Pensacon 2016

My sister and I went to Pensacola last month for Pensacon, a sci/fantasy convention. We were quite glad that they hold this convention in the winter as the day was nice and cool. If they held it in the summer, ugh......it would be unpleasant.

We had decided to go for two reasons: 1) a lot of authors and a few of the actors from Star Wars were going to be there and 2) we wanted to see if the convention would be worth it to sign up for their artist alley next year.

I had preregistered our tickets earlier in the week. When we got there.....the prereg line was insane. It literally snaked out into the parking lot area. The parking lot was reserved for vendor and volunteer parking along with food trucks.

While waiting in line I kept hearing a song I recognized and it was one of the songs from the Ghostbusters movies. There were two men dressed as characters from the movie. Gotta love geeks!

As we neared the table where we could get our badges, I looked over and saw this lovely group of people wearing handmade crocheted beanies. I loved the R2D2 beanie!

The first place you enter when you get in the convention center is the artist alley as it is located on the floor above the bleachers while the main dealers' area was in the bottom (court area) of the convention center.

We weren't impressed by the artist alley. Not that the art was bad because it wasn't, the location was just hideous. The lighting was poor and the booths were far apart from one another. If they had lit the area correctly and put more tables beside one another it would have been great.

I saw this hilarious sign on one of the comic artist's tables:

 
After going around the artist alley, we made our way down to the dealers' area, which was extremely busy and crowded. Walked around once and decided to go find the autograph rooms, which were located in another part of the convention center.

Almost all the celebrities were in the same room while a few others were out in the hallways with lines (yet again) snaking all over the place with people in line to meet actors.

We went through the autograph room once, too nervous to actually walk up and get autographs. So we went around again and my sister got a signature from one of the actors from House of a Thousand Corpses (extreme gross movie which I will never watch again).

I went up to the table for Clive Revill to get his autograph. I had been debating whether to have him sign something Star Wars since he was the original Emperor Palpatine or for his role as Rogozhin, the Russian ballet director in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. I decided in the end to go with Sherlock Holmes and brought my copy of the DVD to get signed.

Each actor/actress table had an assistant to take cash for autographs and when I handed my DVD cover to the assistant, he said he thought Mr. Revill might like it because he hadn't got something like that all day.

I think I might have stumped Mr. Revill for a few minutes. He looked at the cover, read the back of the cover, looked at the front.......and then suddenly quoted his first line from that movie to me. I couldn't help laughing.

I can only hope to have a memory like that at 85 years of age. Absolutely amazing. I would have loved to stop and chat with him, but I am shy so I scampered off like a bunny after getting the cover back from him. LOL You would think at my age I would be more talkative, but nope. I am hopeless with strangers.

I was hoping to get my copy of The Witches of Echo Park signed by Amber Benson, but she wanted $40 for an autograph. Who knows? Maybe she would have signed the book for free, but the sign for $40 was off putting so I didn't even step up to her table and ask.

After we got our autographs, we went back down to the dealers' area again to get a few books signed. Sherrilyn Kenyon was having a book signing at 1pm so we got in line for that. She was late by about an hour because she got mobbed by some fans of her books when she was trying to leave a restaurant.

I didn't mind waiting. While I kept our place in line, my sister went across the way to a book booth to get my Star Wars books signed by Troy Denning and Kevin J. Anderson.

Shortly after getting my books signed, Mrs. Kenyon showed up. We were escorted a few people at a time to where she was doing her signings. Having never been to one of her signings, I was surprised. She was sweetheart and would give everyone who came up a hug and chat with them. There were a lot of ladies in line who had met her at previous book signings so she would ask how they were doing, etc. Don't you just love personable authors?

After running around all day, we decided to go to lunch at McGuire's Restaurant, an Irish pub. Yum, yum!

Overall I think we had a lot of fun despite not being able to meet Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) who had to cancel because of scheduling issues (possibly because filming for Star Wars VIII had just started)!

I don't think we will ever sign up for their artist alley unless they change some things, but we would definitely go again to meet celebrities and authors :)

Until next time ^____^