my personal experiance at comic con

[bluebikerboy1]

so i appologize first for posting this late. but please keep in mind the following. i got a one day pass for thursday. me and my friend left wednesday (to the guys from the island no it wasnt rick so please refrain from the jokes, this is serious stuff). i drove both ways cause i was the insured party on my truck. anyways we left about 12:30pm. now we got there about 9pm. straight shot. why did it take so long? well i have always heard about Los angeles traffic but have never experianced it. it took us 3 hrs to get through LA. i will never in my life complain about sacramento or stockton or traffic from the altamount again scouts honor. so i get maybe 5hrs of sleep at a haunted hotel. and im dead serious about the haunting. ill tell that story some other time. so we get up at 5:30am. do the con and drive back leaving about 3pm and get home at midnight. again about 2+ hrs was LA traffic. so i was a little tired and i thank my son for allowing daddy to sleep in till 11am this morning.
anyways we leave the hotel and get to the convention center about 6:15am. about 7am heres what it looked like line wise from front to back.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y284/bluebikerboy1/convention/outcrowdfront.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y284/bluebikerboy1/convention/outcrowdback.jpg

[bluebikerboy1]

so heres were it gets screwy. i paid for a pre register online so i can get in faster. well wednesday was the "preview night" (im emphasizing preview for everyone and i will get into why later) were you can go and get your badge and "look" at the floor. again keyword is preview and look. and that is what it was advertised as.
so they let all the people that were there wednesday that had there badges go in at like 8:30am. they werent suppposed to get in the actual convention, just let in the doors to wonder around for an hr and a half. so finally after they go (and it was over half the line btw) they let the pre registerd in to get our badges. i high tailed it in (my friend had other arangements to get in for free cause he knew a seller). was about the 12th person in line to get the badge. got it, and continued to yet the next line to get in.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y284/bluebikerboy1/convention/crowd1.jpg
at least while waiting i got to take a picture. heres me with some troopers and a kinda hot jedi lady'
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y284/bluebikerboy1/convention/mesw.jpg

[bluebikerboy1]

so we proceed in. and heres the screwy part. badges are already in for the most part. hasbrotoyshop booth (were the exclusives are) instead of doing a line were first come first serve they handed out tickets. you get a ticket and hopefully you got an oppertunity to get what you wanted cause the tickets were numbered and certain numbers can shop at certain times. well, they handed out tickets the night before (PREVIEW NIGHT) for the morning (10am when doors opened) and what was left for the morning ticket numbers were snagged up by the people that got the badges wednesday night and were let in first. heres a scene of the MOB
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y284/bluebikerboy1/convention/hasbrocrowd.jpg

[bluebikerboy1]

so next tickets are at two to get an oppertunity to buy. well come to find out not only were they handing out tickets wednesday, hasbro was selling the exclusives to dealers and epople at preview night wednesday. so guess what happened. this picture is taken about 1pm on thursday. 3 hrs after the con is supposed to start.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y284/bluebikerboy1/convention/outstocksign2.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y284/bluebikerboy1/convention/outstocksign.jpg

[bluebikerboy1]

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y284/bluebikerboy1/convention/outstocksign.jpg

[bluebikerboy1]

for thoes that cant read it. it says the following next to destro

show inventory sold out. visit hasbro toyshop.com

[bluebikerboy1]

luckily a guy felt bad when i was telling him i drove 9 hrs and i didnt get what i came to get so he sold me a silver destro for 20 bucks. and theres a chance my friends friend is going to score a gold head for me. that chance is slim but it might happen. so at least i got a silver head for me.
so after security told us at 10 to leave to get some crowd control i proceed to wait till 2pm to get a shot at a ticket (i did get one at 2pm btw. so i did get to get a couple exclusives from hasbro, just not gi joe. also they had 5 packs for sale that sold out about the same time the destros did) i go to the matell booth. well first i went to the lego booth and entered to win some lego millenium falcon for a guy i know that couldnt make it and entered the bronze c3po for me.
so i go to matell. they have this huge line and i get in it. 45 min later this security guy comes and tells the
4th person in front of me (and thus everyone in back of him) that the line is too long and they are inforcing crowd control and we all have to leave and comeback when the line gets under control.
so 2 lines of exclusives im kicked out of. so i go to gentle giants booth. they have some statues i was looking to pick up and so sur eenough tickets are handed out every hr to get a chance to but these statues. needless to say by the time i got in line for that the ones i wanted were sold out for the day.
so i just went around and got some other stuff instead. met a few comic book artists. didnt get any autographs and now im regreting that. stan lee was rummored to be there that day and signing autographs but i didnt get any conformation of that and never saw any signs or anyhting of it so that may have been hearsay.

