In September of 2019 I was finally able to attend the world renowned Fan-X! I have always wanted to attend one of these conferences, but it was always tricky to figure out how to go with work, but now that I create my own schedule, I was able to go! Jenny had gone the past couple of years, so she served as my expert guide, which was nice because there is a lot happening and it can be kind of hard to navigate. Pictured above are all the celebrity guests that attended and gave panels. There were so many I wanted to see! It was hard to create a schedule that included all the panels I wanted to attend, so I didn't get to see everyone I would have liked to, but I loved all the panels we attended.
I started my Fan-X experience with a panel with Susan Egan, she is best known for voicing Megara in Disney's Hercules and originating the role of Belle in the Broadway musical adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. She is the sweetest most sincere person, she is like a real life Disney princess. Her stories were fascinating!
She did some of our favorite quotes in Meg's voice and even sang I Won't Say I'm in Love, one of my favorite Disney songs. She took a picture with all of us and I am two people behind the guy dressed like prince charming!
Then we headed to the grand ballroom to hear Jason Isaacs, best known for his role as Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter. Jason is hilarious and so boisterous and fun, the complete opposite of his icy cold, evil character. He told us the story of how he originally auditioned for the role of Gilderoy Lockhart, which made sense seeing his personality in real life, I thought it was so interesting they offered him such a contrasting part. He did an amazing job as Lucius, and his stories from set were so good.
Next was a break for lunch, there are tons of food trucks lined up outside the Salt Palace during the entire weekend of Fan-X. We walked up and down the sidewalk, taking in all our options and ultimately decided on a BBQ truck, you can never go wrong with BBQ. I got a two meat platter with a side of coleslaw and creamy corn, it was all soooo good.
Jenny was intruded by the BBQ sundae, neither of us had ever seen anything like it. But it is a rather convent way to enjoy a whole BBQ platter all mashed into a cup.
After lunch, Jenny introduced me to the vendor floor, a vast, complex maze of vendors selling all manner of wares.
It was so easy to get lost in this place, trying to remember were any certain booth was was almost impossible.
It was so much fun to walk through, there were so many creative and imaginative things from all areas of movie and TV genres.
There was a cool Dr. Who exhibit, that had all the costumes from all 13 Drs from the reboot.
Jenny loves the 13th Dr.
We even got to get a photo in the TARDIS!
This naturalist booth was my favorite, they had some of the most beautiful specimens I have seen! I ended up getting a really cool, unique species of praying mantis preserved in a bell jar.
The vender floor is also one of the best places for people watching, and costume spotting. The cosplay is such a fun part of Fan-X. The creativity of people is so fun to see.
There were so many "bro Thors" from the movie Avenger's End Game. It is a pretty ingenious costume. After our time on the vendor floor, I had leave to go do some work visits, such a fun first day!
The next day began suuuuuuuuper early, as in 5 am. Tom Holland was the biggest guest at this year's Fan X and his panel was the first one of the day. Since his panel was such a big deal, we had to enter a lottery to be able to attend. I thought for sure there wasn't any way I would win a seat in the lottery but somehow I did! Jenny entered the lottery for three tickets for her, Evie and Nora but she was only able to get two seats, so she sent the girls with me and Jenny watched from the over flow room.
We were assigned a certain line up time and location, our line up time was 7:30 am, but we showed up early because we didn't know what the parking would be like and we wanted time to figure out where our line location was. When we arrived our specific line was already quite long, good thing we decided to come early!
We waited in line for quite a while before they began letting us in. They would let people in, in batches of 10. This sweet service dog is apparently a big Spiderman Fan, I saw he got a photo with Tom Holland which was posted on the Fan-X page.
I expected we would get a seat somewhere in the back, but we were able to get seats in the closest section of chairs, so we had a pretty good, close view of the stage!
When Tom came out, the cheers were sooooo loud it was unbelievable. We all got to take a group photo with him with our phone lights on, it was the best way to show how many people showed up for his panel.
