UPDATE 10/14 D23 Expo and Oogie Boogie Bash! It's Halloween-lo-ween everybody! It's Halloween! Give a Scream it's Halloween

[OhioStateBuckeye]

I'm baaaack!



Can't resist writing trip reports. It's so much fun to relive the trip and have a record to look back on in the future.

For those of you who don't know me I am Rachel, my long suffering companion is Brian. We are huge Disney fans and now live in Orlando and go to the parks all the time. But now that we live here....we need a new vacation spot. Disneyland fits that bill!

The last time we were in Disneyland was actually for the last D23 Expo in August 2019. We also attended the expo in 2017 and have been to Disneyland several other times, though never at Halloween! That picture above is of our casual cosplays for D23 Expo 2019, we were Dave Filoni and Ashley Eckstein from Star Wars fame.

When the expo dates for this year were announced we were super excited that we'd finally get to go for Halloween. Not only do we get to cosplay at the expo, we also get to dress up for Oogie Boogie Bash!

Our trip itinerary ended up as follows:
Wednesday Sept 7 late flight into LAX from Orlando
Thursday Sept 8 day at the parks
Friday Sept 9 Expo day number one and Hulu After Party at Downtown Disney Splitsville
Saturday Sept 10 Expo day number two and Oogie Boogie Bash
Sunday Sept 11 Expo day number three and parks
Monday Sept 12 park day and red eye flight back to Orlando

Here we are in cosplays from 2019, we did a Top Gun/Captain Marvel mashup. Brian was Maverick, I was pilot Goose but I also had cat ears (so I could be half flerken from Capt Marvel also named Goose) and our friend was Capt Marvel in flight suit. We even had a Tesseract cat toy.



And here we were at Trader Sam's with the rest of our crew from 2019, who all make reappearances at this expo.




So just a disclaimer. I have a love/hate relationship with these D23 Expos. I go to a lot of comic/fan conventions, and D23 is by far always the worst run/managed. However, we usually end up having some super awesome moments that happen amid the disappointment and chaos, so we always come back. So this report will not be all sunshine and rainbows, but it might be fun anyway to compare your experience to mine or to try to pick up some tips/tricks if you plan to attend in the future.



Anyway, without further preamble, let's begin.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Day 1: Travel Day

Not too much to say about this day. I was working and we were finishing up a few last minute packing things. We'd woke up way earlier than we had to, because isn't everyone too excited to sleep the day vacation starts? But since we were awake early, we were welcomed by the site of this hot air balloon over our house:





Brian had to take Sirius to the vet for his monthly aquapuncture, and then the poor guy suffered the ultimate betrayal and was left at the vet's for his boarding staycation.



Not pictured: the look of ultimate betrayal.

I finished up work around 5 and we were ready to get going, except I got a notification on my phone: our flight had been delayed 15 minutes. Thus started the first glimmer of defeat. We have not had great luck with flights this year, as I'm sure a lot of you have also experienced.

This was our seventh flight of the year. 2 legs of flights had gone off without a hitch, 2 others had delays of approx 2 hours, 1 from DC was canceled completely and I had to rebook a marathon day of layovers and additional delays. And the last was delayed two hours, sat on the tarmac at MCO 50 some in line for takeoff, then had to return to the gate after 1.5 hours on the tarmac because the pilot ran out of flight time. We then rescheduled for a morning flight and had 3 hours of sleep before that flight left.

We sat around and checked and re-checked our luggage as the flight kept getting pushed by tiny time increments. We had been waiting around for an hour when Brian finally checked the flight tracker and realized that our plane had, in fact, finally left Dallas.

It was time to go! Brian's sister had left her Red Panda Mei Mei at our house after her last trip, so Mei Mei was traveling with us to reunite with Stephanie at D23 Expo.



We quickly headed to the airport and dropped the car at the Parking Spot.

We hung out at our gate and were finally able to board after a total of roughly two hours of delays at 8:15 pm.

See, below, an artistic photo of Mei Mei on the plane. She would serve as my pillow during the flight.



The flight was pretty uneventful. I tried to sleep and was probably able to for half an hour. Brian watched The Batman. I was able to take peeks at his phone and still perfectly hear the soundtrack in my head.

We finally landed and headed to the baggage claim. Mei Mei had a VIP seat and waited stoically for our bags.

Also, interesting note, those two carry ons below were stuffed full of our cosplays. Don't want to lose 'em.



It was then we realized that LAX has made it very hard to take a taxi or do a ride share. You basically have to take a shuttle or hike to the outer edges of the known lands. We only ever did see one shuttle and there were tons of people waiting at the shuttle pick up and drop off, so we got in our cardio for the day endlessly walking to the pick up area.

We ended up hailing a Lyft and had a very nice driver and no traffic to speak of. Shortly we arrived to our hotel, the Sheraton Park Hotel at the Anaheim Resort. Try remembering that long winded name. I never did. But the hotel was very close to the convention center.

See green arrow below for our hotel, and the convention center is circled.



