Back from a great second European Celebration. Next time in Amsterdam, please
Just kidding, Essen was just a great location. Easy to get to, lots of parking space at the convention center, fast moving lines (if there were any) and a wide variety of visitors from all kinds of countries. I had to speak English, German, Dutch and even a petit peu Français
So, recap time then.
On Friday me and Craig (from Chicago, builder of the C-V award winning Carbon Freeze Room diorama) went straight to the Hasbro booth and stood in line for a whopping 10 minutes to get our Black Series Boba/Han packs. Then we went on to Mintinbox.net and over the course of the day collected their exclusive bounty hunter art card set. These are really beautiful and I will post pics of each card sometime this week. Furthermore we bought way too much stuff on the side
In the evening we went to see RotJ in the Gruga park next to the convention center. What a great experience! The cheers when the big SW logo came into view, the reaction of the crowd when the Rancor died, the "it's a trap!" line, the booing when Hayden appeared as a Force ghost.... brilliant stuff!
On Saturday we mostly visited panels. Warwick Davis.... wow, what a great little show master. Please, have him host the Academy Awards next year! Anthony Daniels, Kathleen Kennedy and Dave Filoni were all very entertaining to listen to. I managed to find Marjorie and Arnie from SWActionNews and had my seven custom figures displatyed for the remainder of the celebration. At the end of the day I interviewed Markus from StarConstrux and we then both watched the pretty awesome docu Lost Secrets of Empire. Very impressive stuff.
On Sunday I mostly sat in a chair and in the afternoon I recorded short videos and took quite a few pics. At the end of the day I went to the collector's panel to score three free StarTots. I also bought two art prints from Spencer L. Brinckerhoff III. He is working on a three part set of prints, based on Vader quotes. Very cool and I will recieve ANH and Empire in a few weeks. Jedi hasn't been finished yet, but I will definitely order that one too.
All in all, I had an awesome time and some really cool discussion with Craig about Celebrations (he's a six time veteran) and the differences between the US, Europe and the Netherlands in particular.
The number of Slave Leias was a bit disappointing, though
Well, at least that guy in Slave Leia bikini I saw at CE1 in London in 2007 wasn't there.... Eeeowww...
