SWC17 Orlando 2017!

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They were giving fast passes for certain times for people to get in. If you go early in the morning they should give you a time to come back and skip the line, at least that's what I've been told. Only things that were sold out were shirt sizes when I went on Friday. Not sure if they restocked.

 

Just a note that if you are attending today you might want to take a final stroll around the vendor area later in the afternoon. If the London Celebrations were any indication quite a few dealers will mark stuff down - they'd rather sell it than pack it up. Last year I got the 6" Black Jango Fett on discount from the Forbidden Planet stall.

 

They did the same in Anaheim. Better to sell than have to pack up.

CoolyFett: that's kind of what the exhibit hall is at every major convention across the country. TBH, you want that "pawn shop" feel because you can find long-sold-out items from them. If it was nothing but booths like gentle giant then you'd never get anything past what they currently have on the market. Is it often overpriced? Sure. Can you get a deal if you look hard enough? Sometimes, yeah. Especially on Sundays.

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First Celebration impressions:

I had a one-day ticket (Friday) and I had originally planned on sleeping over Thursday night for TLJ panel until I heard that people were actually skipping their entire Thursday in order to wait in line for that panel. I was out after that. We arrived at 6:30 Friday morning and got in one of the lines to get in the building. The signage around the OCCC was not helpful and when the SWCO App sent messages to go to certain entrances, nobody knew which entrance was which. It ended up taking us around 35-45 minutes to get through security. Not too bad. Met some cool people in line.

We went straight to the show floor queue and were in the 2nd holding pen. Waited 3 hours for the show to open and then went straight to the Celebration store. It took us 1 hour to wait, shop, and pay at the store, which was much better than I anticipated. Spent most of the morning walking the floor and getting swag and taking pictures. I was able to give Andi from The Star Wars Show a button, so that was cool. Went to the Displaying Your SW Collection panel that was packed (pretty clearly because people just wanted the Star Tots at the end). I had found out I had a 2:30 for the Lego booth that morning so I rushed there. I found out I had all day to pick it up and was guaranteed a set. Did some shopping at the art show and saw the droid building panel. Met Jason Fry, Pablo Hidalgo, and Kemp at the DK booth. Overall, a very successful and fun day, but I have a few suggestions:

QUEUE HALL: Hang some screens and play either the films, or a constant stream of Clone Wars/Rebels Episodes. This would make the 3 hours we waited in there go by much faster. At the very least, play some music. It's not like there isn't any iconic music from SW that would get people even more hyped as they wait.

LEGO EXCLUSIVE: Notify people before the DAY OF so they can make plans ahead of time, and tell them they have all day to pick up their set.

STREAMING PANELS: Hang screens all around the Show Floor and stream ALL of the panels to the show floor. I really can't understand why this isn't done. It makes absolutely zero sense.

BIG PANELS: Use a larger space, like the show floor hall instead of a theater. Build a stage, let fans sit on the floor (they'll do it) and increase peoples ability to see the big panels. People would be MUCH happier. This would eliminate the need for wristbands. People would still camp out for close seats, but a lot of the other mayhem and confusion would disappear.

STORE: Have several merchandise locations around the hall, rather than just one. More work for them, I suppose, but better for the fans.

 

wookiebusiness I agree. Was in celebration store line during last Jedi panel and there was no screen at all around so we had to watch on our phones and none of us had good service so we couldn't enjoy it.

 

So, how many here got the exclusive 40th Luke X-wing Pilot??

 

I'm surprised at how much the crowd dispersed once yesterday was over. I remember when Anaheim ended there were several hundred people hanging around outside the convention center for a few hours, including many cosplayers still in full gear taking pictures with everyone. But yesterday there wasn't any of that. Even across the way from the OCCC at that bar/restaurant area there were very few attendees from Celebration last night. In comparison to Anaheim where Downtown Disney was just packed full of Celebration attendees after it was over. I was kind of hoping that would be the case here and I could meet more people and talk about Celebration. Oh well.

Anywho, I had a great time. I was able to do a lot, and everything went as smoothly as it possibly could. Did a lot of panels, the overnights were fun, my photo op/autograph day went a lot more smoothly than I had expected, got some exclusives pretty easily, met a lot of great people, met some big name SW people, and overall had as good a time as I thought I would. There were hiccups, and I battled the crowds, lines, missteps, and chaos like everyone else, but it was nothing that led to anything turning into a bad experience. I'll post about my experience a little later on. I found it so crazy yesterday as I was making my way out how after all these months of anticipation, after all these days packed full of Star Wars, and now it's all over. I definitely have the post Star Wars Celebration blues right now. I'll probably be spending all week catching up on all the live stream action.

