Friday, June 10, 2016

Dallas Fan Expo 2016 (Guest writer)

Hey there, Fanatics!
My name is Hannah, sister of Megh and blood-sister of Aaron. I have a lot of feelings about cats, dragons and video games, and I go to local conventions whenever I can. I recently attended Dallas Fan Expo with a good friend of mine and her mother, who was kind enough to drive us up to Dallas because we are both terrified of Houston drivers and traffic in general. That being said, I would like to share a little bit about my time at the convention. I'll start off by saying that my first impression of the convention wasn't a fantastic one. The attendees that I passed on Friday seemed unhappy, and after hearing stories about Space City Comic Con, I was worried that we were in for a terrible weekend. Thankfully, I was wrong. As far as conventions go, Dallas Fan Expo is definitely one of the best I've attended.



Our first day revolved mostly around the exhibitors and artist alley, which are my favorite parts of any convention. I love seeing all of the unique, handmade items for sale and the equally unique people who create them. Meanwhile, my friend is much more interested in official collector's items and graphic novels. We both found a fair amount of booths that suited our interests, and we both walked away from the floor with a bag full of goodies.

The next thing on our list was a panel featuring Anthony Daniels, who plays C-3PO in each of the Star Wars movies. I'm not much of a Star Wars fan myself, but I generally like being around famous people. It makes me feel important. Now, we went to other panels throughout the weekend, we saw Frank Miller, Stan Lee and George Takei's panels as well, but none of them compared to Anthony Daniels'. He was animated, hilarious, informative and even brought two Star Wars cosplayers on stage with him to re-enact different scenes. Not only that, but he was incredibly charming. I was absolutely swept off of my feet just from watching him tell stories about his time on the set of Star Wars, a series that I'm not even interested in. My friend, her mother and I all agreed that he was the highlight of our weekend.

Now I'd like to talk a little bit about how the convention was run. The volunteers were absolutely fantastic, especially one woman named Patricia who was more than happy to answer any and all of our questions as we waited in line to get Amy Acker's autograph. She even stopped by to chat with us about the convention when she got a break from directing people. After we were done with the autograph, we asked another volunteer about a photo-op with Chloe Bennet, and he very politely gave us all the information we needed. He even answered a few questions that we didn't know to ask and made sure that we walked away completely informed about where we needed to be and when we needed to be there. We had a few more interactions with volunteers throughout the weekend and not a single one of them left me feeling confused or patronized.

All in all, I had an incredible time. If you have the chance to go to Dallas Fan Expo next year, I strongly recommend that you attend. It was worth the drive, the money, and the awful case of Con Crud that I'm currently experiencing as I write this.

Stay Fanatic,
Hannah

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