D23 EXPO THREAD - See you in 2019!

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Sure had I showed up at 6 maybe I wouldn't have waited an hor for Duck Tales but part of the experience was being able to sleep in.

I cut off most of the text in the quote so as not to have a huge block of text.

Can I ask a few questions?

So Sorcerer's always got to enter the expo floor 15 minutes before 9?

But it sounds like they let vendors and cast members enter the store queues before you? That seems messed up.

Did you ever go for any signing wrist bands or hear about any sorcerer's who did? I'm thinking of the Black Panther, Avengers, GOTG or Tangled meets. They were all distributing wrist bands at a particular place. I imagine if the sorcerer's were let in 15 minutes before everyone else, you'd probably have had no problem getting one of those wrist bands? For instance, the Tangled signing bands were given out at Talent Central so you'd just go straight there and be among the first in line, right?

So the way I'm hearing it is that the perks of sorcerer's were being let onto the show floor 15 minutes in advance, have a reserved seat for any panel you signed up in advance for...and then have a preview shopping day but without any of the LE items. Is that about right?

So you could have signed up for the live action panel and legit showed up 20 minutes before it started to sit in the front?

 

[wilkeliza]

I cut off most of the text in the quote so as not to have a huge block of text.

Can I ask a few questions?

So Sorcerer's always got to enter the expo floor 15 minutes before 9?
Not exactly 15 minutes. Some days it was only 5 or whatever. We were only promised "first".

But it sounds like they let vendors and cast members enter the store queues before you? That seems messed up.

From my understanding it was not suppose to happen this way. In 2015 vendors and CMs were told they could not participate on their vendor or CM passes but this year they said no problem use your free pass. So A lot of vendors and CMs were entering lines before the show floor was released for opening. Only Disney Store enforced Sorcerers 1st.

Did you ever go for any signing wrist bands or hear about any sorcerer's who did? I'm thinking of the Black Panther, Avengers, GOTG or Tangled meets. They were all distributing wrist bands at a particular place. I imagine if the sorcerer's were let in 15 minutes before everyone else, you'd probably have had no problem getting one of those wrist bands? For instance, the Tangled signing bands were given out at Talent Central so you'd just go straight there and be among the first in line, right?

This was the tricky one. Marvel signings Sorcerers were told no official queue would start until exactly 9 am. So you could have been the 1st Sorcerer in line and if people pushed and shoved you out of the way you then could end up with out the wrist band because the line was unofficial until 9 and thus not policed by Disney. Marvel said Sorcerers had an "unfair advantage" and that is why they made that call. Personally I thought I paid for that unfair advantage. The other signings were similar absolutely no guarantee because of vendors and CMs but yes you could have rushed over there and had a better chance. We didn't try any though because Talent Central was an absolute mess with and with out wrist bands and you basically had to miss the biggest panels to do it. My fiance tried for one of the signings and decided it was so unorganized his anxiety couldn't take it so he just went to something else.


So the way I'm hearing it is that the perks of sorcerer's were being let onto the show floor 15 minutes in advance, have a reserved seat for any panel you signed up in advance for...and then have a preview shopping day but without any of the LE items. Is that about right?

That's about it. We could buy LE that were released on Friday and they were suppose to put out all LE items but did not. The big one was they only put out about 20 of the Lassetershirts the first day which was the most disappointing. They made up for that though by letting us shop Sorcerers only and buy 2 items (2 different items) on Friday before it opened to any one else. Since they did that and I was actually the last one in that line I was able to get a Lasseter shirt finally. Only needed the one because my fiance has been wanting one for years. Other days I had no issue with LE items at first line and got everything I wanted. (again just shopping for me and fiance)


So you could have signed up for the live action panel and legit showed up 20 minutes before it started to sit in the front?

Yes we could have signed up for any panel that was in an actual room with seats.You were guaranteed to be in one of the front two center sections no matter when you showed up. For the big hall 20 minutes got your somewhere between row 2 and 7 depending on the panel and for the smaller ones literately walking up 5 minutes to got you 1st or second row.

Added my answers in red in the quote.

 

[ashley0139]

@wilkeliza Thanks for your thoughts! Looking forward to reading your report. I'd love to try Sorcerers, even so we can just say that we did it once. Though I have a feeling it would be hard to go back.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

OK so I'm probably going to do a trip report but this is my write up on my experience for now...

Hah, this was very long. So for those of you who want in depth experiences, here you go. Please don't be afraid to 'talk back with me', so to speak. If you had my same experiences I'd love to hear your stories.

We stayed at the Cortona, which only ended up being at most a 5 minute walk from the convention center.

Friday

8 hours and 50 minutes of sleep
This is mostly afforded to the fact that our flight was on Thursday morning and we had to get up at 3 am. It is somewhat easy falling asleep around 6 pm if you've only had 3 hours of sleep the night before.

Arrival time: 5:15 am
I had been pretty sure that we'd be inside if we arrived before 6 am. However, this was not the case. We were in the second section (each section had a taped off walkway left) so we were pretty close to the doors. We spoke with some people in line with us in the MOG line later that morning and they had arrived at 5 and been allowed inside to wait downstairs. So we must have just missed the cut off.

At that time of day there was no wait for security. As everyone knows now, they did not care about bringing outside food in. We saw people with pizza boxes even.

So we settled in to wait. Got to meet a few DISers like @HydroGuy and @PaintsWithAllTheColors .

As we got closer to the 9 am opening time we were all slowly moved forward. We did not get in right at 9, we assumed we had to wait for all the people in the basement to funnel up first.

We had our game plan ready to go, there were 3 of us. Myself, my boyfriend Brian and my boyfriend's sister Stephanie.

Initial Wants Before Arrival

9 am: Shop Pass
10-12: Disney Legends
12-1: Signing Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, Incredibles, Ratatouille, Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, Tomorrowland)
12:30: stage pass for Park Stars panel
12:30-1:45: Signing with Alex Hirsch (Gravity Falls)
1:30-1:45: Ashley Eckstein talk
1:30-2:30: Moana Animator signing (Hyrum Osmond: Olaf, Prep & Landing, Feast, Paperman. Amy Smeed: Rapunzel)
2-3: Signing Tony Anselmo (Donald animator and voice since 1985)
2:30-4:30: Animation panel
4:30-5:30: Tour of Pixar with prizes
6-7: Park Stars Panel

We knew the schedule was overambitious and that we wouldn't get everything, we just wanted to have second and third choices in case we were shut out of things.

We were pretty sure we'd be able to walk up to the Legends panel before it started since we'd heard the previous expo's panel hadn't been full.
So the plan was to split up. Brian would run for a store pass and we'd run for our number one store, Mickey's of Glendale (MOG). We would be communicating and let him know if the line was huge and if we needed one for MOG or for a different store. At this time we didn't realize he could take our badges and get 3 store passes.

We were finally allowed in and we were off. Stephanie and I had a pretty easy trip and made it to the MOG line. Actually, it wasn't really easy. There weren't a lot of people inside yet but we saw so many awesome things it was hard not to stop and gawk. It was like in Zoolander where he is getting brain washed and told not to get distracted by the beautiful celebrities.

We were in the regular MOG line, didn't even realize there was a separate MOG pin line at that point. The queue against the wall was full and then half the queue right next to it was full. This line moved so quick, I think we were only waiting for 10 minutes. Brian texted and we told him we didn't need a MOG pass so he was to get a Disney store pass. He was able to get one for 4:30. I believe 2:30 was the earliest time available but we had already decided on a time where we didn't have any panels.

So obviously we had our pick of all the MOG merchandise and sizing. I think I did pretty well, I did a circuit and picked up everything I kind of liked then did a second circuit and put some stuff back and made sure I saw everything.

