I know I love to throw out “Best weekend ever!” quite often,
but I soooo whole heartedly mean it for this past weekend. Here I go,
entering total fangirl mode:
Somehow, in my years of being a total TV nerd, I’d never hit
a con before. While I loved the idea of doing something like Comic Con since
most of the time my “Once Upon a Time” peeps are there – it’s so incredibly
large and intense! So when OUAT peeps got added to Spooky Empire, it seemed
like a great opportunity. And when Lana Parrilla got added – there was no way
around skipping this con. This con is typically a Horror convention (Robert
Englund typically appears to be the most popular there each year), and this was
their first year branching out a little bit. It was a massive success, as the
crowd Lana attracted was INSANE. Even after years of fan fair, I’ve never seen
anything like her lines. Clearly, the Evil Queen is QUITE loved.
Fortunately, we were VIP Pass holders. VIP passes got to get
in the doors an hour earlier, and then we also got to jump the auto and photo
lines.
I flew out of Nashville Friday to Orlando with an old
friend Robin. Immediately we got off the plane and saw this Snow White figure
sitting outside the Disney World shop. So obviously I did what any Evil Queen
fan would do—I choked Snow White so I could tweet it to Lana. Starting the trip
off right.
Spooky is a GREAT con, although slightly unorganized in some
aspects. We picked up our VIP passes and immediately rushed to the photo op
table so we could purchase a photo op with Lana for the weekend. Instead of letting
us buy an op for a specific day (she had a scheduled photo op for Saturday and
then for Sunday) – the photographer gave us our passes and said to use it
either day. Yikes! That meant they had NO IDEA how many people would be at the
Saturday op and Sunday op. We had planned on Saturday, but it seemed like a
horrible idea to tell people they could use it whenever when Lana attracts such
a crazy, intense crowd & was on a tight schedule. But we breathed a huge
sigh of relief when we had our passes in hand.
We spent our Friday after that in the rest of the Once Cast
room - getting our favorite guy – Sean Maguire. Swoon, Swoon, Swoon. Love this
guy, and aside from being ridiculously hot, he’s one of the sweetest ever
and crazy talented. No really, I love this guy. Once is my jam, and I’ve been
in love with Josh Dallas since I started watching it, but….Sean took his place
super quick.
I was so "I need to look nice for Sean, I will meet him when I look nice!" and then we walked in and I was like oh sweet Jesus. But oh well - I was at least wearing my Evil Queen tee.
We had our “hooray, we survived getting Lana Parrilla photo
passes!” celebration at this awesome place at Universal Citywalk. Seriously,
our hotel could not have been in a more awesome location – directly across the
street was Universal Studios, so it took us about 6 minutes to get back in the
actual park area of Universal and boom, we’re overwhelmed with places to eat.
Saturday marked the arrival of the Queen, and when I say it
was crazy, I mean IT WAS CRAZY. Even the staff said “I’ve never seen anything
like this!” They weren’t really prepared for her crowd, as evidenced by a
bit of a mess the lines for her were. There are only 200 VIP passes, but I
swear 90% of those people got in Lana’s line. We were in the first few folks in
Lana’s line, surrounded by so many great folks. The most awesome part
about Once’s fan base is there was SUCH a variety of people there. Everyone
aging from 2 years to 15 to 20 to 40 to 80, women with friends, husbands
tagging along with some – it was just such a great variety of people. And when
she walked in the room, people went crazy. There was something heartwarming
about seeing the 65 year old woman in line with us screaming for the Evil
Queen.
I’ve met so many celebrities in my time, and I make no
exaggerations when I say that Lana Parrilla is hands down THE absolute nicest
one I’ve ever met in my life. This is zero exaggeration. It’s quite rare – especially when it’s someone
THIS popular that had lines snaking all the way down the hotel outside – for
someone to want to know your name, hold fans hands as they talk to her,
intently listening, commenting on their stories – and flat out CRYING with some
fans. No one was rushed through – while it looked like you might be, she
wasn’t having any of that. Some of us spent 5 minutes asking questions, telling
her what we thought about the show, current storyline – or in my case, asking a
specific question about an episode. And that split second I said I wanted to
ask about this episode, she stopped what she was doing to intently listen. I
was so so impressed. Impressed enough that we went through Lana’s lines
multiple times, giving us a total of 5 meetings with her. Cons are quite
expensive, especially when you start adding up the cost of meeting some of the
higher priced ones like her (especially since we had to pay for our photo op
separately…you don’t even want to know what we spent on autographs and photos
on top of everything else this trip!), but man it’s worth every penny.
Everything I got signed I got exactly what I wanted – down to my favorite line
of hers on the show. This people, is how you treat your fans. Pure class.
It’s hard to believe it got even better Saturday night with
the VIP party, but it did. More time with the swoon worthy Sean, and grabbing
some time with a few of the other cast members. (Who knew we’d love Rebecca
Mader as much as we did when we hated her character all season!? And Lee
Arenburg is a total sweetheart!) It was a “is this real life?”
moment. And bless Sean’s heart for trying to get us an Outlaw Queen pic we wanted so desperately. It didn’t work with the mob, but man
I love this guy.
Have I mentioned how much I love this man!?
The Wicked Witch is actually a MASSIVE sweetheart!
And Lee Arenburg is far from Grumpy!
The cast panel was Sunday morning, and not only was it a FABULOUS
panel (probably one of my favorites, but I’m an Outlaw Queen nerd, so having
the two of them together on the panel for the first time probably has something
to do with that), Sean made sure we got the gold we’d been wanting all weekend!
Part of the cast panel.
and our beloved Outlaw Queen!
and then the gold! Sean and Lana totally played everything up and we got exactly what we wanted.
We loved the last one so much we had to have it printed & make
Lana sign it before we left – which almost made us late catching our flight
home! (No seriously, we were massive panicking in Lana’s line Sunday, but we
refused to leave. Once they said she was running late, we played the “Okay, she
gets 30 more minutes. Okay, we can give her 30 MORE minutes if we have to. Okay….maybe
we’re getting a little panicked.”) But alas, something in the Universe wanted
us to get it signed, and we not only made it to the airport in time, MCO put us
in the expedited security line so we’d get to our gate even quicker.
Seriously, best weekend ever. I’m such a tv junkie. I’m so sad it’s over. We’ll be heading to
Vancouver soon to visit the set and that can’t get here quick enough. But first…..we’ll
hit Dragon Con so we can see our Sean again!
.JPG)
