Where in the World is Carmen? San Diego! Day 2 – Preview Night

I made the mistake of temporarily leaving the convention floor, half an hour before the doors opened for Preview Night.

I made it back just as the giant Indiana Jones boulder that is the very first wave of SDCC foot traffic rolled in. It is like all of those Walmart security videos you see at the holidays. You know, the ones where some hapless person in a cute sweater gets 86’d because French-Tickle-Me-Elmo or some such nonsense has just hit the shelves. Well, it is like that, only worse because instead of there being one focus of the stampede, here there are infinite ones.

People full-on run to get in line for various exclusive figures, commission lists, statues, signing lines and pretty much whatever else you can think of. I dove (not even joking) out of the way as the wave crashed in on itself à la the Red Sea post-parting.

The CliffsNotes version of today:

Hard Rock Spa, well – rocks. ‘Nuff said.

I watched as a truck nearly got hit by the trolley outside of the convention center. This is meaningful because it always seems that someone or something gets hit by these trolleys, which is odd since they are fairly slow-moving. I assume it is because they are so close in proximity to one another and the person per square inch ratio at SDCC defies time and space.

Apparently, from what I hear, the Ghostbusters giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man figure is already sold out unless you pre-ordered. This is the buzz, at least, and not a verified fact. Maybe it was just sold out for today, but in all honesty, given the crowd size I think it is fair to assume that the sold out in full (unless pre-ordered) rumor has some truth to it.

The Hall H line is just silly now. It was 500 as of this morning. I didn’t even attempt to check it out this evening.

The whole town, as always, has overnight turned into Geekland. I took many pictures of elevators transformed, street signs with comic themes and general mayhem all around. The Hard Rock Cafe, usually called Mary Jane’s (no, not Spidey’s MJ….more like Tom Petty’s MJ), is now Café Diem and is entirely SyFy. The menu items are all renamed to fit the theme as well.

Sideshow Collectibles (a personal favorite) went above and beyond in their sculpts and scale. Holy shit – these are getting big.

The Hallmark booth had a CRAZY line, which, while they have super cool merch, was not expected.

The new Kinect Star Wars game looks awesome – using the force has never been so real (no “force choke” that I could see, though. Bummer.)

TWISTED METAL! I suddenly have Pit Viper flashbacks. Awesome.

No really interesting or funny cosplayers yet. Probably on Saturday.

No F-ING insane Westboro Baptist Church protesters yet.

No zombies accosting me in the crosswalk yet. All in good time.

There is, of course, so much to tell and I will check in again tomorrow. Excelsior!