I ended up getting 2 of the galaxy of stories t shirts, gray for me and black for Brian. A society of explorer's shirt, a sorcerer mickey imagineering t shirt, and a light blue imagineering hoodie.

So we were done with our purchases and met back up with Brian. At this time I was keeping my eye on D23 twitter and such and saw that they announced that Whoopi Goldberg was the surprise inductee this year. We had assumed it would be Harrison Ford to go along with Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher and he is who we wanted to see, so we knew we could skip Legends.

At this point we had our only 'what do we do wander around in a daze' moments. On his way back to meet up with us, Brian had stopped at the Music Emporium to ask about Moana and Giacchino signings. They told him to come back on their respective signing days to get a wrist band and purchase the required merch.

We discussed this for a little while and were like, you know what, we have convention experience and often times people don't know what they are talking about. So we went back and asked 3 more people working the booth and got some different answers so we got in the long line to purchase our singing merch.

This line was probably about 45 minutes long. I was able to peek out a side door and saw a couple food stands so we took turns waiting in line while the other 2 ate. It was the delicious grilled cheese cart and I really enjoyed my sandwich and, best of all, there was no wait.

It was interesting to watch while we waited, the Descendants stars were signing and they must have got through their line quicker than they thought because they were pulling people from the long line if they wanted signatures from them.

We finally got to the front and were able to make our purchases. We had decided that if these items were going to be signed we wanted the vinyl records over the CDs because we felt vinyls displayed better. We bought our Michael Giacchino Rogue One vinyl and a Moana soundtrack vinyl. The guy was pushing the $10 Moana lithos and told us we could have both the vinyl and the litho signed (remember this, it will come up again later). So we each got a Moana vinyl and litho. The wristbands were just handed to us, they did not make us put them on at the time. The Moana signing was Saturday and Giacchino was Sunday.

As we waited we got texts from some of our friends who we'd met on a previous DIS Adventures by Disney southern California trip. We were all going to meet up for the Animation panel. As soon as we were done we went off to find them.

It took us about 10 minutes of trying to figure out where they were, but we finally met up. At this point we had a bad experience. The line up for Animation was downstairs but there was a long line of people upstairs who were waiting for the escalator. It took us forever to find the back of the line and at one point I was trying to ask a volunteer where the back of the line was and he just turned away and pretended not to hear me. It was a cluster. I think we were lining up around 11:30 maybe, I don't know the exact time.

We were just about to get to the point to head down the escalator and the Legends panel must have let out. There was a big surge where those people melded with our line (our line was not pleased but what could you do about it?).

I think by now everyone has heard about the giant mess with the Animation panel line. I'm afraid we might have been a part of the surge that ended up in front of other people, but we had no idea at the time and were just following the crowd. Which was pretty dangerous by the way, everyone was shoving and it was a bit scary. You just had to go where the crowd went.

We settled down to wait for Animation. We had fun waiting in a group. There was a guy who was giving us announcements and letting us know we'd have to put our phones in bags. Now, we know after the fact that lots of people who had been waiting didn't get into the panel. This guy kept announcing there was plenty of space in line and inviting more people to join sections.

The lines finally started to move in and we were able to get a spot in the back of the stage right section. Once again, this was very disorganized. When we arrived at the top of the escalator there was a whole mass of people hovering at the door waiting to get in.

Now...after the fact we heard all the bad stories about the Animation panel line and how some people who had been waiting for hours got shuffled around and never got in. If those people were lucky enough to stick around after they announced the panel was full, they were given a wristband for the parks and resorts or live action panel. Apparently, if you stuck around even longer you were further compensated by a park ticket. I kind of have a problem with this. Now, some people had been waiting for hours and got screwed out of their spot by poor line management, however, some people walked up 20 minutes before the panel started because the guy was announcing plenty of room. It was not fair that those people got the perks. However, I understand there would have been no way to weed out the people who rightfully deserved the compensation and those who didn't.

We did see a few people bragging on twitter later that their wrist bands were not removed for the live action panel and they used it for both live action and parks and resorts.

Anyway...I think the Animation panel was one of my favorite moments of the convention.

Really, my top want from the panel was just to see John Lasseter with my own eyes, so of course that happened. He started off with a tshirt shoot. I was too short to see anything, but next thing I know everyone in my section is going crazy and then my boyfriend hands me a tshirt. He caught one! I think they only shot off less than 10. I was so excited. I dunno if all the sizes were random but ours ended up being a small and it fits me.

So already the panel was starting off with a bang.

They started with the trailer about planes in space. The animation was breath taking. It was just a really short teaser trailer but right at the end they showed that the plan had eyes like the cars do in Cars. So really, I don't know anything about that except it is about planes that go up into space and they will most likely talk and act like the cars in Cars.

Then Kristen Bell came out to talk about Frozen 2. They revealed that Frozen 2 will not be the name and then cycled through a bunch of really funny titles like Thawed. Kristen Bell was going to talk about the new Olaf Christmas short but the audio went on the fritz so...Josh Gad just came out to sign it live! One of the best parts. Gad then went on to keep ribbing Bell about how the short was named Olaf's short, not Anna's and how her name kind of confused him because her last name is Bell yet she hadn't been in the live action Beauty and the Beast like he had. It was all hilarious.

They brought out Sarah Silverman to talk about Wreck it Ralph 2. We got to watch the infamous Disney princess clip, which I thought was hilarious. The whole room was roaring.

After the clip they announced that every princess had come back to reprise their roles (they didn't mention it but I'm assuming the deceased princesses' voices were replaced). They started off by announcing Ming Na Wen was back as Mulan, and Idina Menzel back as Elsa. Then they announced Kristen Bell back as Anna (since we had already seen her there). But then she came back out and announced I think Jodie Benson back as Ariel, so she came out, and it just went on and on like that until we had 10+ princesses out on stage. The crowd was going insane.

Then they brought out the director to announce a new original Pixar movie which would be a suburban fantasy type movie. I heard this concept get trashed a lot on the internet by people who weren't there, but I think it sounds great. It is based off the experience of the director and his brother, their father died when they were very young so they never knew him. The movie follows along with this idea, it is 2 brothers who try to find a way to speak with their dad. Except, the world they come in was one that used to know magic. However, magic was hard so technology started to evolve so the people in the land (trolls, elves, goblins, fantasy type creatures) have the same tech we do nowadays and they forgot about magic. It looks great, they showed some funny concept art where unicorns are rodents like rats and are everywhere and eat out of garbage cans. I'm excited about this one.

They ended with showing an extended clip of Coco. I am really excited about this movie. It looks gorgeous and emotionally charged as usual with Pixar original movies.

After it was over they brought out the little boy who voices Miguel (the lead) and he sang a bit of a song of his relative's. Then Benjamin Bratt, the voice of the great grandfather, came out and continued the song then dancers came down all the aisles and it was a huge production with a confetti release at the end. It was a great finale.

There was no mention of the Jack and the Giant Beanstalk movie, so I wonder if that movie is having issues.

After the panel was over we picked up our Coco posters and then we split up a bit. Myself, Brian and 2 of our other friends went to line up for the Park Stars panel at 6. Stephanie was our nominated person to use the store pass so that is where she went. We arrived just as the previous panel was loading so we were able to get right in line and settle in. We were about the 3rd group in line for Park Stars and we got all our stuff set up then took turns saving the spaces while people went to get food and walked around the floor.

Stephanie face timed us all live and showed us which merch was left. She said the store was looking pretty raggedy at this point in the day. Surprisingly, some of the stormtrooper tsum tsums and the Star Wars cantina dobz (I think it is dobz) were left so some of our friends wanted those. Stephanie got some lithographs but I ended up passing on everything. There really wasn't a lot left in the store at that time and nothing appealed to me.