I'm still at my hotel. It was weird waking up and not rushing over to the convention center this morning. It's like I still feel this pull there, like I'm missing out on something, even though obviously nothing is going on anymore. I have to head over to the FedEx office there anyway and ship a few things, so I'll be able to get some last few moments remembering the weekend.

I know I kind of dropped off here after that first day of constantly updating. Once it all started it was like the rope dropped at the starting line and I just kept going non-stop until now. Like I said, I'll post my thoughts later on, and I want to read all these pages to see how it went for people. From what I've read so far it didn't seem like everyone had the greatest experience.

Anyways, I'm going to start getting ready for the day and packing up to leave.

 

Guy got robbed. I sold mine + Leia for $350

 

I got one. It was really easy to get on Saturday. You didn't need a ticket or a lottery, just had to stand in line. I was in line for 30 minutes tops.

 

Did they have limit to how many you could buy?

 

Yes I was only able to get two. I suppose my wife and son could have also got two and we could have flipped them on Ebay but I'm not that kind of person.

 

I bought one off a guy for $60 on Thurs thinking they had much less quantity than they did and to just not have to waste any time trying to get it. Figured it was worth the extra few bucks. But then Friday afternoon I happened to be walking by the booth towards the end of the day, saw the line was basically confined to the space they were in with no one waiting outside it, the lady standing outside said they had just opened it up to everyone, so I got right in, and bought two, didn't take more than 15 minutes. I thought about selling one just to make the money back that I had spent for the first one I bought, but I figured whatever, I already have it. So now I have three.

 

Well I'm back home now. It's still surreal to me how we went for months and months of anticipation for this and now it's completely over. Even coming here to the forum there won't be those daily updates and chatter about it. It's why I made the best of it and just went non-stop when I was there.

Just a quick recap: I did the overnight wait for the 40th Anniversary and TLJ panels and got to see both live. Other panels I attended throughout the weekend were Ian McDiarmid, Ray Park, Making of RO, and Rebels Reunion. Saw and heard a lot of cool stuff at those. I did the late night screenings, including RO and ANH back to back. Did a photo op and autograph with Mark Hamill. Walked the show floor plenty of times. Bought some great shirts, pins, art prints, and exclusives. Took pictures of everything. I met Ray Park, Daniel Logan, and Rian Johnson when they came and visited the overnight queues. I also met Warwick Davis and Pablo Hidalgo at different points just walking around. Met a few people from this forum including Padme501st, star_wars_is_good, and another guy who spotted me after reading my posts about how to find me the first day (I forgot his username). Talked Star Wars with anyone and everyone I struck up a conversation with. And I think I only slept 20-25 hours total from Wed through Sun.

I definitely have the post Celebration blues. I'll be spending a lot of this week catching up on the live streams.

Don't get me wrong, it was definitely hectic, and I experienced my fair share of hiccups along the way. I'll get to more of a breakdown of that in the "Good, Bad, and Ugly" thread.

 

I just got back home a few hrs ago and wanted to chime in.I was very lucky enough to get a JM VIP badge so I got into all the big panels.But I will say this,the company/company's putting on all future Celebrations need to STOP OVERSELLING.Thursday was a nightmare for lots of people,VIPs to.We were told we could show up and seats would be saved for the 40th up until start,that wasn't true.I got there 30mins before the start and five mins after that it was a free for all.Plus people who waited in line for hours and hours were also turned away even with wrist bands.THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE.VIPs,Media and Medical took up a good portion of the room,so obviously nobody was doing a good job on count.Celebrations have always been great,but my biggest fear is that it's gonna turn into SDCC which is a circus and not worth going to anymore IMO.Don't ruin future Celebrations by greed.

 

I'm not sure over selling is the problem. The event itself (convention center/show floor) can accommodate the number of people, it's just that, short of hiring an arena, there's no way the panels can do the same and for big panels like the 40th and The Last Jedi, everyone (understandably) wants to be in the room.

I'm not sure what the solution is really. There's no way they'd ever cap the convention capacity at panel capacity and doing so would create create a situation even worse than SDCC for trying to get tickets. They already stream to 2 additional halls and the Star Wars stage in the main convention hall. Others have said they'd like additional screens around the hall (especially around the store queue), that might be something they could look into next time, maybe stream into the queue hall as well as that's a very large room that could hold a lot of people with a few big screens. I'd say could they do the main panel direct from the Star Wars stage on the show floor (definitely more room even if it is standing room only) but I don't think the acoustics would work for that.

