I had a dream for this SDCC, and that dream was to go to the Funko booth. Last year the booth eluded me, as I could never get to the hall early enough to avoid it being capped ahead of me, and then timing when the line would be uncapped proved impossible. Last year I had Funko Fun Day to salve this wound, but I was unable to secure tickets to the celebration this year, so there is no relief in my future.
Wednesday was Preview Night, and I thought I had everything under control. I showed up early, got in the professional line, and was ready to go. I thought I had it all covered–except the professional line is let in the same time as everyone else, and worse, it is let in on the opposite side of the convention center, so I had to briskly walk (not run–I would never run, but I am tall, so it may seem like I am running) across the entire hall, only to arrive just as the line was capped. Preview night is, of course, not long enough to let many more people in after the line is capped, so that ended my dreams for the night. The Funko booth continued to taunt me as I slowly walked away, nursing my wounds.
It’s a long road upstairs to your destination…
So what to do? Easy: get up early on Thursday, and try again. So I did. I wake up, get ready, and walk down the gargantuan everything-besides-Hall H line, and bunker down for the next few hours until the hall is open. Soon I realize I made the mistake of sleeping at all. The line is longer than expected, but there is still hope as maybe I won’t have to walk as far–and not everyone can go to the Funko booth. After a long wait, the throng is let in, and I slowly descend towards the exhibition hall amidst the mass of people. We are entering on the side by the Funko booth! I can do this. There is ho–nope, capped again. That is when I realize hope is a lie, a lie that made me waste precious time, so now the Marvel booth is also capped (just like Wednesday night). Broken hope that makes a man buy a SDCC exclusive Loot Crate just to have something. These are dark days. Ones I may never be able to recover fr–wait, is that a Godzilla shirt in my Loot Crate? Awesome, maybe things aren’t so bad.
Why do you taunt me so?
See, here’s the thing about SDCC. Rarely do things go according to plan, and it is a place of choices. Sometimes these choices lead to good places, and sometimes they lead to you spending your Thursday morning arriving too late from place to place to do what you wanted because you tried to do something else first (which also proved to be a failure). If you don’t learn to roll with the punches, SDCC will devour you whole. More importantly, missed opportunities always lead to other opportunities. So Wednesday I couldn’t get into either of the booths I wanted, but that just meant I got to go to smaller booths and leisurely enjoy Preview Night for once. There was no pressure, only a nice walk picking up other items of interest. Was it the night I had hope for? No. But was it lots of fun? Most definitely.
Continuing this line of thought, was much of Thursday morning a bust? Yep. I wasted a lot of time for no tangible gain. I lost opportunities to hang out with friends, too. But that is life. My Thursday still turned out just fine. Sure, I didn’t get to go to the Gravity Falls panel, but instead I stood in the LEGO Mini-Figure line and won an Arsenal. Then later I was still able to get into the Teen Wolf panel (which I’ll address more in the next Welcome to the Wolfpack). I ended the day getting an exclusive Funko Golden Frieza from the Funimation booth. In a lot of ways SDCC is like life, sometimes things don’t go your way and sometimes they do. Just as in life, how you roll with the bad breaks generally dictates how your SDCC experience will go.
Sometimes things just all come together.
So where do I go from here? Well, there is still plenty of con left, so maybe one day I will get into the Funko line. Then again, maybe I won’t, and instead will do something equally (or honestly more) fun. There are still three days left, and the fun is just starting. There are more lines to stand in, friends to hang out with, and new horizons to explore experience and explore. The key is to always be striving to have a unique SDCC experience, because ultimately, while the exclusives you get and the panels you see are cool, the most valuable thing are the memories you create. Words we should live by in real life as well.
…
Yeah, screw all that, I just want to get into the Funko line. Memories are cool, but what are those compared to sweet, sweet, exclusive collectible figures? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I hear another line calling to me, and I must go to it.
-David