D23 EXPO THREAD - See you in 2019!

Status
Not open for further replies.
I sat in a taped off section, I mean the white tape on the seats, (not the blue tape across the rows that was moved as room was loaded.) I was brought in as a standby, one of the last to enter. In the best scenario, they load those seats with the standbys, or in one case, in 2015, they let people already seated move up to those closer seats.

BUT! They are just way to slow loading the rooms, all of them. So they will often close doors, send standbys away, and start a panel with some seats still empty including reserved seats near the front. I am not saying a TON of empty seats, but some.

Hall D23, is especially frustrating because they have time to load that huge room, since panels are spread out there, time wise. From my observation it takes 1 hour 15 minutes (at best) to 1 1/2 hours to load Hall D23. They even have left some empty seats in there, in the back, that I have seen, and those are in demand panels.

Looking forward to 2019.
 
@wilkeliza The enforcement of the badge check for the Sorcerer lounge was hit-or-miss for me - Friday I was stopped three times before I got into the room, then again by the Concierge desk inside. But at time I saw people wander in and get pretty far in the room before getting spotted. As always, inconsistently enforced.

Of course...no one stopped Zachary Levi when he dropped in via a back door for a drink. Hee!

I know that one of the cast members that was loading the Sorcerer seats for the Hall D23 Parks and Resorts panel was trying to balance keeping seats open versus filling those seats with VIPs. We were jokingly encouraged to spread out a bit. :rotfl:

There is always room for improvement at the Expos but I felt most of the changes they implemented for 2017 were positive. There will always be people pushing boundaries for giveaways, for the stores, for the lines...Disney and D23 needs to train their cast members and temporary staff to deal with these situations better as well as follow the rules they themselves set out.
 
@wilkeliza The enforcement of the badge check for the Sorcerer lounge was hit-or-miss for me - Friday I was stopped three times before I got into the room, then again by the Concierge desk inside. But at time I saw people wander in and get pretty far in the room before getting spotted. As always, inconsistently enforced.

Of course...no one stopped Zachary Levi when he dropped in via a back door for a drink. Hee!

I know that one of the cast members that was loading the Sorcerer seats for the Hall D23 Parks and Resorts panel was trying to balance keeping seats open versus filling those seats with VIPs. We were jokingly encouraged to spread out a bit. :rotfl:

There is always room for improvement at the Expos but I felt most of the changes they implemented for 2017 were positive. There will always be people pushing boundaries for giveaways, for the stores, for the lines...Disney and D23 needs to train their cast members and temporary staff to deal with these situations better as well as follow the rules they themselves set out.

Oh I agree. They eventually caught the guy who came just for Jeremy and Eden's photo (and I think even made him delete the ones he took) but it was odd that they had the 2 doors but only manned the one. The lounge was never full and all giveaways our badge was checked or scanned so in the grand scheme it was no big deal. I just thought it was interesting that they didn't think people would try to sneak in.

I noticed the plain clothed lounge reps were much more strict then the GR members from the parks. Michael also took it very seriously and he was the one that actually approached the person during the meet and greet.
 
Last edited:
I filled out my survey for the D23 expo that they sent out through email.

I did remark on what was handled well, but I was not kind for all of my signing experiences. The signings were truly handled terribly.
 


But @wilkeliza they could have gotten popcorn! (I kid, I kid.)

I blamed my third-degree badge interrogation on the fact that I swapped the lanyard out for one a bit more fun, so it probably threw them. Ha!
 
But @wilkeliza they could have gotten popcorn! (I kid, I kid.)

I blamed my third-degree badge interrogation on the fact that I swapped the lanyard out for one a bit more fun, so it probably threw them. Ha!

HAHA I never ate the popcorn. I was honestly shocked though at how many pastries people could throw back. By the time we would get to the lounge the "snacks" were pretty much gone most days.
 
HAHA I never ate the popcorn. I was honestly shocked though at how many pastries people could throw back. By the time we would get to the lounge the "snacks" were pretty much gone most days.

The muffins were truly horrible, unbelievably dry. I gave up on the pastries after that, although the doughnuts seemed to go over well. The M&Ms went so fast! I was going to get a tiny cup full to add to my popcorn and they were always gone. Hee.

Like the amount of shopping people did, I was surprised at the snack consumption. Heh.
 


The muffins were truly horrible, unbelievably dry. I gave up on the pastries after that, although the doughnuts seemed to go over well. The M&Ms went so fast! I was going to get a tiny cup full to add to my popcorn and they were always gone. Hee.

Like the amount of shopping people did, I was surprised at the snack consumption. Heh.

One of the more laugh my butt off moments was went I went to bag check. They asked how many and I said 1. All 3 CMs said "Only 1 thank you!" I got a glimpse at their list and before the first panel people were already checking 5+ bags on average.
 
I filled out my survey for the D23 expo that they sent out through email.

I did remark on what was handled well, but I was not kind for all of my signing experiences. The signings were truly handled terribly.
I have been waiting for a post-event survey to provide some feedback, but have not yet received one....guess I will have to email them thru the D23 website.
 
General ramblings on our Expo:

- We were doing 4 days in the Parks first since DW and I hadn't been to Disneyland since we were kids. Had to do over again I would have just come in for the Expo, gone to the seaside somewhere to wind down afterwards and done the Parks on a separate trip. We had a load of fun on the trip but it ended up being a bit too much. Plus, since we were doing a Disneyland vacation AND the Expo, we didn't really have enough room in the luggage for stuff like folding chairs for the lines. I've done Cons before so I made sure to bring my heavily padded hiking backpack which could double as a seating pad, but three or four hours is a long time to sit on a pad at my age. Meh .. live and learn.