The "problem" is that Star Wars is just getting bigger and bigger so the demand is going up. People said Anaheim 2015 was chaos compared with Orlando 2012, now they're saying the same about Orlando 2017 compared with Anaheim 2015. The over night queuing for a panel was unheard of before 2015's TFA panel but even based on 2015 they couldn't have anticipated the volume of people queuing over night last weekend. The demand is going up and the fans seem prepared to go to ever greater extremes to be there. It's easy to disperse a couple of people who want to queue before 8pm (they could have done it very easily in London last year), but when you have over 1000 what do you do? Allow them an unofficial line that's at least orderly or try and deal with 1000+ "dispersed" fans hanging around and all trying to crush into the area at 8pm? I'm honestly not sure what the answer is.

 

It has to be Anaheim in the future. There is no way they can do another Celebration without having that 8,000 person capacity arena to host the large most popular panels in. And with the proximity to Disneyland, the Anaheim Convention Center is the obvious choice.

It would be a major display of ReedPop's stubbornness and incompetence if they try going with another venue that isn't Anaheim. They've seen it now on both ends in this new wave and new era of Star Wars, and if it is still even a debate as to which is the better venue, or if they're mindset is to search for an altogether different venue somewhere else, whatever their reasoning may be, than that just shows they shouldn't be in charge of this event.

 

well rumor is the reason no location has been confirmed is because Disney (and I guess Lucasfilm? I'm not even sure who is in charge) is not happy with how things was handled by Reedpop and all the complaints so they haven't signed anything yet. A reedpop volunteer said it was in Orlando in 2019 on Saturday but then nothing was even confirmed. I also heard Reedpop is using guidelines for 35k people when attendance is now more like 75k and are refusing to change. I don't know if any of that is true, but what I do know is if Reedpop does do the next one, they need to be prepared way in advance, none of this trial by error. Also train your volunteers better. As the days went on, I was dispersed to lines much better than I was on Thursday when my only instructions were "go left" even after I asked. Enforce your rules! If you are going to do wristbands, hand them out when you close the doors at midnight or when people are coming in that night. There were too many people who were told they were in the live stage at 10pm on Wednesday to find out that was a lie on Thursday morning at 6am. Also maybe have your wristbands numbered by rows, so as you give them out down the line the people who have been in line for 20 hours get closer seats than the people who have been in line 5 hours, because the whole mad dash back to the queue line and to the main room totally negated the amount of time people spent in line. Passing out the wristbands prior to letting other people in might even help with the line cutting issue that caused overnight campers to miss out.

TOPPS was an absolute disaster. they got some of their problems worked out by Saturday for big guests only but that was too little too late for most people. Most of their staff would just say "I don't know" with no desire to help you further then that. I get better customer service out of minimum wage people where I drop $10, but here i'm spending hundreds and I'm moved to 5 different lines and still get nowhere. They also didn't enforce their rules or their own schedules which made it tough on fans. Fortunately I was able to get all my autos and pictures unlike other attendees so I am grateful for that.

With the popularity of the live stage, I'm thinking it could be located somewhere else besides the show floor to eliminate the mob in one area. Also thanks for "enforcing" the whole "No exclusives to vendors" rule...

 

2 days after celebration and I'm still depressed... We need a coping with post celebration depression thread.

 

The unfortunate part of the autographs/photo ops is that we're unlikely to get Official Pix back as the company handling them. The word I've gotten from several people who are involved with OP is that, after Disney bought Star Wars, they priced the cost for handling things so high that OP just couldn't afford to do it anymore. That's why such a big name like Topps was given the job. Disney pretty much burned their bridges with OP, so it's unlikely they'll get to handle things again.

Honestly, I think Disney needs to just handle the event completely or at least take over the majority of it. ReedPOP obviously can't handle this event anymore. What's even more shocking about how terrible ReedPOP has been since Anaheim is the fact that they also do PAX. PAX has similar attendance to SWC (if not a bit more people) and they seem to be able to handle those fine.

So unless they're going to bring in a company like Comic Con International I think they just need to take a more active role in this thing until either ReedPOP can show they can cope or they find someone else who can.

 

Yea, with two US Celebrations and one European Celebration under their belt in the post TFA era, there's no more excuses for the debacles. Either put up or hand it over to Disney.

 

If you read in the Celebration Orlando Program they usually don't do the same location twice so being that no celebration in 2018 look for it to return to Orlando in 3-4 years from now. And I am definitely going again and now that I know what it is like I will prepare better!

This Is a video I took on Friday!!!!!!!!


my bad if this video isn't allowed if so mods take it down but if it is allowed I hope you all enjoy!!!!!

 

When did tickets go on sale for this celebration and how long were VIP tickets available before they sold out? Thanks in advance!

 

May 25th 2016 and they sold out within 3 minutes I believe

 

If that long...

 

Just downloaded all the panels/ live stream from the youtube channel before they get taken down.

star_wars_is_good I have a question about VIP, did you need wristbands at all or did they let you in cause of your badge?