Wizard World
May 22, 2004
Philadelphia Convention Center - Philadelphia, PA

Guests:

Eliza Dushku: Faith the Vampire Slayer (BtVS/AtS)

Brian Thompson: Luke/The Judge (BtVS)

Scott L. Schwartz: Various demons (BtVS/AtS)

photos

Uhm, yeah. Where the hell do I start with this one? I had decided a few weeks back that I would try to get to this one because Eliza Dushku was going to be there and for $20, you can't go wrong, right? HA! Whatever. I arrived at the Philadelphia Convention Center shortly after 10 AM. That was probably my first big mistake. I had an early bird pass and should have taken advantage of it. However, I'm still fighting my cold and I'm totally wiped...which means I had a hell of a time getting out of bed yesterday morning. Anyway, that aside, I went upstairs to the festivities, found my way to the autograph area and was standing in line for Eliza when they cut off the line with one other person in front of me. She was scheduled to sign from 11-12 and then again from 3-5. Not a problem, right. Wrong. Those of us who were left outside the queue were told that we could no wait in line for the next session, that we had to disperse and come back after her Q&A. Fine. Not a problem, or so I thought. The girl in front of me and I had struck up a conversation while we had been waiting and it was good that I did because she played an important role for me later on that afternoon.

Anyway, I decided to busy myself visiting the guests who were on hand, including Brian Thompson (Luke/The Judge on BtVS), Scott Schwartz (who played a bad guy in several Angel and Buffy eps) as well as Brian O'Halloran of Clerks fame. Yes, my friends, Dante from the Kevin Smith movies was there signing autographs as well as selling Dante action figures. I was so excited about meeting Brian that I called both SoccerRef and frackattackgirl to tell them who was there. It was very, very cool. In fact, View Askew had a whole booth set up and it was freakin' amazing.

After giggling with glee over the whole meeting of Dante, I checked the time and figured since it was almost noon, I may as well head down to the Julias Schwartz room to get a seat for Eliza's Q&A which was scheduled for 1 PM. In the meantime, Joe Quesada - head of Marvel Comics - was giving his panel. I'm not a comic book fan by nature, but I thought his talk might sound interesting, especially with the whole Joss connection. And yes, he did talk about how excited everyone was that Joss was on board. He also said that he had asked Joss to pen a comic a few years back, but that Joss turned him down because at that time he was in the middle of Buffy, Angel and Firefly. So apparently, last year at the San Diego Comicon, Joe was sitting there signing stuff and he realized he had lost Joss's phone number and wasn't sure how to get in touch with him, and that's when he looked up and right there in front of him was none other than Joss Whedon. That's when he asked Joss if he wanted a job and Joss said that the timing was pretty good, so yeah. And the rest is history. They're all very excited about what Joss can bring to the table - including a huge following. I'm glad that I decided to go to Joe's panel because he's very funny and had a great time talking about up coming projects for Marvel. I just may have to start reading comic books. *g*

Once Joe's panel was over, the room sort of cleared out and I moved from the 5th row to the second row for Eliza's Q&A. She was about 15 minutes late and when she did arrive and start taking questions, she stood behind the podium the whole time behind the microphone. At one point she did lower the mic so we could see her face, but from my vantage point, all I got to see was her eyes and forehead. Yay. Oh well. Some of the highlights that I can remember of her talk:

For other questions and answers that I didn't get to or remember, you can read about it here. Once her Q&A ended, I ran upstairs to get in line for her autograph because they kept saying that autographs were from 3-5 and I wanted to make sure that I was going to make the cut off this time. Well imagine my freakin surprise when I get up there and there's a Wizard staff member standing at the end of a line with a sign that says, "I'm soooo last in line." What???? I ask him if this is the line for Eliza and he says yes and that it's capped and has been for several hours. So I get pissed. I tell him that I was told not to come back until after the Q&A and that we weren't allowed to line up until then and he said I was given bad information. Excuse me? It was given to me by a person in an orange Wizard staff shirt. He says that I was given bogus information and that Eliza will sign up to six items so maybe I should go makes friends with someone in line. By this point I am so pissed off I want to rip someone a new one, but as I walk down the line I see the girl that was in line with me earlier. I start talking to her and then she offered to get my stuff signed. She also asked if I wanted to get in line with them and I said I didn't want to because I hadn't been there whole time and stuff. It was just enough to get the cards signed, I didn't have to meet her too. So while I was standing there talking to Britney, this person comes up next to me and asks a question. I turned to answer and it's thefangirl, drinkthepoisonx, soulmate815 and Ginger (sorry, not sure if you have an LJ). Of course we all squee and there's hugs all around. So for the next 3 hours we stand around chatting and waiting to see if we'll get autographs from Eliza.

