Celebration II Report

I headed down to Indianapolis this last weekend to spend three days at the Celebration II convention. It is hard to believe that so many people would show up to something like this. I have read reports of 70-75 thousand people attended, and I believe it. There was so much to see and not enough time to do it in. If they had a better set up to move people, it could have saved quite a bit of time and frustration for the patrons. One thing to note is that photography was not allowed in many places so that is why I don't have pictures for everything. Shown above is the program for the event. It is nicely done and filled with photographs while not having too many spoilers inside.

Friday morning we headed out to the convention center an hour before the doors were to open for the Fan Club members (Fan Club members get in an hour earlier than those who are not). We found the front of the line and headed for the end of it. We walked, turned the corner, walked, turned the corner and walked some more. We were literally at least a mile from the front of the line. Saturday we got a two hour head start and cut our spot in line down to half what it was on Friday. Sunday we were a little farther back because of some things we needed to take care of at the hotel. The pictures above don't do justice to how long the lines were. They were taken at about the point we started at on Saturday. The lines themselves go at least as far as from the point that I was standing and the corner once the line turns the corners. The first picture looks towards the front of the line. The corner goes around the tall building on the right. The second picture looks toward the end of the line and it turns the corner as well. The entrance is in the middle of the block to give you an idea. Now this just gets you into the convention center where you need to stand in more lines to do things.

The most popular line was for the store. It is incredible how long you needed to wait in line to buy stuff and it is just as incredible how little stuff they brought to sell. The Jorg Sacul figure was the most popular. They did learn a little and opened a special line just for the figure (cash only) and that helped speed things up. On Friday we spent maybe an hour and a half waiting to get just the figures. I figured I would come back later once the rush died down to get other things. Well, I was lucky that plan didn't backfire. They stopped selling the figures at about 1:00. When I went in just a little later, they had sold out of quite a few things already and I was just able to get the exclusive posters before they were gone. The figures sold out on Saturday before noon, and the last were sold on Sunday by about 10:00. Rumor is that only 37,000 were made. They definitely sold all of them. The figure comes 48 to a case, but most were in really good shape. They limited you to two figures at $10 each, but that didn't stop people from getting back in line (or another line). I know some people were getting 10-20 of these on Friday. Some of the dealers had signs up buying the figures for $20 each. The figure is pretty nice. Several people had opened theirs and the likeness is pretty good.

We then headed up to the main presentation room. Ha, we would not be able to see anything there this day since the lines were so long.

It was off to get some autographs. Again, more lines to get tickets (one ticket per autograph) or to buy pre-signed photos. I wanted to get some figures signed, so I needed tickets which of course was the longer line. Once I had the tickets, the lines for the people signing weren't too bad. Many were just a few people long with the exception of David Prowse and Billy D. Williams. Since I didn't need their autographs, I didn't have any problems here. The people were great. Bonnie Piesse (Aunt Beru) is really nice, but very young at only 19. Everyone was interesting and fun. They had a few people from AOTC who I think we will see more of in the future.

We then went to the book grab. How this was supposed to work is that they would have thousands of foreign books, give you a bag, and you could fill your bag with these books. Well, this was completely underestimated. There were supposed to be enough books to last the entire weekend. As we were standing in line, the piles of books kept getting smaller and smaller. I expected someone to bring out more, but that never happened. By the time I got there, all they had was a little pamphlet. By noon, they were all gone.

Luckily, Jenine (my wife) decided to get in line for the concert tickets instead of waiting with me for the books. About two hours later, we had our tickets.

We then went to see the first show of the day. It was a presentation by John Knoll who is one of the digital effects supervisors. It wasn't what I thought it would be. Instead of being on digital effects, it was a slide show of pictures he had taken during the filming of AOTC. It was still interesting, but not what I thought.

We walked around the event floor a little. Hasbro had a large area set up where you could get a look at some of the newest figures coming, play with some of their games, or even take your picture on a large figure card. Some of the things they had were loose versions of Darth Vader Bespin, Luke Bespin, the new Cantina alien, both versions of the Endor Rebel Soldiers, Chewbaca w/ C-3PO, Qui-Gon Jinn, Darth Maul w/ probe droid, Orn Free Taa, Chancellor Palpatine, Deluxe C-3PO w/ Battle Droid, and Efant Mon. The figures all looked pretty good. The C-3PO that comes with Chewy does not go back together except maybe one arm and his head. C-3PO with Battle droid is just weird. I wonder if that is an actual scene from the movie or something Hasbro made up. Efant Mon is really cool and even has an articulated jaw.

