Lines, signings, crowds, and celebrity sightings – it must be San Diego Comic Con!

I managed to score a four-day badge for the con, which happened this last week (July 18-21).

We spent our first day at the convention browsing the exhibit floor and checking out merchandise. After that, we headed out onto the marina where I participated in a trivia game hosted by IMdb. People could join by going online and answering the fifteen questions; the top 150 people would get to go on board the boat and I was lucky enough to rank number two. It was a nice respite from the heat and walking around the con; the free food and drinks were a great bonus as well.

But even luckier, I managed to get inside the infamous Hall H for not one day, but two.

If you’ve never been to San Diego Comic Con, Hall H is known to be the home of announcements of big-name studios, like AMC, Fox, Marvel, HBO, or Warner Brothers. People spend whole days sitting in line in hopes of getting a coveted wristband that will grant you access to the hall. Even after sitting in line and procuring a wristband, some people even camp out under the white tents next to Hall H in order to get good seats inside of the giant hall (Hall H seats about 7,000 people in the audience.)

So, for the first time since I’ve started attending cons, I joined the giant group of campers on Thursday night. (Side note: if you ever decide to camp out or are trying to get into Hall H, find yourself a line-sitting group. It’ll make getting into the panels and sitting in line much more bearable.) After setting up sleeping bags for the night, those who elected to camp out got some surprise visitors – some of the cast members from Amazon Prime’s new series The Boys. The cast was passed out candy and burgers from Carl’s Jr. to the waiting attendees and were kind enough to spend time taking selfies and signing autographs.

Click on the buttons or scroll the gallery below for recaps and photos from some of the Friday panels:

AMC’s The Walking Dead

After those three panels, I decided to head out since I’d be camping out again that night. There were no surprise visitors to the tents on Friday night, but that’s okay since we were in for a treat the next day.

Saturday tends to be a big affair for Hall H. Though they were absent this year, Warner Brothers often starts off the presentations, which in the past has included the DCEU movies as well as the Fantastic Beasts series. Marvel Studios is also included on Saturday and this year marked their return after taking a hiatus last year. Check out our recaps of the panels on twitter at @crazy10ent and some photos of the Marvel Studios presentation below:

Sunday was a relatively relaxed day for me at SDCC. I did get into the “Everything Else” line at 4am to get into the convention center to try to get a ticket for the Marvel merchandise line. Other than that, I had no lines I had to worry about rushing into and spent the day browsing the various booths and doing some shopping. I also hit up the annual blood drive at the Hyatt hotel adjacent to the convention center. In addition to helping out someone in need, you also get a cool t-shirt; this year, it was an Avengers: Endgame design.

By the end of the weekend I was exhausted and sunburned, but was able to have a super enjoyable Comic Con experience. Of course, there’s more to SDCC than what I’ve mentioned above, such as offsite activations, other panels, cosplaying meet-ups, signings, or parties; everyone does Comic Con differently. There’s always something cool to see and there’s no one definitive way to experience SDCC. I think that’s what causes thousands of people to flock to downtown San Diego each summer — being able to be surrounded by things that they enjoy and others who have similar interests.

San Diego Comic Con will return to the San Diego Convention Center July 23-26, 2020.

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