NeutralDrow said:
Ouch. I'd have plenty of recommendations, but...I live in San Diego, so I can't comment on travel, hotels, and the like. If you
do go for a hotel here, I wouldn't try for one downtown. They're likely to have vastly inflated prices. As long as you can find one along any of the trolley lines (green line especially), transportation isn't a problem at all.
It is pretty darn fun to come all four days, I've found. I typically manage with between $200-$300 worth of spending money (I save about a month's pay just for that), though scraping more doesn't hurt.
G1eet said:
Mr.Pandah said:
Bring a few hundred bucks though in case anything catches your eye. 300 dollars should cover it, if you're really spend happy.
What sort of things were the booths selling, other than, say, clothing with logos and such?
A few thousand metric asstons of stuff. Clothing, DVDs of all sorts, games (board, card, video, you name it), weaponry (normal and replica), comics and books, dice, food, porn (at the J-List booth, at least, though there must be more), stuffed animals, memberships, figurines...
Don't let the name fool you, it's not just about comics. If you're a geek of any sort (comics, anime, video games, television, cinema, science fiction, fantasy, cards...), it's heaven. Myself, I go primarily for the anime, as well as certain video game and webcomic interests, and I only see a bare fraction of what there is to see.
As a resident, do you have any recommendations for where to eat?
Also, do you remember which booths were the best to visit? (Least crowded, most rewarding, etc.)
For the first...I think it would depend on the area where you stay, to be honest. Most of the food in the convention itself is absurdly expensive (though there are a few normal-priced stands with decent hot dogs and salads), and I've only eaten outside the center in the Gaslamp Quarter once. Still, restaurants aren't too hard to find right outside the convention center...the eastern side, at least (can't speak for the western side, near Seaport Village).
And the second...it would depend on what you're looking for. The lowest crowds tend to be on the opposite ends of the exhibition hall, near the rows and rows of comics on one end and the less-traveled (usually gaming and art-related) booths on the other. Still, crowds are pretty much impossible to avoid on any day but Sunday. The booths I wind up frequenting are on those opposite sides; not necessarily because of the crowds, but because the center area is devoted to things like Star Wars, Viz Media, Marvel and DC Comics, the film/television series du jour, and the like, stuff that doesn't interest me. For specific interests, let's see if I can remember this right...
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Western comics - west side of the exhibition hall (A and B sections, lower numbers from 0-900). Sometimes extend into the center with the large companies. Sometimes overlap with newspaper comics...but I typically ignore them, as a whole. If you're interested in Golden/Silver/Bronze/Dark age comics, I tend to see the fewest crowds around the boxes.
Manga/Anime - Same as above. Sometimes extends into the center with Viz and Tokyopop, and there are a few large distributors near the western wall. The actual anime rooms (where I work) are upstairs in rooms 24 and 25, east of the Sails Pavilion.
Webcomics/Machinima - Usually in the western half, closer to the back.
Video games - booths are typically in the eastern side of the exhibit hall (these are pretty darn fun, as they usually have sneak previews and samples available to play), though there are some special interest areas in the west. Actual games to play are usually upstairs in the hallways (last year was a rip, they just had Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion).
Autographs - if they're not at individual booths, authors and artists are in the Sails Pavilion upstairs.
Art - Near the eastern wall of the exhibit hall (or this one area upstairs in the Sails Pavilion). I usually ignore them.
Tabletop gaming - Same as above, except for the ignoring part. There's actually this one booth where I buy dice every year, normal and specialty type...
T-shirts - at individual booths, or along the front of the western and eastern walls (I think they're the same on both sides).
Food - scattered in stands throughout the hallways, or all along the back wall of the exhibit hall.
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All of that was true as of last year. To be perfectly honest, you'd be better served with an actual program than my recollections. I don't even go to panels, I tend to ignore swag, and I typically hit the same areas each year (Dayfree Press, Penny Arcade, J-list, Rooster Teeth, Castle dice, some place selling weapons, the eastern area with video games, the T-shirt wall, the gaming hallway, and the anime rooms) and then just wander around looking. I did wind up missing some mock medieval combat outside on the embarcadero...