- Thanks to the experienced contributors on this board, we had a pretty good plan in place for each day. We were fortunate enough to not highly value any of the morning Hall D23 panels so the super early mornings and/or overnights weren't part of our plan. We left our room in the Hilton around 6:00 am on all three days and managed to get to the show floor in a reasonable amount of time after 9:00 ... or right at 9:00 on Sunday. That gave us a pretty good shot at the shopping we wanted to prioritize first thing on each day, so we broke it down into three parts and hit the Disney Store on Friday, the Dream Store on Saturday and MOG on Sunday ... all with maybe 5-10 minutes of waiting. We're not super into store exclusives, but even so we picked up a few Expo exclusive items which was fine. We hit the other retail booths (Uniqlo, Little Golden Books, Funko, Havianas etc) when we had gaps between other activities. We also had a good time browsing and talking to folks in the Emporium area ... especially at the Walt Disney Family Museum booth, which had a lot of people dropping in to hang out and say hello.

- The panels we wanted, we pretty much were able to get. My only regret was deciding to be dead sure about Parks on Saturday and sacrificing the Princess panel to do that. We ended up freezing our butts off in Hall E for probably an hour and a half more than necessary, but hey ... we got in, got decent seats near the middle of the hall and were thrilled with that panel. So I'm not complaining too much. Besides, if we were going to make the Princess panel it would have forced me to re-think the shopping plan too. Every decision you make planning these big Expos has reverberations. So ... panels. We hit the Mousequerade, Joe Quesada's Marvel talk and the Ink and Paint history of women in animation on Friday and loved all three. Cosplay at D23 was everything I had hoped it would be and the Mousequerade was tremendous fun. I'm a huge Marvel nerd and got to sit right behind the Sorcerers for Cup o' Joe ... that was great. And my DW in particular adored the women of animation panel .. me too, honestly. I'm a nut for Disney history. Saturday we hit the Parks queue right after we got our shopping and general floor wandering done in the morning. That panel was awesome and I thought the line management was pretty good in general. After Parks we headed outside for an early supper at the food trucks and to catch some sun after freezing inside all day. Then we went to the Evolution of Pixar's Characters panel upstairs at Stage 28. Super fun panel and a great way to end the day. After the last of our shopping on Sunday we hit the Star Wars model area and the Pirates Archives display and both of those were highlights of the Expo. That killed the morning and we went to the Hercules panel after a bite to eat. Munger and Clement are always fun and that was a blast. Then I went over and hung out at the DIS booth for awhile ... since I needed to at least say hey to my boss. We wrapped things up with the Maps of the Parks panel and then Legends of Imagineering. Again, a great way to end the day, this time with Tony Baxter and Marty Sklar (twice). More food trucks for dinner and then we waddled exhausted over to the Hilton and thanked our lucky stars that we weren't in the huge group of people grabbing cabs to LAX for a redeye flight back east. We slept in on Monday and took a mid day flight back to NC.

- Overall we tried to balance the Panels, the shopping and the big ticket displays and I thought we did a pretty good job. We're in our 50s so guerrilla panel hopping while eating exclusively out of your backpack is a thing of the past, and that was a good way to experience a wide swath of the Expo without feeling like we had to do absolutely everything. Like I said, my only regret is making too big a trip out of it. Next time we do a D23 it will be just the Expo and then a couple of days to unwind before we head back home.
 
See below. It took us about at most a minute to setup each chair and less to break it down.

Nice! We kind of hover around the weight limit of the other ones posted so it's nice to find one that has a bit more support.

I guess I could lose weight but then I would have to give up churros.
 
So the more I'm thinking about it the more I feel Live Action was the worst panel I saw.

I'm not sure if it had to do with the 2 am wake up, or almost not getting into the panel.

I also really had my heart set on seeing Lin Manuel Miranda live and obviously he did not show.

Was anyone else just not that impressed by it?

Sure, there were lots of really famous stars that showed up. Also, the Animation panel is probably at the top of my list next to a Kiss Goodnight panel (who wouldn't have Richard Sherman playing Feed the Birds in the top spot?)

So I'm not sure what it is but I just wasn't really that into Live Action.
 
So the more I'm thinking about it the more I feel Live Action was the worst panel I saw.

I'm not sure if it had to do with the 2 am wake up, or almost not getting into the panel.

I also really had my heart set on seeing Lin Manuel Miranda live and obviously he did not show.

Was anyone else just not that impressed by it?

Sure, there were lots of really famous stars that showed up. Also, the Animation panel is probably at the top of my list next to a Kiss Goodnight panel (who wouldn't have Richard Sherman playing Feed the Birds in the top spot?)

So I'm not sure what it is but I just wasn't really that into Live Action.
I thought Live Action was disappointing too. The last three Expos it was my favorite. No this time.
 
I thought the Live Action panel was great! This was my first Live Action panel though, as I missed out on getting into the one for 2015 by around 30 minutes. I was more excited over actually making it in after the stress/anxiety of having to plan around the wristbands given out at the Animation panel & early campers. I thought the movies they previewed were great and the Avengers reveal at the end was definitely the highlight. I did expect more out of Star Wars/EP8 but I had already read speculation that it was almost certain they were going to show a behind the scenes reel. The Lion King clip was surprising as well!
 
Everyone I've talked to loved the Live Action panel. That's the one I'm least likely to go to, as I'm not a Star Wars or Marvel fan. I would have liked to see the Mary Poppins and Lion King stuff though.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!





Top