It turned out being a really good thing we got in line that early because the panel was in a very small space and the sorcerer's and stage pass took up most of the room. Our little waiting room was entirely full (maybe 20+ lines) and there was a big line outside. I doubt any more than 5 lines were able to get in and get seats.

The panel was pretty interesting, there were 2 story imagineers there and they started off with a joke about the panel not being about Park Starz the vinyl collectibles.

They talked about all the different park original characters' roles in their attractions and how the story would suffer if there were no original characters.

They talked about a lot of POTC characters and the roles they played in the story. My favorite was the skeleton pirate steering the boat, he was labeled as I believe the 'workaholic'. The pirate wearing all the hats was the over achiever. Surprisingly enough they did not mention the redhead, even though I think she is the most popular POTC character.

They spoke a lot about the Food Rocks characters at Epcot, I think they were one of the imagineers' favorites.

They also pointed out something I had never noticed, which was that the mom, dad and dog from Carousel of Progress were in a futuristic scene of World or Motion. The imagineer talked about how he saw that as a little boy and was so impressed that the COP family made it into the future.

They spent a decent amount of time talking about characters in overseas parks like Chandu and Duffy and his entourage.

We talked about Sonny Eclipse, Figment, Orange Bird and had a phone call from the bird in Miss Adventure Falls.

It was really interesting and they ended up doing some trivia and prize giveaways at the end, but you had to have a raffle ticket and those were never handed out to the stand by line.

At that point the convention was closed for the day. We slowly walked out and our group split up. Stephanie was headed out to meet other friends for drinks but Brian and I knew we'd have a very early morning for the Live action panel the next day so we got into bed and ordered a pizza.

Does anyone want me to add a few pictures to this? I have some of our merch and things like that I could add if anyone's interested.

I'll start writing about Saturday and post that next in a bit.


What we actually ended up doing

9 am MOG
9 am store pass for Disney store
10 am line at Disney Music Emporium for wrist bands for Moana and Giacchino signings
11 am-4:30 Animation line and panel
4:30-7 Park Stars line and panel

 

[ashley0139]

OK so I'm probably going to do a trip report but this is my write up on my experience for now...

Hah, this was very long. So for those of you who want in depth experiences, here you go. Please don't be afraid to 'talk back with me', so to speak. If you had my same experiences I'd love to hear your stories.

We stayed at the Cortona, which only ended up being at most a 5 minute walk from the convention center.

Friday

8 hours and 50 minutes of sleep
This is mostly afforded to the fact that our flight was on Thursday morning and we had to get up at 3 am. It is somewhat easy falling asleep around 6 pm if you've only had 3 hours of sleep the night before.

Arrival time: 5:15 am
I had been pretty sure that we'd be inside if we arrived before 6 am. However, this was not the case. We were in the second section (each section had a taped off walkway left) so we were pretty close to the doors. We spoke with some people in line with us in the MOG line later that morning and they had arrived at 5 and been allowed inside to wait downstairs. So we must have just missed the cut off.

At that time of day there was no wait for security. As everyone knows now, they did not care about bringing outside food in. We saw people with pizza boxes even.

So we settled in to wait. Got to meet a few DISers like @HydroGuy and @PaintsWithAllTheColors .

As we got closer to the 9 am opening time we were all slowly moved forward. We did not get in right at 9, we assumed we had to wait for all the people in the basement to funnel up first.

We had our game plan ready to go, there were 3 of us. Myself, my boyfriend Brian and my boyfriend's sister Stephanie.

Initial Wants Before Arrival

9 am: Shop Pass
10-12: Disney Legends
12-1: Signing Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, Incredibles, Ratatouille, Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, Tomorrowland)
12:30: stage pass for Park Stars panel
12:30-1:45: Signing with Alex Hirsch (Gravity Falls)
1:30-1:45: Ashley Eckstein talk
1:30-2:30: Moana Animator signing (Hyrum Osmond: Olaf, Prep & Landing, Feast, Paperman. Amy Smeed: Rapunzel)
2-3: Signing Tony Anselmo (Donald animator and voice since 1985)
2:30-4:30: Animation panel
4:30-5:30: Tour of Pixar with prizes
6-7: Park Stars Panel

We knew the schedule was overambitious and that we wouldn't get everything, we just wanted to have second and third choices in case we were shut out of things.

We were pretty sure we'd be able to walk up to the Legends panel before it started since we'd heard the previous expo's panel hadn't been full.
So the plan was to split up. Brian would run for a store pass and we'd run for our number one store, Mickey's of Glendale (MOG). We would be communicating and let him know if the line was huge and if we needed one for MOG or for a different store. At this time we didn't realize he could take our badges and get 3 store passes.

We were finally allowed in and we were off. Stephanie and I had a pretty easy trip and made it to the MOG line. Actually, it wasn't really easy. There weren't a lot of people inside yet but we saw so many awesome things it was hard not to stop and gawk. It was like in Zoolander where he is getting brain washed and told not to get distracted by the beautiful celebrities.

We were in the regular MOG line, didn't even realize there was a separate MOG pin line at that point. The queue against the wall was full and then half the queue right next to it was full. This line moved so quick, I think we were only waiting for 10 minutes. Brian texted and we told him we didn't need a MOG pass so he was to get a Disney store pass. He was able to get one for 4:30. I believe 2:30 was the earliest time available but we had already decided on a time where we didn't have any panels.

So obviously we had our pick of all the MOG merchandise and sizing. I think I did pretty well, I did a circuit and picked up everything I kind of liked then did a second circuit and put some stuff back and made sure I saw everything.

I ended up getting 2 of the galaxy of stories t shirts, gray for me and black for Brian. A society of explorer's shirt, a sorcerer mickey imagineering t shirt, and a light blue imagineering hoodie.

So we were done with our purchases and met back up with Brian. At this time I was keeping my eye on D23 twitter and such and saw that they announced that Whoopi Goldberg was the surprise inductee this year. We had assumed it would be Harrison Ford to go along with Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher and he is who we wanted to see, so we knew we could skip Legends.

At this point we had our only 'what do we do wander around in a daze' moments. On his way back to meet up with us, Brian had stopped at the Music Emporium to ask about Moana and Giacchino signings. They told him to come back on their respective signing days to get a wrist band and purchase the required merch.

We discussed this for a little while and were like, you know what, we have convention experience and often times people don't know what they are talking about. So we went back and asked 3 more people working the booth and got some different answers so we got in the long line to purchase our singing merch.

This line was probably about 45 minutes long. I was able to peek out a side door and saw a couple food stands so we took turns waiting in line while the other 2 ate. It was the delicious grilled cheese cart and I really enjoyed my sandwich and, best of all, there was no wait.

It was interesting to watch while we waited, the Descendants stars were signing and they must have got through their line quicker than they thought because they were pulling people from the long line if they wanted signatures from them.

We finally got to the front and were able to make our purchases. We had decided that if these items were going to be signed we wanted the vinyl records over the CDs because we felt vinyls displayed better. We bought our Michael Giacchino Rogue One vinyl and a Moana soundtrack vinyl. The guy was pushing the $10 Moana lithos and told us we could have both the vinyl and the litho signed (remember this, it will come up again later). So we each got a Moana vinyl and litho. The wristbands were just handed to us, they did not make us put them on at the time. The Moana signing was Saturday and Giacchino was Sunday.

As we waited we got texts from some of our friends who we'd met on a previous DIS Adventures by Disney southern California trip. We were all going to meet up for the Animation panel. As soon as we were done we went off to find them.