[bluebikerboy1]

did see some other cool stuff and took the following pictures
girl from that grunge movie (forgot what it was called. it was 2 movies in one that came out a little while ago)
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y284/bluebikerboy1/convention/grung2.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y284/bluebikerboy1/convention/grung1.jpg
and a very nice lelia costumed girl
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y284/bluebikerboy1/convention/leliachick.jpg

[DESTRO]

That sucks Blue, you went all that way and could not get a Destro.

[bluebikerboy1]

so i got my ticket for 2pm. had to use my 6-3 and long ass arms to my advantage to get it. at first i didnt think i was going to get it. this isw how it went down. these guys "enforcing crowd control" kept coming out saying if you were loitering in the area waiting to get a ticket that you wouldnt get one so leave. so 2pm came around, the back of the booth oppened. it was a mob. i was going over people to get a ticket and the same guy came out 45 sec after first ticket handing out saying no more would be given out till the mob leaves. so that was it.
luckily about 10 ft from him there was a lone guy handing them out and he was burried. i reached over like 10 people and got mine finally. but my number was for tommarrow morning. you heard that right all that work and i cant buy till tommarrow (friday). well i go to the lady that is guarding th line and tell her my story that i was there one day and she let me in. i got some star wars stuff and she hulks and 1 stan lee figure. afterwards im frusterated (and so is my friend. he got in early enough to get some silverhead destros but even he didnt get a gold head. but luckily he may score one from his friend. well good for him and if he reads this no hard fellings clint. im just praying your friend has a big gracious heart :) ). so we dont do any of the meetings and leave. its a good thing i guess cause i was dead tired and barely made it home as it was.

[bluebikerboy1]

so hasbro if you see this you are going to have some very pissed off people including me. i feel very bad for the friday,saturday,sunday people. thye dont even get a chance to get any destros.

[flash70]

lol...thank you "Hasbro"...you are proving my point everyday with your bad service.

biker...i'm sorry dude...its not worth all the hassle you went through.

[bluebikerboy1]

^^ no kidden about bad service. the guys at the booth litteraly told us on more then one occasion to get lost. seriously.

[Mtolen78]

Usually the big vendors like this will allocate a certain amount of figures for each day. That way they don't sell out on thrusday screwing everyone else for the rest of the weekend. I'm pretty sure that's what happened here. I have friends still there trying to get figures, just a matter of getting the golden tickets I guess.

[Cataclizm1]

All the Destros at SDCC are gone entirely. No more for the week-end. This was confirmed to me by a hasbro employee there. Luckily I managed to get 1 each silver and gold on Thursday morning. :)

[Mtolen78]

I wouldn't blame hasbro as a company though. The workers at the conventions should have had a better plan, and they should have been a little more stern to vendors. I know of several ebayers that are able to secure many destros and hot rods and what not. They tell me all they have to do is schmooze the right people and they are able to buy as much as they want. Such is the life of a collector.

[OUTBACK]

great documentary!!

must have been a hectic few days. still though..i wish i was there.

[Nemesis_Enforcer]

Hey everyone, HTS has both the Gold & Silver Destros available for $9.99 each!!

[CrazyBones]

Thanks for the pics and review Blue. Sorry to hear you didn't score any Destro's.

I went to Celebration III and it was very much the same. The lines are crazy and the fire marshall closed down the store a couple of times.

[C.I.A.D.]

Blue, sorry that things didn't work out as planned...

I will say this though, at ANY toy show that offers exclusives...it's all about who you know. If you happen to know "Mr. X" that works at the Hasbro booth...then SHAZAAM!...you just scored easy access to anything and everything you want/need.

As also mentioned, proof of this is all over FeeBay, as more than one seller has/had at least 20 of each in stock.