Good Points
- Seeing all the costumes and the effort that people had gone to.
- Seeing kids enjoying themselves.
- A good turn out
- Had a 20 minute chat with Dave Barclay and Toby Philpott - very nice guys!
- Got to put faces (and say hi) to a few names I've known online.
Bad Points
- Took me 55 mins to get in! A huge queue that took me 15 minutes to find the back of!
- Not enough catering. Too many queues.
- Rude staff who clearly didn't have a clue what they were doing.
- Bad design of the autograph area. If you didn't want to join the queue, you simply couldn't see any of the 'stars'. The queue should also have taken people by the other 'stars'. When I spoke to Dave and Toby nobody was in their queue. They were simply ingnored and very bored with it all.
- No 'star' panels. Why didn't they just sit everyone down and field questions from the audience.
- Queued for an hour to see 'one man star wars'. Didn't get in, so waited a further hour to see Anthony Daniels. After only 15 minutes of Mr.Daniels mortifying display, we just had to leave. Making the audience clap him and welcome him for over 10 minutes was just unbearable. Perhaps he doesn't get enough love from home. I actually thought he was slightly sloshed. Very weird indeed.
- Not enough info on what was where. For one, nobody could tell me where I had to go to find the queue to get my Hyperspace landyard. Perhaps I should have done a little more reseach.
- The vast majority of the floorspace was taken up by traders.
- I was absolutely sickened by the presence of the Army and Navy. "Do you kids enjoy watching people killed on films and games? Wanna do it for real?" Very distasteful and cast a real shadow over what was otherwise a family event.
Well I certainly learned a lesson. I should have gone on friday.
UPDATE:
should have added that I gave the Jabba crew copies of my docos. Dave Barclay in particular was a very nice guy. Toby was also very accomodating but has been ever since I contacted him when I was making 'Returning to Jedi'.
I should also say that the group of friends I spent the day with were very disheartened very quickly. So by the time I met up with them they pretty much wanted to leave. So I think I was dragged down with them. I wish I had managed to call Scott (Aficionado) back, but my phone ran out of battery and my only option would have been to carry on alone, something I wasn't very keen on. Many regrets really. Oh well. We live and learn.