It took us about 10 minutes of trying to figure out where they were, but we finally met up. At this point we had a bad experience. The line up for Animation was downstairs but there was a long line of people upstairs who were waiting for the escalator. It took us forever to find the back of the line and at one point I was trying to ask a volunteer where the back of the line was and he just turned away and pretended not to hear me. It was a cluster. I think we were lining up around 11:30 maybe, I don't know the exact time.

We were just about to get to the point to head down the escalator and the Legends panel must have let out. There was a big surge where those people melded with our line (our line was not pleased but what could you do about it?).

I think by now everyone has heard about the giant mess with the Animation panel line. I'm afraid we might have been a part of the surge that ended up in front of other people, but we had no idea at the time and were just following the crowd. Which was pretty dangerous by the way, everyone was shoving and it was a bit scary. You just had to go where the crowd went.

We settled down to wait for Animation. We had fun waiting in a group. There was a guy who was giving us announcements and letting us know we'd have to put our phones in bags. Now, we know after the fact that lots of people who had been waiting didn't get into the panel. This guy kept announcing there was plenty of space in line and inviting more people to join sections.

The lines finally started to move in and we were able to get a spot in the back of the stage right section. Once again, this was very disorganized. When we arrived at the top of the escalator there was a whole mass of people hovering at the door waiting to get in.

Now...after the fact we heard all the bad stories about the Animation panel line and how some people who had been waiting for hours got shuffled around and never got in. If those people were lucky enough to stick around after they announced the panel was full, they were given a wristband for the parks and resorts or live action panel. Apparently, if you stuck around even longer you were further compensated by a park ticket. I kind of have a problem with this. Now, some people had been waiting for hours and got screwed out of their spot by poor line management, however, some people walked up 20 minutes before the panel started because the guy was announcing plenty of room. It was not fair that those people got the perks. However, I understand there would have been no way to weed out the people who rightfully deserved the compensation and those who didn't.

We did see a few people bragging on twitter later that their wrist bands were not removed for the live action panel and they used it for both live action and parks and resorts.

Anyway...I think the Animation panel was one of my favorite moments of the convention.

Really, my top want from the panel was just to see John Lasseter with my own eyes, so of course that happened. He started off with a tshirt shoot. I was too short to see anything, but next thing I know everyone in my section is going crazy and then my boyfriend hands me a tshirt. He caught one! I think they only shot off less than 10. I was so excited. I dunno if all the sizes were random but ours ended up being a small and it fits me.

So already the panel was starting off with a bang.

They started with the trailer about planes in space. The animation was breath taking. It was just a really short teaser trailer but right at the end they showed that the plan had eyes like the cars do in Cars. So really, I don't know anything about that except it is about planes that go up into space and they will most likely talk and act like the cars in Cars.

Then Kristen Bell came out to talk about Frozen 2. They revealed that Frozen 2 will not be the name and then cycled through a bunch of really funny titles like Thawed. Kristen Bell was going to talk about the new Olaf Christmas short but the audio went on the fritz so...Josh Gad just came out to sign it live! One of the best parts. Gad then went on to keep ribbing Bell about how the short was named Olaf's short, not Anna's and how her name kind of confused him because her last name is Bell yet she hadn't been in the live action Beauty and the Beast like he had. It was all hilarious.

They brought out Sarah Silverman to talk about Wreck it Ralph 2. We got to watch the infamous Disney princess clip, which I thought was hilarious. The whole room was roaring.

After the clip they announced that every princess had come back to reprise their roles (they didn't mention it but I'm assuming the deceased princesses' voices were replaced). They started off by announcing Ming Na Wen was back as Mulan, and Idina Menzel back as Elsa. Then they announced Kristen Bell back as Anna (since we had already seen her there). But then she came back out and announced I think Jodie Benson back as Ariel, so she came out, and it just went on and on like that until we had 10+ princesses out on stage. The crowd was going insane.

Then they brought out the director to announce a new original Pixar movie which would be a suburban fantasy type movie. I heard this concept get trashed a lot on the internet by people who weren't there, but I think it sounds great. It is based off the experience of the director and his brother, their father died when they were very young so they never knew him. The movie follows along with this idea, it is 2 brothers who try to find a way to speak with their dad. Except, the world they come in was one that used to know magic. However, magic was hard so technology started to evolve so the people in the land (trolls, elves, goblins, fantasy type creatures) have the same tech we do nowadays and they forgot about magic. It looks great, they showed some funny concept art where unicorns are rodents like rats and are everywhere and eat out of garbage cans. I'm excited about this one.

They ended with showing an extended clip of Coco. I am really excited about this movie. It looks gorgeous and emotionally charged as usual with Pixar original movies.

After it was over they brought out the little boy who voices Miguel (the lead) and he sang a bit of a song of his relative's. Then Benjamin Bratt, the voice of the great grandfather, came out and continued the song then dancers came down all the aisles and it was a huge production with a confetti release at the end. It was a great finale.

There was no mention of the Jack and the Giant Beanstalk movie, so I wonder if that movie is having issues.

After the panel was over we picked up our Coco posters and then we split up a bit. Myself, Brian and 2 of our other friends went to line up for the Park Stars panel at 6. Stephanie was our nominated person to use the store pass so that is where she went. We arrived just as the previous panel was loading so we were able to get right in line and settle in. We were about the 3rd group in line for Park Stars and we got all our stuff set up then took turns saving the spaces while people went to get food and walked around the floor.

Stephanie face timed us all live and showed us which merch was left. She said the store was looking pretty raggedy at this point in the day. Surprisingly, some of the stormtrooper tsum tsums and the Star Wars cantina dobz (I think it is dobz) were left so some of our friends wanted those. Stephanie got some lithographs but I ended up passing on everything. There really wasn't a lot left in the store at that time and nothing appealed to me.

It turned out being a really good thing we got in line that early because the panel was in a very small space and the sorcerer's and stage pass took up most of the room. Our little waiting room was entirely full (maybe 20+ lines) and there was a big line outside. I doubt any more than 5 lines were able to get in and get seats.

The panel was pretty interesting, there were 2 story imagineers there and they started off with a joke about the panel not being about Park Starz the vinyl collectibles.

They talked about all the different park original characters' roles in their attractions and how the story would suffer if there were no original characters.

They talked about a lot of POTC characters and the roles they played in the story. My favorite was the skeleton pirate steering the boat, he was labeled as I believe the 'workaholic'. The pirate wearing all the hats was the over achiever. Surprisingly enough they did not mention the redhead, even though I think she is the most popular POTC character.

They spoke a lot about the Food Rocks characters at Epcot, I think they were one of the imagineers' favorites.

They also pointed out something I had never noticed, which was that the mom, dad and dog from Carousel of Progress were in a futuristic scene of World or Motion. The imagineer talked about how he saw that as a little boy and was so impressed that the COP family made it into the future.

They spent a decent amount of time talking about characters in overseas parks like Chandu and Duffy and his entourage.

We talked about Sonny Eclipse, Figment, Orange Bird and had a phone call from the bird in Miss Adventure Falls.

It was really interesting and they ended up doing some trivia and prize giveaways at the end, but you had to have a raffle ticket and those were never handed out to the stand by line.

At that point the convention was closed for the day. We slowly walked out and our group split up. Stephanie was headed out to meet other friends for drinks but Brian and I knew we'd have a very early morning for the Live action panel the next day so we got into bed and ordered a pizza.

Does anyone want me to add a few pictures to this? I have some of our merch and things like that I could add if anyone's interested.

I'll start writing about Saturday and post that next in a bit.