They had several unreleased 12" figures including the Ultimate Edition Jango Fett, Ki-Adi Mundi, Super Battle Droid, and Count Dooku, and three colors of Clone Troopers. The Jango Fett figure looks really cool and I'm sure will sell well. The others look pretty good, but you have to wonder why they are doing three colors of Clone Troopers in such a short time frame.

They had a lot of other cool stuff on hand including the Playskool Millennium Falcon set, the electronic R2-D2, and the Ackley. All of this stuff is great. They also had some of the Unleashed figures, but my photos didn't turn out. Then, you could head over and get your free AOTC figure poster. It includes the first 40 figures. If you wanted, you could even cast your vote for the next Fan's Choice figure.

We then headed up to see the three Fetts program. Temuera Morrison is awesome. He has this incredible voice and will make a great Jango Fett. Daniel Logan seemed overwhelmed by the whole thing, but he is only 14 years old. He did come off being pretty cool and I think he will work out well as the young Boba Fett.

After waiting in line to get in on Saturday, we split up. Jenine would get in line for Carrie Fisher's autograph while I would try to get some more figures. Carrie had her own room and they didn't allow photographs. We tag teamed the Carrie Fisher line most of the day until we finally got her autograph at around 3:00. She is a really nice woman, but maybe a little eccentric. She gave a guy ahead of us some Reeses Pieces since he hadn't eaten. Her cel phone rang and she had a guy behind us answer it. "It probably is my mom" she says, it was. How cool! After standing in line that long, I decided to get one of her photos signed as well as my figure.

During all of that, I would head out to get some more autographs from the regular area. This was much easier now that I had the tickets. Or I would go through the event area. If you were there at the right time you could get some neat stuff. Topps was handing out packs of AOTC promo cards (P1-P3), one place had origami "Jedi Holocron Cubes" with character pictures on them, RebelScum had a pin you could get, and the artist who did the puzzles was there giving away signed copies of posters from their artwork. They also had gift bags you could get. Inside were lots of promo materials for the different vendors. Some of the cooler items included a Topps AOTC promo card (P6), Frito Lay puzzle pieces (the same as those found in Cheetos), and a small catalog from Hasbro reminiscent to those from the vintage days.

The only program that we saw on Saturday was in the main presentation hall. This hall is huge and has three large screens that they projected what was happening on the stage onto. Anthony Daniels was the MC and the show included Ben Burt, R2-D2 and operator Don Bies, and Hayden Christensen. Ben Burt is much more interesting than he thinks and he needed a little prompting to keep going. R2-D2 was really cool and they could have done a whole hour of just him. It was mostly a question an answer with R2-D2 (not the operator), but it was so well done that you could actually believe he was listening and giving real answers. Hayden is going to be every girls dream guy. They were just drooling and I'm surprised no one rushed the stage.

After supper, we got in line to enter the concert. Of course they screwed up this line as well and allowed hundreds of people to by-pass the end of line. Fortunately they had assigned people to sections, so it didn't make a huge difference. The concert was OK, but could have used a little more practice. Nothing too bad, but some instruments seemed to falter at times.

On Sunday, we were in the store just as they announced that the figures were sold out. Actually, most everything was gone except a few odds and ends. I think a lot of people are going to be pissed about how little merchandise was available.

I got the last of the autographs that I wanted and we headed to the event floor again. Lego had been building this huge Yoda. It is at least 15 foot tall and made entirely from normal blocks. They would have kids help out putting the blocks together. It was awesome. Besides this, Lego also had a life size Darth Vader, robotic life size Battle Droid, and more.

We went to watch one last presentation. This time it was the men inside the masks. It included five people who you probably wouldn't know without their costumes. This ended up being more like a cabaret thing than a question and answer, quite a bit of fun.

We headed up to see some of the dioramas. They were working on this huge one of Mos Eisley, but it still had a lot of work that needed to be done. There weren't as many dioramas as I would have thought, but the ones there were quite nice.

We then wandered around for a while. It was the first time that we didn't feel we needed to be in a line for something. We never got a chance to go see the props and today wouldn't be an exception because of the long lines. But, they did have the Jedi Starfighter prop outside of the room. Whoops, did I sneak in under the ropes :)

They also had quite a few large banners around. This was one that didn't have too many people around at the time. This banner is much wider, but I didn't think I would be able to see Jenine if I wasn't this close. Just to the left they had one of the Millennium Falcon.

Lastly, there were a lot of people in really nice costumes. I wish I had taken more pictures of them. First off, Stormtroopers and Imperials were everywhere. Many of them were volunteers working the gates and such. I don't know how many times I was told to "move along". There were plenty of kids in really nice costumes. The ones I have pictured I took just as we were heading out the door. The Zam Wesell costume was nearly perfect, I wish I had a better picture of her.