micro series will probably be a lot like the old Clone Wars micro series with short animated clips that tell stories. They’re using the original voice actors for the acting, and the animation is pretty good for a stylized 2D show. It has promise.

According to the panel, the videos will show up on Disney’s YouTube channel in July with a Fall special, as well as a toy line.

From there, I managed to get into the Lucasfilm Publishing Writers’ Roundtable which had already started, but I caught most of it. Jen Heddle pulled questions from fans that she had gathered the week before on Twitter, and yes, Roqoo Depot was one of the questions chosen, which was cool. There was a wide selection of writers on the panel from Del Rey, Disney Publishing, Marvel and even IDW. They revealed some new books that are coming, with the new Phasma novel from Del Rey taking the cake.

I'm writing PHASMA for Star Wars! Coming to you September 1. When it's up for pre-order, you'll be the first to know. pic.twitter.com/ZXvMJe0aMA

— Delilah S. Dawson (@DelilahSDawson) April 14, 2017

The last panel of the day for me was the Jason Fry panel, which I was late for as the time changed and I hadn’t checked the app that day (it started a half hour earlier). It was pretty good. Jason talked about some of the aspects of writing which served as a dual benefit of helping potential writers as well as providing insight to his own writing process.