What we actually ended up doing

9 am MOG
9 am store pass for Disney store
10 am line at Disney Music Emporium for wrist bands for Moana and Giacchino signings
11 am-4:30 Animation line and panel
4:30-7 Park Stars line and panel

Thanks for the write up! I am in the process of writing everything up as well, but I haven't gotten that far yet. As you know, I was stuck outside as well Friday morning even though they said before 6 we'd be allowed inside. Thankfully it wasn't too hot that early, so I wasn't too miserable out there. Sounds like you had a great day!

Also, regarding the park tickets thing. We were placed next to the animation overflow people (or "blue wristband people" as well called them) for Parks and Resorts. Before P&R started, someone came up to that group and told them to stick around after the presentation because they had something for them. I'm sure it was the park ticket, although we booked it out of there to get our Fantasmic wristband.

 

[beachdreamr1229]

I'm happy to read that all of the people who missed animation after waiting forever were compensated. It was a major mess. I was half-way through B-section waiting in line and the entire half behind me didn't make it in despite many saying in previous years, the entire section had made it with space left for more. I knew they got the wristbands for Saturday, but I think the tickets were a nice perk, too. The way they set up the lines wasn't right and the fact that A and C people got there much later than most B people and still got in was hugely frustrating. As it was, I got super lucky and was seated up with the execs who had come to see the show, but I felt really, really bad for people behind me.

I think in 2019 I will focus more on just exploring the floor and smaller panels. It was amazing seeing both animation and live action, but it left little time to do anything else and I'm really not sure waiting in line for 11 hours was worth it. I would love to the Sorcerer's just once in life. It sounds like those of you who had it had a blast! I'm not sure it's in my price range, but you know, if I ever got lucky enough to catch a pass before they sell out, I might just go for it and figure out how to pay later.

 

[Curlyxz]

OK so I'm probably going to do a trip report but this is my write up on my experience for now...

Hah, this was very long. So for those of you who want in depth experiences, here you go. Please don't be afraid to 'talk back with me', so to speak. If you had my same experiences I'd love to hear your stories.

We stayed at the Cortona, which only ended up being at most a 5 minute walk from the convention center.

Friday

8 hours and 50 minutes of sleep
This is mostly afforded to the fact that our flight was on Thursday morning and we had to get up at 3 am. It is somewhat easy falling asleep around 6 pm if you've only had 3 hours of sleep the night before.

Arrival time: 5:15 am
I had been pretty sure that we'd be inside if we arrived before 6 am. However, this was not the case. We were in the second section (each section had a taped off walkway left) so we were pretty close to the doors. We spoke with some people in line with us in the MOG line later that morning and they had arrived at 5 and been allowed inside to wait downstairs. So we must have just missed the cut off.

At that time of day there was no wait for security. As everyone knows now, they did not care about bringing outside food in. We saw people with pizza boxes even.

So we settled in to wait. Got to meet a few DISers like @HydroGuy and @PaintsWithAllTheColors .

As we got closer to the 9 am opening time we were all slowly moved forward. We did not get in right at 9, we assumed we had to wait for all the people in the basement to funnel up first.

We had our game plan ready to go, there were 3 of us. Myself, my boyfriend Brian and my boyfriend's sister Stephanie.

Initial Wants Before Arrival

9 am: Shop Pass
10-12: Disney Legends
12-1: Signing Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, Incredibles, Ratatouille, Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, Tomorrowland)
12:30: stage pass for Park Stars panel
12:30-1:45: Signing with Alex Hirsch (Gravity Falls)
1:30-1:45: Ashley Eckstein talk
1:30-2:30: Moana Animator signing (Hyrum Osmond: Olaf, Prep & Landing, Feast, Paperman. Amy Smeed: Rapunzel)
2-3: Signing Tony Anselmo (Donald animator and voice since 1985)
2:30-4:30: Animation panel
4:30-5:30: Tour of Pixar with prizes
6-7: Park Stars Panel

We knew the schedule was overambitious and that we wouldn't get everything, we just wanted to have second and third choices in case we were shut out of things.

We were pretty sure we'd be able to walk up to the Legends panel before it started since we'd heard the previous expo's panel hadn't been full.
So the plan was to split up. Brian would run for a store pass and we'd run for our number one store, Mickey's of Glendale (MOG). We would be communicating and let him know if the line was huge and if we needed one for MOG or for a different store. At this time we didn't realize he could take our badges and get 3 store passes.

We were finally allowed in and we were off. Stephanie and I had a pretty easy trip and made it to the MOG line. Actually, it wasn't really easy. There weren't a lot of people inside yet but we saw so many awesome things it was hard not to stop and gawk. It was like in Zoolander where he is getting brain washed and told not to get distracted by the beautiful celebrities.

We were in the regular MOG line, didn't even realize there was a separate MOG pin line at that point. The queue against the wall was full and then half the queue right next to it was full. This line moved so quick, I think we were only waiting for 10 minutes. Brian texted and we told him we didn't need a MOG pass so he was to get a Disney store pass. He was able to get one for 4:30. I believe 2:30 was the earliest time available but we had already decided on a time where we didn't have any panels.

So obviously we had our pick of all the MOG merchandise and sizing. I think I did pretty well, I did a circuit and picked up everything I kind of liked then did a second circuit and put some stuff back and made sure I saw everything.

I ended up getting 2 of the galaxy of stories t shirts, gray for me and black for Brian. A society of explorer's shirt, a sorcerer mickey imagineering t shirt, and a light blue imagineering hoodie.

So we were done with our purchases and met back up with Brian. At this time I was keeping my eye on D23 twitter and such and saw that they announced that Whoopi Goldberg was the surprise inductee this year. We had assumed it would be Harrison Ford to go along with Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher and he is who we wanted to see, so we knew we could skip Legends.

At this point we had our only 'what do we do wander around in a daze' moments. On his way back to meet up with us, Brian had stopped at the Music Emporium to ask about Moana and Giacchino signings. They told him to come back on their respective signing days to get a wrist band and purchase the required merch.

We discussed this for a little while and were like, you know what, we have convention experience and often times people don't know what they are talking about. So we went back and asked 3 more people working the booth and got some different answers so we got in the long line to purchase our singing merch.

This line was probably about 45 minutes long. I was able to peek out a side door and saw a couple food stands so we took turns waiting in line while the other 2 ate. It was the delicious grilled cheese cart and I really enjoyed my sandwich and, best of all, there was no wait.

It was interesting to watch while we waited, the Descendants stars were signing and they must have got through their line quicker than they thought because they were pulling people from the long line if they wanted signatures from them.

We finally got to the front and were able to make our purchases. We had decided that if these items were going to be signed we wanted the vinyl records over the CDs because we felt vinyls displayed better. We bought our Michael Giacchino Rogue One vinyl and a Moana soundtrack vinyl. The guy was pushing the $10 Moana lithos and told us we could have both the vinyl and the litho signed (remember this, it will come up again later). So we each got a Moana vinyl and litho. The wristbands were just handed to us, they did not make us put them on at the time. The Moana signing was Saturday and Giacchino was Sunday.

As we waited we got texts from some of our friends who we'd met on a previous DIS Adventures by Disney southern California trip. We were all going to meet up for the Animation panel. As soon as we were done we went off to find them.

It took us about 10 minutes of trying to figure out where they were, but we finally met up. At this point we had a bad experience. The line up for Animation was downstairs but there was a long line of people upstairs who were waiting for the escalator. It took us forever to find the back of the line and at one point I was trying to ask a volunteer where the back of the line was and he just turned away and pretended not to hear me. It was a cluster. I think we were lining up around 11:30 maybe, I don't know the exact time.

We were just about to get to the point to head down the escalator and the Legends panel must have let out. There was a big surge where those people melded with our line (our line was not pleased but what could you do about it?).