Tom is just as adorable and sweet as you think he is and his panel was a lot of fun.
He told some fun stories, I do wish someone different was interviewing him, I didn't think Kerry Jackson (from X-96 Radio from Hell morning show) asked the best questions. He did ask who was his favorite "Chris" which was a pretty funny question. Tom began by saying he couldn't possibly answer that question, but ended up saying Chris Pratt was like his big brother, so I'm assuming the answer is Chris Pratt.
After Tom's panel, Jenny came and joined us in the Grand Ball Room. The Griffin gals had dressed up as the women of Harry Potter, Evie was Ginny, Jenny was Luna and Nora was Hermione, they all fit their characters perfectly. We had a line up of 4 panels back to back in the ballroom, we had gotten such good seats for Tom's panel that we didn't need to move closer, we kept those seats for all the panels.
Our next panel was Matthew Lewis, who we all fell in love with when he played the role of Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter films. This was by far my favorite panel. Matthew is hilarious, and is actually pretty similar to Neville, especially Neville in the later books. Matthew told the best stories from the Harry Potter set.
My favorite was when he was asked what Hogwarts house he was in and what animal would he choose for his Patronus. He was officially sorted into Hufflepuff by Pottermore (I always thought Neville was more of a Hufflepuff than a Gryffindor) and he would choose a little, red panda as his patronus, that endeared him to me even more.
One fan asked the extremely awkward question of what was it like to suddenly come back so hot in one of the movies. The fan worded it in such an awkward way that at first he didn't understand the question, even the moderator tried to rephrase the question in a tasteful way but it was still confusing.
He handled it well in the end, but it was an excruciating few minutes. He went on to talk about all the prosthetics he had to wear for the first few movies to make him look more nerdy. He wore a fat suit, fake teeth and had his ears pinned up to make them look bigger.
The Griffins signed up to get a picture with him, it turned out so cute!
Our next panel was with Lana Parrilla and Rebecca Mader who are best known for their roles in the magical drama Once Upon a Time, but they were both also in Lost.
They were so much fun to listen to, it is so fun to get to see all these celebrities personalities in real life. Both these gals play villains on Once Upon a Time so it was fun to see them in a completely different way. It was like hanging out with two best girlfriends, it was a really fun and interesting panel.
Next up, we got to spend some time with Ming-Na Wen, who voiced Mulan and played Melinda May on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. She was sassy and fun.
Our last panel was supposed to be with Hayden Christensen and Ian McDiarmid who played Anakin Skywalker and Emperor Palpatine, in the Star Wars movies but it got canceled fairly last minute. They never gave a specific reason as to why is was canceled, but we had heard it was to keep spoilers about the latest Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker, that was coming out in a couple of months from leaking. Now that I have seen that movie, and seen how big a role Emperor Palpatine plays, I can see why that may have been a concern. It was still a major bummer though.
After all our panels, we headed back to the vendor floor to meet up with the Madisons, get some lunch, and look through some more vendor booths.
Butterbeer!
We happened to see Benedict Wong, from Dr. Strange, ride by on a golf cart! He had given a panel that we wanted to go to, but it was at the same time as one of our other panels.
After lunch, we headed to KidCon to see what fun things they had going on.
We were all confused why there was a pirate santa in the middle of September ... But he was so jolly and gave us so many giggles, Jenny wanted a picture with him.
V had quite a long tea party with Belle, a mermaid, a witch, and a lady bug. V was in heaven, it was adorable.
V was excited to see there was a face painting station were Tinker Bell and her fairy friends did the painting, talk about magical.
I loved finally getting to experience Fan-X, and I am so proud of SLC for creating and hosting one of the biggest comic conventions in the United States! They have done such an amazing job at organizing this ginormous event, I was impressed with how easy it was to navigate and how smoothly everything appeared to run. I will definitely be attending in the future!
No comments:
Post a Comment