London Film and Comic Con 2017 – Day 1 – The weekend I met my idol

I’ve just had the most amazing weekend at London Film and Comic Con with my family and my sister’s friend. Honestly I think it was their best one yet but that could be because I checked something off my bucket list! After 19 years or so I finally got to meet one of my idols, Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Alyson Hannigan (Willow).

Alyson was announced back in May along with her husband Alexis Denisof who plays Wesley in Buffy and Angel. I checked out the website as soon as they were announced and snapped up a diamond pass for Alyson straight away to guarentee I’d be able to meet her.

A diamond pass gives you a guarenteed autograph with the guest, saving the need to get a VQ ticket and hoping your number gets called. There’s also no need to queue up early for the VQ either (unless there’s other guests you’d like to meet of course). Each diamond pass is different but all include a lanyard pass, an autograph and a photoshoot of some kind, you’re also able to jump to the front of the queue for your guest. Alyson’s diamond pass also included a talk with her and Alexis and a limited edition print.

Saturday

Our day started early Saturday morning, we arrived at Olympia just before 7am, unloaded our day bags and memorabilia for signing out of the car and headed to the doors to convention. Normally we’d head straight to the entry queue but found there was a seperate queue diamond pass collection so I joined that one with my sister’s friend and my family joined the entry queue. As we waited in the queue for the diamond passes the entry queue kept getting longer and longer and we were worried we wouldn’t get a good spot in the queue. It’s important to get their early and as far to the front as possible for collecting VQ tickets because, as I’ve said before, the lower the number the better your chance to meet the guests.

It would have been better if the diamond pass collection was after the bag inspection or inside the show itself however, we later found out that we could have collected them at any point during the day! No one told us that when we were queuing unfortunately. 🙁 Nevertheless we got a good spot in the entry queue and managed to get some low VQ ticket numbers. 😀

After the mad rush for our VQ tickets we headed down to the ground floor to look at the wide range of dealers and I took a photo of the Big Bang Theory set they had on display. My sister had her photo taken with Will Wheaton on the sofa and got to sit in Sheldon’s spot! The photo turned out great and she loved meeting him.

Other prop displays they had were the Delorean, the Ford Anglia from the Harry Potter films and a Batman vehicle tribute to the late Adam West.

I didn’t buy much memorabilia at this show, which is surprising but I did notice there weren’t as many dealers as last year or as wide a range of things on offer. I think this is largely due to another big UK convention being on the same weekend! I did buy a few things, including a Hodor door stop 😉 , two custom leather journals, two feather bookmarks, a bunch of Emerald City cupcakes (of course!) and my dad picked up a Kaylee (Firefly) bear for me to put up for Christmas, from the Firefly Store. It’s very cute!

After a good look around the stalls we headed back upstairs to meet some of the guests! The main guests I wanted to meet (besides Alyson) were three actors from Son’s of Anarchy (Tommy Flanagan, Mark Boone Junior and David Labrava) and Imogen Boorman from Hellraiser II.

Tommy Flannigan

The first person we met was Tommy Flannigan (Chibs in Son’s of Anarchy), he seemed to love the journal I’d brought him to sign and joked that the dealer I bought it from should gift him one. Haha. He was friendly but as he had a large queue of people to get through our chat was very brief.

David Labrava

David was lovely to talk to and told us about his love for the show. I asked if he’d done many conventions, he has but not many in the UK.

Imogen Boorman

Imogen Boorman (or Immy Boo) was at a table near David so we decided to meet her next, she was very sweet and engaging. We had a long chat about horror films and especially the Hellraiser and Saw franchises. She also spoke about how old she was when they were filming the movie and how she was too young to go to the premiere screening. She wrote a lovely message on my photo and a great quote by her character.

Mark Boone Junior

Mark Boone Junior was back at his table and had a good look at my journal he asked if I was a writer or a drawer, I draw a little but explained to him I was going to use the journal as an autograph book. Like Tommy he also joked that the dealer should gift him one! 😉

Alyson Hannigan

After meeting the Son’s of Anarchy guests and Imogen, I met up with my friends Sazzzy and Gemma so Sazzzy could hold my hand(!) while we met Alyson Hannigan. I was very nervous and didn’t know how I’d be meeting her but expected to get or go mute.

It was nearing the end of the day and the crew were getting ready to close her queue, luckily for us our diamond pass allowed us to jump the queue and head straight to the payment desk. We get one autograph free with the pass but are able to purchase extras, I bought two.

Sazzzy and Gemma mentioned if I leaned to my left I’d be able to see Alyson at her signing table. I did. Got overwhelmed and cried a little! I managed to compose myself before we got to the end of her queue and had a brief chat with her when I got there. She is a very sweet, engaging person and I was on cloud 9 for the rest of the day after I met her. The conversation was relatively short as it was near the end of the day and they were rushing us through, we said hello, I asked how she was and asked her if she could sign my items. I also told her I was very happy to meet her, we said a quick goodbye and I ended up crying again after I left her queue. Lol.

I’ve never had that reaction meeting a guest before but shes an idol of mine and it was a 19 year wait. It was definitely worth the diamond pass.

Day 2 to follow very soon – more Alyson Hannigan and the young adult literature convention  (YALC).