I think by now everyone has heard about the giant mess with the Animation panel line. I'm afraid we might have been a part of the surge that ended up in front of other people, but we had no idea at the time and were just following the crowd. Which was pretty dangerous by the way, everyone was shoving and it was a bit scary. You just had to go where the crowd went.

We settled down to wait for Animation. We had fun waiting in a group. There was a guy who was giving us announcements and letting us know we'd have to put our phones in bags. Now, we know after the fact that lots of people who had been waiting didn't get into the panel. This guy kept announcing there was plenty of space in line and inviting more people to join sections.

The lines finally started to move in and we were able to get a spot in the back of the stage right section. Once again, this was very disorganized. When we arrived at the top of the escalator there was a whole mass of people hovering at the door waiting to get in.

Now...after the fact we heard all the bad stories about the Animation panel line and how some people who had been waiting for hours got shuffled around and never got in. If those people were lucky enough to stick around after they announced the panel was full, they were given a wristband for the parks and resorts or live action panel. Apparently, if you stuck around even longer you were further compensated by a park ticket. I kind of have a problem with this. Now, some people had been waiting for hours and got screwed out of their spot by poor line management, however, some people walked up 20 minutes before the panel started because the guy was announcing plenty of room. It was not fair that those people got the perks. However, I understand there would have been no way to weed out the people who rightfully deserved the compensation and those who didn't.

We did see a few people bragging on twitter later that their wrist bands were not removed for the live action panel and they used it for both live action and parks and resorts.

Anyway...I think the Animation panel was one of my favorite moments of the convention.

Really, my top want from the panel was just to see John Lasseter with my own eyes, so of course that happened. He started off with a tshirt shoot. I was too short to see anything, but next thing I know everyone in my section is going crazy and then my boyfriend hands me a tshirt. He caught one! I think they only shot off less than 10. I was so excited. I dunno if all the sizes were random but ours ended up being a small and it fits me.

So already the panel was starting off with a bang.

They started with the trailer about planes in space. The animation was breath taking. It was just a really short teaser trailer but right at the end they showed that the plan had eyes like the cars do in Cars. So really, I don't know anything about that except it is about planes that go up into space and they will most likely talk and act like the cars in Cars.

Then Kristen Bell came out to talk about Frozen 2. They revealed that Frozen 2 will not be the name and then cycled through a bunch of really funny titles like Thawed. Kristen Bell was going to talk about the new Olaf Christmas short but the audio went on the fritz so...Josh Gad just came out to sign it live! One of the best parts. Gad then went on to keep ribbing Bell about how the short was named Olaf's short, not Anna's and how her name kind of confused him because her last name is Bell yet she hadn't been in the live action Beauty and the Beast like he had. It was all hilarious.

They brought out Sarah Silverman to talk about Wreck it Ralph 2. We got to watch the infamous Disney princess clip, which I thought was hilarious. The whole room was roaring.

After the clip they announced that every princess had come back to reprise their roles (they didn't mention it but I'm assuming the deceased princesses' voices were replaced). They started off by announcing Ming Na Wen was back as Mulan, and Idina Menzel back as Elsa. Then they announced Kristen Bell back as Anna (since we had already seen her there). But then she came back out and announced I think Jodie Benson back as Ariel, so she came out, and it just went on and on like that until we had 10+ princesses out on stage. The crowd was going insane.

Then they brought out the director to announce a new original Pixar movie which would be a suburban fantasy type movie. I heard this concept get trashed a lot on the internet by people who weren't there, but I think it sounds great. It is based off the experience of the director and his brother, their father died when they were very young so they never knew him. The movie follows along with this idea, it is 2 brothers who try to find a way to speak with their dad. Except, the world they come in was one that used to know magic. However, magic was hard so technology started to evolve so the people in the land (trolls, elves, goblins, fantasy type creatures) have the same tech we do nowadays and they forgot about magic. It looks great, they showed some funny concept art where unicorns are rodents like rats and are everywhere and eat out of garbage cans. I'm excited about this one.

They ended with showing an extended clip of Coco. I am really excited about this movie. It looks gorgeous and emotionally charged as usual with Pixar original movies.

After it was over they brought out the little boy who voices Miguel (the lead) and he sang a bit of a song of his relative's. Then Benjamin Bratt, the voice of the great grandfather, came out and continued the song then dancers came down all the aisles and it was a huge production with a confetti release at the end. It was a great finale.

There was no mention of the Jack and the Giant Beanstalk movie, so I wonder if that movie is having issues.

After the panel was over we picked up our Coco posters and then we split up a bit. Myself, Brian and 2 of our other friends went to line up for the Park Stars panel at 6. Stephanie was our nominated person to use the store pass so that is where she went. We arrived just as the previous panel was loading so we were able to get right in line and settle in. We were about the 3rd group in line for Park Stars and we got all our stuff set up then took turns saving the spaces while people went to get food and walked around the floor.

Stephanie face timed us all live and showed us which merch was left. She said the store was looking pretty raggedy at this point in the day. Surprisingly, some of the stormtrooper tsum tsums and the Star Wars cantina dobz (I think it is dobz) were left so some of our friends wanted those. Stephanie got some lithographs but I ended up passing on everything. There really wasn't a lot left in the store at that time and nothing appealed to me.

It turned out being a really good thing we got in line that early because the panel was in a very small space and the sorcerer's and stage pass took up most of the room. Our little waiting room was entirely full (maybe 20+ lines) and there was a big line outside. I doubt any more than 5 lines were able to get in and get seats.

The panel was pretty interesting, there were 2 story imagineers there and they started off with a joke about the panel not being about Park Starz the vinyl collectibles.

They talked about all the different park original characters' roles in their attractions and how the story would suffer if there were no original characters.

They talked about a lot of POTC characters and the roles they played in the story. My favorite was the skeleton pirate steering the boat, he was labeled as I believe the 'workaholic'. The pirate wearing all the hats was the over achiever. Surprisingly enough they did not mention the redhead, even though I think she is the most popular POTC character.

They spoke a lot about the Food Rocks characters at Epcot, I think they were one of the imagineers' favorites.

They also pointed out something I had never noticed, which was that the mom, dad and dog from Carousel of Progress were in a futuristic scene of World or Motion. The imagineer talked about how he saw that as a little boy and was so impressed that the COP family made it into the future.

They spent a decent amount of time talking about characters in overseas parks like Chandu and Duffy and his entourage.

We talked about Sonny Eclipse, Figment, Orange Bird and had a phone call from the bird in Miss Adventure Falls.

It was really interesting and they ended up doing some trivia and prize giveaways at the end, but you had to have a raffle ticket and those were never handed out to the stand by line.

At that point the convention was closed for the day. We slowly walked out and our group split up. Stephanie was headed out to meet other friends for drinks but Brian and I knew we'd have a very early morning for the Live action panel the next day so we got into bed and ordered a pizza.

Does anyone want me to add a few pictures to this? I have some of our merch and things like that I could add if anyone's interested.

I'll start writing about Saturday and post that next in a bit.


What we actually ended up doing

9 am MOG
9 am store pass for Disney store
10 am line at Disney Music Emporium for wrist bands for Moana and Giacchino signings
11 am-4:30 Animation line and panel
4:30-7 Park Stars line and panel

Nice write up! Too bad I missed getting a Giacchino wristband on Friday, I was under the impression you had to make the purchase and get the wristband on the day of. Oh well, until next time!

 

[wilkeliza]

Nice write up! Too bad I missed getting a Giacchino wristband on Friday, I was under the impression you had to make the purchase and get the wristband on the day of. Oh well, until next time!

Same here.

 

[ashley0139]

Nice write up! Too bad I missed getting a Giacchino wristband on Friday, I was under the impression you had to make the purchase and get the wristband on the day of. Oh well, until next time!

