From last time...
DAY 2/ Friday (continued!)
I posted a pic of the WETA booth in last Friday's SDCC recap post. I forgot to mention that we saw Evangaline Lily while we were wandering around looking at all the Lord of the Rings/ The Hobbit props. She plays the elf Tauriel in the upcoming The Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug, but she was at the booth to sign her new children's book.
We left the Exhibit Hall after that to take a look at the off-site attractions. We bumped into this Ugly Doll first though.
Outside, in front of the Hilton Bayfront Hotel and by the marina, they had a bunch of random cool stuff. There was also a blimp in the sky that looked like a minion from Despicable Me.
Inflatable giant Teen Titans Go figures and Scooby Doo's Mystery Machine.
 |  |
Very cool, sorta life-sized LEGO version of Bilbo's Bag End - complete with Bilbo, Gandalf, & Dwarves
Also, this giant ship in the marina? It's promo for the new Assassin's Creed game.
Away from the marina, back on the San Diego Gaslamp district, we hit up all the photo booth opps we could find. A really cool one was HBO's Game of Thrones exhibit. You could get your face drawn into a GoT scene (we didn't do this), sit on the Iron Throne, look at cute FUNKO GoT figures, play a GoT archery game, and get custom HOUSE shirts made! (I'll post a shirt pic when I do the swag post.)
 |
| The outside of the GoT exhibit. Pic from Thurs night when we passed by. |
 |
| House Stark (Photo/the Sister) |
From there, we got in line at Dracula's Crypt to see what that was all about. It was next to a restaurant that had been taken over to be NBC's Revolution themed. Inside Dracula's crypt, we saw an extended trailer for NBC's new fall show DRACULA. We were ushered into a 2nd room where there was a coffin with a desiccated body impaled on spikes. Then we were shown an opening scene from the show on the ceiling. The last room was a photo opportunity inside Dracula's coffin.
 |  |
The ladies working at the Dracula thing really liked our skirts. :)
Around the corner from Dracula's crypt was the GRIMM photo opportunity. It was pretty cool because they rebuilt the spice shop from the show to exacting detail. It was full of bottles and curiosity cabinets, books and bits and bobs. The photographer was funny because he kept telling the Sister to move her hand holding the magnifying glass up or down, to the right and more to the right.
We were like, "What is he doing?" but after he snapped the shot, he was like, "I wanted to make your eye BIG."
We headed back to the convention center after this to see if the Summit T-Shirt Bar line was shorter. Upstairs in the Ballroom 20 area, we saw that the line was closed for the day. But more importantly, this is when the Sister spotted the Hannibal crew of Bryan Fuller and Hugh Dancy. I posted this already, but I think I need to post it again.
We went back to the Exhibit Hall, sort of saw the Game of Thrones cast signing from afar, met up with the Sister's friend, saw more cool figures & models, and the Sister met her spirit animal R2-D2.
We went back to the apartment to put our stuff down before heading back out to the Gaslamp District. Needless to say, it was a happening place -what with the parties, eating, and general hanging out. We ate pinkberry, checked out the Course for the Force art gallery, and kept a lookout for celebs.
(We actually saw Manu Bennett - from Spartacus, Arrow, and The Hobbit - when we were eating at pinkberry.)
 |
| Defiance Cafe. The Superman 75th anniversary party was happening on the roof. |
 |
| Apparently, this shows up parked on this street every year for SDCC. |
 |
| This lounge was turned into the Bates Motel for A&E's social. |
We wanted to try to catch the free screening of Edgar Wright's movie World's End, but since we were planning to be in the Hall H line for part of the night, we thought we ought to head back to the apartment to sleep in a bed while we could. We passed by Petco Park on the way back though, so we got to see one of the Walking Dead Experience night-runs.
If I were more of a runner and less of a chicken, I think this would be totally fun to do. It's a 5K obstacle-ridden, zombie-infested course set up in the concourses of Petco Park. At the end, runners get an exclusive prize. This year looked like T-Shirts and posters. Last year, I heard the prize was an exclusive copy of The Walking Dead #100. You can also opt to be a zombie & they make you up to be spectacularly undead.
 |
| (Photo/ the Sister) |
 |
| These zombies are waiting for runners to come through this part of the obstacle course. |
AND that was our Friday night. We turned in after looking at the zombies and had a night of not-so-much sleep, and then we woke up at 2:30a to get our butts down to the Hall H line. But that's another day. Tune in for the Day 3 recap next week!
The Sister and I are probably going to see Percy Jackson & the Sea of Monsters and Elysium this weekend. Are any of you looking forward to any of these (or other) summer movies?
By the by, if you haven't seen Pacific Rim yet, everyone at the blog here heartily recommends it. It is such an entertaining and gorgeous visual movie. And the best part? Yes, it plays to a lot of cheesy tropes and plot lines, but it's a loving homage to Japanese monster (kaiju) films, and if you really look at it, the movie actual subverts a lot of the tropes it initially presents. And it's just awesome. So consider it maybe? (Don't worry. I thought it looked kind of ridiculous too, but I was so glad to be SO wrong about it.)
For more SDCC goodness, here are my previous related posts:
1) What's Up Wednesday (7) / RSW (6)
2) SDCC Recap No. 1
3) What's Up Wednesday (8) / Our Comic Con Fashion
4) SDCC Recap No. 2
Posts
