19.7.17 at 3:56 PM with ≡
I have sooo many words to say about my experience, but I'll save that for later on in this post. first things first, I was only at anime expo for the weekend (2 days) but got the 4 day pass because it would've been cheaper & I really did not want to wait in line for 2 days straight to get each pass when I had better things to do.
saturday morning, I woke up at 4:30am to drive to LA (it's about a 2 hour drive from where I live) and got there around 6am. I decided to take a nap in my car for a bit & then I went to go wait in line for my pass at around 8:30am.
it was weird because I didn't see ANY staff or volunteers and there was this super long, make shift line for badge pick up. every person I asked wasn't sure what the line was for, but many were pretty certain it was the badge pick up line. fast forward to around 10am when FINALLY there were staff/volunteers around actually trying to organize this huge mess and from what I heard, badges were finally being handed out at almost 11am. which is ridiculous because it was supposed to start at 8am!!! last year wasn't even this bad.
anyways, the line kept getting longer and longer and at one point i was in line past pico and union. PICO AND UNION. according to my step tracker, by the time I got my badge i'd walked nearly 2 miles. and waited in line for 5 hours. I didn't get my badge until almost 2pm. I felt so bad for the girls I was in line with since they only got the one day pass and literally wasted half their day waiting in line. even guardians of the galaxy's line wasn't this long and that was disneyland.
thankfully the only reason I was at AX in the first place was for artist alley (and yamada ryosuke but it turns out his panel wasn't until monday and I wasn't able to attend, boo.) I didn't buy as much as I had anticipated and ended up buying more for friends and family, lol. but down below is my haul
after anime expo, me & my friend daisy went to check into our airbnb before going out to eat.
and can I just say the view from our airbnb was stunning????
the view in the morning was nice too, lol.
parked my car at AX before going to brunch with my bff, daisy. the food was delicious
the second day was mostly spent going through dealers hall and another round through artist alley to pick up a couple things. there was a lot of interesting things to see, and so many freebees being given out in dealers hall.
good smile had a bunch of nendroids and figures on display.
I was pretty meh about yurio's nendroid when he was announced, but seeing the mock up in person.... I Have to have him now omg. I'll definitely be pre-ordering whenever that is.
there's also an ushijima nendroid coming soon. he's so cute omg, too bad he isn't my favorite LOL. my kageyama nendroid actually arrived earlier this month, but I'll make a post about him later on ^^
there was also a huge digimon booth/set up that was really awesome.
and of course, love live standees
there was so many things to do & see and I definitely could not capture all that in pictures. I also left out quite a bit about my experience, but overall I did enjoy my time at anime expo this year. a lot of the people I met were so nice and easy to talk to. however, I do think they need to better organize everything. they should certainly consider mailing home badges because the waiting lines were absolutely ridiculous. I still cannot believe I waited 5 hours to get my badge. absolutely mind-boggling. but luckily, it wasn't that hot compared to last year (only mid 70s at the highest) and the a/c was actually on in artist alley so it didn't feel like we were all dying.
because of the debacle of badge pickup, I'm really hesitant of going to anime expo next year. maybe if a lot of my friends are going or if someone I really, really admire/like is having a panel, then I'll consider. but as of right now, I'm leaning towards not attending. I don't know what I'd do with myself if I had to wait in another 5 hour line to get my badge...
Labels: anime expo, love live