Yeah, I stopped by the booth just to browse and they had a sign saying the Auli'i signing was sold out on Friday. There were several people that were upset because they were told they could not get wristbands until Saturday. I didn't even bother with any signings. Seemed like way more trouble than they were worth.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Yeah, I stopped by the booth just to browse and they had a sign saying the Auli'i signing was sold out on Friday. There were several people that were upset because they were told they could not get wristbands until Saturday. I didn't even bother with any signings. Seemed like way more trouble than they were worth.

I was going to post this on my Saturday write up, but the Auli'i signing was not worth the trouble and was the biggest let down anyway.

Remember how I said we'd been upsold the litho because they said we could get two things signed?

Well, we get in line for her and they start saying we can only have one item signed because they sold a bunch of stand by wristbands and they needed to push them through.

Then we get up to her, my boyfriend has the phone out ready for a picture, the woman shouts 'no pictures!' even though we'd seen others taking pictures early on in the half hour we were in line. I tried to say I really enjoyed her work and the woman working the booth literally pushed me away and shoved my record at me so hard I got a paper cut.

That's nice that they want to shove through as many stand by as they can, but when they upsell you items you don't even want and then take away the fact that you can get them signed...and basically ruin the meet and greet by not letting you even say hello the whole thing just sucks.

Probably the worst part of the expo. So maybe you guys who missed the bands lucked out. I mean, yeah, I stood in front of her for maybe 5 seconds but I didn't even get to say a word.

Very disappointing. I don't pay for celebrities autographs to have the autograph, if I just solely wanted that I could purchase it from an autograph vendor.

I mostly purchase autographs because I want to meet the person and have a few minutes to let them know what their work means to me. So for me, paying for her autograph was a waste of money.

 

[lurkergirl]

But it sounds like they let vendors and cast members enter the store queues before you? That seems messed up.

Did you ever go for any signing wrist bands or hear about any sorcerer's who did? I'm thinking of the Black Panther, Avengers, GOTG or Tangled meets. They were all distributing wrist bands at a particular place. I imagine if the sorcerer's were let in 15 minutes before everyone else, you'd probably have had no problem getting one of those wrist bands? For instance, the Tangled signing bands were given out at Talent Central so you'd just go straight there and be among the first in line, right?

I was behind a woman on Sunday morning at the Lularoe booth that was waiting for leggings - she had a green vendor badge and VERY CAREFULLY had it stashed in her purse. A Disney person went through the line to check badges but she was deep in conversation and he was distracted by everyone in line. So it did happen a lot. I truly believe that adding RFID technology would stop issues like this and people over-buying LE items. Scan it, one per Event Guest for anything. It would slow the process but probably help.

I met a Sorcerer couple who did get a wristband for the Avengers signing. He got up early and stood around in the Sorcerer line to get onto the Show Floor, he was 50th or something I believe. I don't think Sorcerers got any real advantage with the signings...it was more down to luck and time/place, you know?

 

[PatMcDuck]

Late check in here! I arrived about 4 am Friday morning, and got in floor line. When inside shopped MoG (not pin side!) then saw Parks Pavilion, Archives, and some floor stuff. At about 12, went to escalators to line up for Animation. Legends let out, chaos ensued. NO CMs anywhere, no-one to stop Legends from pushing past flimsy barricade and cutting into the Animation line that was headed downstairs. I was terrified there would be a pileup at the bottom of the escalator. (In prior years, when Hall D23 let out, they forced them outside to join the BACK of the line in place for next Hall D23 panel, and did not let anyone use escalator for that time until things were under control. Anyway, we went into Hall E, packed tightly, for 1/2 hour until the crowd I was in suddenly moved forward to the A-B-C areas in Hall E. It was like a CHARGE! But then everyone settled down, plenty of space, we were 12 rows from front of section B. No worries! 3 hour wait, ok. We were part of the Animation Panel fiasco, where we did not get in, it hit section B the hardest. We complained and got wristbands for our choice of Parks or Live Action on Saturday. We took Parks. I was really upset about missing Animation. I later went to the panel of Park Stars, on standby. Got great seat, Sorcerer seats. I was last one admitted. Panel was so-so, but I was glad to at least see one that day.

Saturday I arrived at 2:30 AM for Live Action. Met my friends, and settled in for the next 8 hours, lol. Live action was great! We had bands for Parks so time to eat in between. Parks was wonderful, and we got the pass to see the preview of Fantasmic either that night, Saturday, or Sunday night. We ASLO were given one day park hopper tickets, good for 2 years, that was just for the Animation Panel debacle survivors. I took Saturday 10:30, and went to hotel to rest a little and had to skip the 6 pm panel I was planning on (Pixar). It was so good to see the preview, I was flying back east Sunday night so this was a real treat.

Sunday I arrived early, got a Store Pass for Disneystore, Stage Pass for Voices of the Parks. Walked the floor awhile, did Hercules panel on standby (GREAT!!) and Voices of the Parks (Fantastic!) then finally got into Dream store before leaving.

Great Expo, will go again. Will arrive 2 am each day, and I am buying one of those banana shaped air filled beds. HA!

 

[Curlyxz]

I was going to post this on my Saturday write up, but the Auli'i signing was not worth the trouble and was the biggest let down anyway.

Remember how I said we'd been upsold the litho because they said we could get two things signed?

Well, we get in line for her and they start saying we can only have one item signed because they sold a bunch of stand by wristbands and they needed to push them through.

Then we get up to her, my boyfriend has the phone out ready for a picture, the woman shouts 'no pictures!' even though we'd seen others taking pictures early on in the half hour we were in line. I tried to say I really enjoyed her work and the woman working the booth literally pushed me away and shoved my record at me so hard I got a paper cut.

That's nice that they want to shove through as many stand by as they can, but when they upsell you items you don't even want and then take away the fact that you can get them signed...and basically ruin the meet and greet by not letting you even say hello the whole thing just sucks.

Probably the worst part of the expo. So maybe you guys who missed the bands lucked out. I mean, yeah, I stood in front of her for maybe 5 seconds but I didn't even get to say a word.

Very disappointing. I don't pay for celebrities autographs to have the autograph, if I just solely wanted that I could purchase it from an autograph vendor.

I mostly purchase autographs because I want to meet the person and have a few minutes to let them know what their work means to me. So for me, paying for her autograph was a waste of money.

What a horrible experience! Poor practice from the Emporium as well by upselling the litho and promising an autograph on both when it wouldn't be the case. I knew that trying to get autographs for anything semi-popular would be ridiculous, which is why the only autograph session I even thought about attempting was Giacchino. I ended up getting to the expo later than I planned on Sunday anyway(from being exhausted from Saturday), so I had given up on the session before even getting there.

I met a Sorcerer couple who did get a wristband for the Avengers signing. He got up early and stood around in the Sorcerer line to get onto the Show Floor, he was 50th or something I believe. I don't think Sorcerers got any real advantage with the signings...it was more down to luck and time/place, you know?

Yeah, if wristbands were limited to 100 it really is luck of the draw. Sure Sorcerers are meant to go in before everyone else but it is up to the staff to ensure that happens.

Late check in here! I arrived about 4 am Friday morning, and got in floor line. When inside shopped MoG (not pin side!) then saw Parks Pavilion, Archives, and some floor stuff. At about 12, went to escalators to line up for Animation. Legends let out, chaos ensued. NO CMs anywhere, no-one to stop Legends from pushing past flimsy barricade and cutting into the Animation line that was headed downstairs. I was terrified there would be a pileup at the bottom of the escalator. (In prior years, when Hall D23 let out, they forced them outside to join the BACK of the line in place for next Hall D23 panel, and did not let anyone use escalator for that time until things were under control. Anyway, we went into Hall E, packed tightly, for 1/2 hour until the crowd I was in suddenly moved forward to the A-B-C areas in Hall E. It was like a CHARGE! But then everyone settled down, plenty of space, we were 12 rows from front of section B. No worries! 3 hour wait, ok. We were part of the Animation Panel fiasco, where we did not get in, it hit section B the hardest. We complained and got wristbands for our choice of Parks or Live Action on Saturday. We took Parks. I was really upset about missing Animation. I later went to the panel of Park Stars, on standby. Got great seat, Sorcerer seats. I was last one admitted. Panel was so-so, but I was glad to at least see one that day.

