TR: Star Wars Celebration IV 5/26/07

[Rastuso]

Yeah, this is a bit late, but I've finished all my TRs now, so here's the first one...

 

TR: day 1

 

The first day was our main reason for going to LA when it was not Halloween. In celebration of one of the greatest movies ever, A New Hope, we went to Celebration IV at the LA Convention Center. For 5 days, every geek, nerd, or ewok was there, many of them dressed up, although I sat on my ass too long and never got around to buying a Jedi outfit. So, we get to the center an hour before the show opens on Saturday. We were told by a worker that unless we were wanting to get into a specific exclusive or autograph line, we should just wait in the plaza until the huge line makes it in, about 30 minutes after the doors open. So, we did that.

 

There were plenty of dressed up folks, mostly Jedi and Stormtoopers, but there was a decent female Han, a Tusken Raider, Biker Scout, a few extended universe Sith Lords that my son knew, and not a single slave Leia. Anthony Daniels, who was C-3PO in all 6 movies, worked the crowd a bit as he walked into the show. There were also some weird mixup folks there. A group of Batman, Robin, and Joker as Jedi was cool, and there was a very funny cartoon group of Chewie, C-3PO, and R2 that got lots of attention. But, by far the greatest thing happened about 5 minutes until 10.

 

Out comes Vader and 15 troopers or so, and they form a large circle in the plaza. Everyone gathers around, with me and my son right on the edge of the circle with a Biker Scout staring us down. Then a shrill comes from a distance and we see Boba Fett flying towards us with his jet pack. My God it was loud, probably close to 100 db. Fett lands right in front of Vader, about 10 feet from us, shakes his hand, and they walk into the center. Celebration had begun.

 

We went in to see even more folks dressed up, like Darth Maul and another Fett. We headed into the vendor room first. There were a few companies set up like Topps, Hasbro, Gentle Giant, etc. I wasn’t really interested in any exclusives except Hasbro’s concept Luke figure. My son entered an Attacktix tournament and got a free silver one. We got the freebie Celebration coins and Luke card back from Hasbro. We then got some autograph coupons for my son to get General Grievous’ (Matthew Wood) autograph. There were lots of celebrities, but no huge ones besides Carrie Fisher, who I got an autograph from a few years ago. It was sad to see the low-end people with no lines. And Gen Con didn’t make it easy to get autos. I probably would have got one from the Oompa Loompa/Jawa, but I would have had to go wait in line again to get a coupon, then come back for the auto.

 

We then went to the other areas. They had a room full of Vader helmets painted by lots of different people, a small archive room which had Vader’s helmet with Luke’s head in it from Empire, and some crispy Anakin props. We saw our first slave Leia posing in front of the real costume. We then headed to the collecting room where they were giving various collecting presentations. BUT, they were also randomly giving out pewter collector medallions at some of them. We missed one by about 30 minutes and sat in the collecting at large show. There were some SCARY collectors in there that go to Mexico just to buy ice creams to hand them out free to kids so they could keep the wrappers. One of the folks was the wife of a Lucasfilm exec, so I can see him having the cash to do it. But one guy was a chemist from Kansas who travels Europe collecting different language versions of the same kids books. Quite scary. We got no medallion. The next topic was cast and crew collectibles about various cool rare stuff including the Blue Horizon stuff when that was the fake name of Jedi while filming. I had to go to the can, so we slipped out fast, knowing if they decided to hand out medallions while we were gone, and we were not in a seat we’d miss it. We did it fast, got back and still found some seats luckily. About 10 minutes later, they handed out the Luke medallions: SCORE! A great exclusive item from the event.

 

We decided to leave with our one coin and do some more stuff. We hit the store next. Previous celebrations were poorly ran and had 3-4 hour lines at the store. We waltzed in to an airplane hanger sized store with about 5 people in it. No real cool items, really. I did get a shirt, but skipped the concept C-3PO/R2-D2 figs. I wasn’t the only one. People attending on the last day of the show got a free fig, instead of paying $20 because they had so many left over.

 

There were presentations about upcoming Star Wars episodes of Robot Chicken and Family Guy, and both Seths were there, but I couldn’t take my son to those. We went up and got our photo op at a cool set made to look like the opening shot of the droids coming down the hallway in A New Hope. We missed the Slave Leia gathering at the full size Jabba set that was there. I saw video of about 30 Leias there, and heard they called the Fire Marshall because of the crowding of geeks there. We did see a few others walking around. God bless ‘em.

 

We saw some other great costumes including 3 Cylons that were VERY impressive with sound and lights. One fat drunk disco Boba Fett was stumbling around with a drink. We also finally saw a real cool General Grievous. It was a simple costume, but looked really good. He let my son have one of his sabers for the photo. There was also a totally out of place Jack Sparrow.

 

All-in-all a fantastic time was had, and we decided to not return the next day since we pretty much did everything we wanted to do.

 

If there is a Celebration V for Empire in a few years, I can definitely foresee us returning.

 

Of course, I had to stop at In-N-Out Burger for dinner. This was my second day to feed the urge, and my bowels felt I had had enough for a while. But, I do still love their food.

A beautiful sight that I already miss

Awesome drunk disco Fett

Grievous

RRC's dream come true

A very good slave leia

Cool Empire prop

Random strangeness

Boba Fett jets in to meet Vader

Funny Chewie, C-3PO, and R2-D2

[Disney Dood]

Disco Fett? Why not a crunk Vater?

[SharkTums]

I wonder how dangerous that Jet Pack entrance was...I think I would have duck and covered!

 

Thanks for making me feel better about being a Coaster Enthusiast!

[Rastuso]

It was definitely loud enough to cause hearing loss. Besides that, I doubt it had much danger as far as the rocket exploding. And Boba is surely into self preservation. Although he told me he only had 3 or 4 seconds of thrust left when he landed.

 

I don't know what's worse, a $500 Star Wars outfit, or a vest with $500 worth of patches on it

 

Rastus

[alpengeist04]

I think I would have hung around the slave Leias too.

[dino]

Ohh looks like fun. I'll have to go next time. Although I like star wars, it would probably make me feel better about myself because I would see I'm not a full out "star wars nerd".