The people from the earlier line who didn't get autographs were given ticket numbers and allowed to return to their positions before she stopped signing. That was all fine well and good...there couldn't have been more than a hundred of them. Well guess what? It took Eliza two hours to sign 100 autographs...okay not even two because she showed up 15 minutes late and then for the last 15 she signed stuff for the volunteers and staff....WTF???? Not once while we stood in line did anyone in an orange Wizard staff shirt come by to say Eliza would not get to this line off to the side. We weren't even allowed to get in the barrier line at all. Once 5 PM came, she bolted. Didn't even acknowledge that there was a whole long line off to the side waiting to see her. Nothing. I don't care if she had commitments, she could have at least made some attempt to say sorry or whatever. I thought there was going to be a riot. People were so totally pissed off and Marlaine went up to a staff member and started complaining. Of course, we kept hearing that there was no guarantee that we were going to get autographs and this, that and the other thing and blah blah blah blah blah. Bullshit. You should have seen the kids in line sobbing because they didn't get to meet her. It was so not right. Some people didn't even get to see her Q&A because they had started lining up at Noon.

When we all tried to complain, the head security guy brushed us all off and said there was nothing he could do about it. Sort of like, we've got your money, we don't give two shits how you feel about this. Well, guess what buddy? I'm a consumer and a paying customer. Do you know what this means? It means I'm going to come here on LJ and on my yahoo lists and on other boards around the fandom and I'm going to tell hundreds, if not thousands of people how poorly organized your event was and how you treated your customers. Do you know what else that means? Well it means a good percentage of people are now going to think twice about buying your tickets to Wizard World Chicago to see Joss Whedon. Why? Well if you can't handle Eliza Dushku, then how on earth are you going to handle someone of the caliber of Joss Whedon?? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Once we got the brush off, we decided to get our money back. We went down stairs and asked who it was we needed to see about refunds. The group at the ticket table pointed to a guy sitting alone. We descended upon him, but were nice about it. We didn't yell. We didn't pitch a fit. We calmly explained to him what happened and how we felt about it. We also made it clear that at one time or another we all had worked Buffy cons with James Marsters as a guest and managed to push 600 or more people through an autograph line in three hours, so there really was no reason for her only signing 200 all day. Ingrid also pointed out that the whole reason she came was because last year her friend came to see Kevin Smith - KEVIN SMITH!! - and praised Wizard World for how well organized they were with him in attendance. Everyone who was in line for an autograph got one. The guy's response to that? "Eliza's popularity took up by surprise." Uhm, excuse me? You had no idea that she would have hundreds of fans show up? Riiiiiiight. If I'm not mistaken, I also got the impression that Eliza was also part of the problem. Whatever. I don't want excuses. What I wanted was to make sure that they were aware that they screwed up big time and I also wanted to know what we they going to do to prevent something like that from happening in the future. The guy apologized profusely and admitted that they indeed had screwed up and he refunded us our money. One small victory for a mostly wasted day.

So for those of you considering going to Wizard World Chicago to see Joss...I highly suggest you call ahead and see what they plan to do about his autograph line. Now, for one thing, he's going to be there the whole weekend if I'm not mistaken, whereas Eliza was only there on Saturday, so I'm sure that's going to make a big difference when it comes to spreading out the autographs. But still...if you're going to go all that way and pay for admission, plane tickets, rental cars, etc., make sure you know what you're getting into first. I'd hate to have you disappointed like we were.

Brat