Saturday I arrived at 2:30 AM for Live Action. Met my friends, and settled in for the next 8 hours, lol. Live action was great! We had bands for Parks so time to eat in between. Parks was wonderful, and we got the pass to see the preview of Fantasmic either that night, Saturday, or Sunday night. We ASLO were given one day park hopper tickets, good for 2 years, that was just for the Animation Panel debacle survivors. I took Saturday 10:30, and went to hotel to rest a little and had to skip the 6 pm panel I was planning on (Pixar). It was so good to see the preview, I was flying back east Sunday night so this was a real treat.

Sunday I arrived early, got a Store Pass for Disneystore, Stage Pass for Voices of the Parks. Walked the floor awhile, did Hercules panel on standby (GREAT!!) and Voices of the Parks (Fantastic!) then finally got into Dream store before leaving.

Great Expo, will go again. Will arrive 2 am each day, and I am buying one of those banana shaped air filled beds. HA!

Sucks that you were part of the Animation panel madness. I was a bit afraid that once Live Action let out, the same thing might happen with the Parks panel. Luckily they learned their lesson and kept everything under control.

Good point on the beds, lol! I did buy two of the chairs that fold down into a small bag and they really came in handy. I had to carry them around in a backpack once we were done using them but it was no problem for me.

 

[wilkeliza]

I was behind a woman on Sunday morning at the Lularoe booth that was waiting for leggings - she had a green vendor badge and VERY CAREFULLY had it stashed in her purse. A Disney person went through the line to check badges but she was deep in conversation and he was distracted by everyone in line. So it did happen a lot. I truly believe that adding RFID technology would stop issues like this and people over-buying LE items. Scan it, one per Event Guest for anything. It would slow the process but probably help.

I met a Sorcerer couple who did get a wristband for the Avengers signing. He got up early and stood around in the Sorcerer line to get onto the Show Floor, he was 50th or something I believe. I don't think Sorcerers got any real advantage with the signings...it was more down to luck and time/place, you know?

They don't even need rfid! Every single badge has a scan code. All they have to do is give vendors the scanners or access to the system to make sure people aren't taking more then their share. They did this with some Disney Store hand outs but don't do it for selling stuff. Seriously could say you get 1 visit to a store a day and you are scanned when you get in. No big deal and doesn't hold up the line at all.

 

[allthenamesaretaken]

But it sounds like they let vendors and cast members enter the store queues before you? That seems messed up.

From my understanding it was not suppose to happen this way. In 2015 vendors and CMs were told they could not participate on their vendor or CM passes but this year they said no problem use your free pass. So A lot of vendors and CMs were entering lines before the show floor was released for opening. Only Disney Store enforced Sorcerers 1st.

To add my two cents...
The early start on Saturday was particularly bad. Sorcerers walked through calmly and soon found general attendees bolting past them, and found vendors and CMs already in lines.
I was queueing for the Disney Store and had a CM in front who was then joined by 2 friends and allowed some random to jump the queue. This random had asked him if she could join (a few metres from the store entry) and his response was vague. She then asked me and I said "well sorry I don't want to be mean but I've paid over $2000 for this and have heaps of sorcerers behind me... so no". She then pushed in front anyway! I appreciate you asking but if I say no, that's a no.

But otherwise everything went well! Haha

 

[wilkeliza]

To add my two cents...
The early start on Saturday was particularly bad. Sorcerers walked through calmly and soon found general attendees bolting past them, and found vendors and CMs already in lines.
I was queueing for the Disney Store and had a CM in front who was then joined by 2 friends and allowed some random to jump the queue. This random had asked him if she could join (a few metres from the store entry) and his response was vague. She then asked me and I said "well sorry I don't want to be mean but I've paid over $2000 for this and have heaps of sorcerers behind me... so no". She then pushed in front anyway! I appreciate you asking but if I say no, that's a no.

But otherwise everything went well! Haha

Oh wow. Saturday I was a little further back but saw them telling people no they could not enter. I got everything I wanted done but if we get exit surveys I'm definitely going to say they should go back to sorcerers have an hour on the floor to themselves and you can only visit a shop once a day (thus makingn sure limited edition rules or enforced) or that sorcerers should get tickets thay let them skip the line 1 time per every major shop per a day and one per the weekend for the floor experiences that were not open during the preview night. Also they could have ley us chose 1 signing or told us before hand who the sorcerer guest was. I love who we got because I'm a big broadway fan but a lot of sorcerers said who? Also watched someone sneak into the lounge on more then one occasion.

Whatever they do there has to make a system that makes the 2K worth it but is also fair to other expo attendees.

 

[ashley0139]

Oh wow. Saturday I was a little further back but saw them telling people no they could not enter. I got everything I wanted done but if we get exit surveys I'm definitely going to say they should go back to sorcerers have an hour on the floor to themselves and you can only visit a shop once a day (thus makingn sure limited edition rules or enforced) or that sorcerers should get tickets thay let them skip the line 1 time per every major shop per a day and one per the weekend for the floor experiences that were not open during the preview night. Also they could have ley us chose 1 signing or told us before hand who the sorcerer guest was. I love who we got because I'm a big broadway fan but a lot of sorcerers said who? Also watched someone sneak into the lounge on more then one occasion.

Whatever they do there has to make a system that makes the 2K worth it but is also fair to other expo attendees.

You had Eden and Jeremy right? I'm a big theatre fan and worked in theatre for a while so I love them, especially Eden, but most people would have no idea who they are.

 

[Nonsuch]

I'll try to do a more extensive report on my sorcerers experience, but first a couple comments on shopping:

The Lasseter shirt seemed to be a trophy purchase, with attendees wearing them at the Expo -- essentially saying "I got one". Surprisingly, I bought the Lasseter shirt from the 2015 expo at Hollywood Studios (WDW) in January 2016.

That's about it. We could buy LE that were released on Friday and they were suppose to put out all LE items but did not. The big one was they only put out about 20 of the Lassetershirts the first day which was the most disappointing. They made up for that though by letting us shop Sorcerers only and buy 2 items (2 different items) on Friday before it opened to any one else. Since they did that and I was actually the last one in that line I was able to get a Lasseter shirt finally. Only needed the one because my fiance has been wanting one for years. Other days I had no issue with LE items at first line and got everything I wanted. (again just shopping for me and fiance)

I never heard about that, just another example of information not being shared with all sorcerers.

Also did not really understand the early show floor entry, but tried it on Sunday (there was no big early panel). The line of sorcerers was surprisingly long, well at least I was surprised. I went to the MOG pin store, and there were about 10 sorcerers ahead of me. CM was only allowing sorcerers in this line, all others (mostly vendors) were not allowed to line up until 9:00.

 

[PatMcDuck]

"We did see a few people bragging on twitter later that their wrist bands were not removed for the live action panel and they used it for both live action and parks and resorts."

They were different colors. Blue or Gray.

 

[wilkeliza]

You had Eden and Jeremy right? I'm a big theatre fan and worked in theatre for a while so I love them, especially Eden, but most people would have no idea who they are.

Yeah they were lovely to meet and both are from the Tangled series as well.