Originally our flight had been slated to arrive at LAX at 9 pm pacific time (which is midnight our time). A late night, but it allowed me to work a full day Wednesday. So with delays, we actually ended up arriving at 1:20 am our time. I know that doesn't seem like a big delay, but we ended up arriving at our hotel at 12:30 am pacific time, which is 3:30 am our time. As opposed to originally arriving around around 1 am our time. That 2 hourish time difference ended up being a pretty big deal and (spoilers) we were pretty much exhausted all weekend.

Though really, if you don't spend D23 Expo weekend exhausted, are you even doing it right??

I snapped some quick pictures of our hotel room, which had been recently updated and had a fridge, no microwave, and kind of a surprising lack of storage space but was otherwise really nice.





We basically threw down our bags and were quickly in bed. We had a long day ahead of us in the morning.

 

[Duckbug.Ducktales]

Thanks for sharing. Your trip reports are great. I was at the expo also and had a good time, but I've never been to other cons or fan conventions before (besides Destination D). So have no way to compare. Just curious, in what way are others run better?

Looking forward to reading the rest of your report. Might inspire me to write my first!

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Thanks for sharing. Your trip reports are great. I was at the expo also and had a good time, but I've never been to other cons or fan conventions before (besides Destination D). So have no way to compare. Just curious, in what way are others run better?

Looking forward to reading the rest of your report. Might inspire me to write my first!

Most of my complaints stem from line management and the reservation system.

Lines for Hall D23 panels (well, really, any panel) can be a cluster and a mess. The Animation Panel fiasco of 2019 comes to mind. Turns out a bunch of us in one line got loaded before a ton of people who had been waiting for a much longer time in a separate line elsewhere but we got in instead of them. The lines were in completely different places and communication (or lack thereof) had us loaded inside before them. They actually got passes for the next day's Hall D23 panel because the managers acknowledged they messed up really bad.

Other, less severe line mishaps like that happen all the time. People will be told standby is capped and other people who come in later will be allowed in. Or there is a different standby line in a different location that lets people load while the other area turns people away.

They also wait way too long to start loading the panels and a lot of people don't get in until the panel has already started. Now, I do understand needing time for technical rehearsals but it just doesn't seem like they could need all THAT much time that they need to wait to load the panels until 15 minutes before they start.

There can also be a lot of angst if you are in the standby line and waiting to see if you actually get to see the panel you've waited hours for because of their ridiculous and disorganized ways that they load.


Now the reservation system. As far as I remember, 2017 had no reservations save for the small group of Sorcerer's who had front row seating set aside for them. If you were willing to put in the time and wait you got into the big panels. We got into every single one that year.

2019 had that horrendous walking man lottery system. You entered a queue at a specific date/time and so many people were let in at a time. There were basically no limitations and those people who got in first were able to take reservations for almost everything they wanted (including all the signings). So maybe 5-10% of people had the most amazing expo ever, and the rest of us were left with the scraps that were left. There also ended up being an exploit with the lottery site that the Expo used, and some people knew about it and were able to jump the line and get in first.

However, that being said, I don't think 2019 was that bad for standby for the big panels. I don't think they gave out That many reservations. They had D23 gold member lines and standby on top of Sorcerer and reservations. Once again, we were able to get into any and every Hall D23 panel that we wanted to so long as we put in the time to wait. The standby stayed uncapped for a long time period. Our friend was even able to walk up to the Parks Panel in 2019 while it was loading and get a seat in the back.

This year was just such a disappointment. I don't know if this number is 100% accurate, but it sounds like there were roughly 200 some standby wristbands given out for Lucasfilm/Marvel. That is insane to me. We were up very early and in line for security. I heard that a different security line opened before ours and the people in that line got most of the paltry amount of wristbands that there were. We never had a chance.

The standby wristbands for Parks were also all handed out around 5 am. Pretty big difference from being able to walk up as it was seating in 2019.

I also didn't like the reservation system this year. If I had known it was one per day, I would have made my selections very differently. The instructions made it sound like we should just put in for whatever we might like and did not give any guidelines on how they were given out. It does seem dumb in hindsight, and that we should have ONLY put in for the big panels. However, we did not, and had no reservations for any Hall D23 and were not even able to see one this year.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Thanks for sharing. Your trip reports are great. I was at the expo also and had a good time, but I've never been to other cons or fan conventions before (besides Destination D). So have no way to compare. Just curious, in what way are others run better?

Looking forward to reading the rest of your report. Might inspire me to write my first!

You totally should write your own It's fun!

 

[dina444444]

Most of my complaints stem from line management and the reservation system.

Lines for Hall D23 panels (well, really, any panel) can be a cluster and a mess. The Animation Panel fiasco of 2019 comes to mind. Turns out a bunch of us in one line got loaded before a ton of people who had been waiting for a much longer time in a separate line elsewhere but we got in instead of them. The lines were in completely different places and communication (or lack thereof) had us loaded inside before them. They actually got passes for the next day's Hall D23 panel because the managers acknowledged they messed up really bad.

Other, less severe line mishaps like that happen all the time. People will be told standby is capped and other people who come in later will be allowed in. Or there is a different standby line in a different location that lets people load while the other area turns people away.

They also wait way too long to start loading the panels and a lot of people don't get in until the panel has already started. Now, I do understand needing time for technical rehearsals but it just doesn't seem like they could need all THAT much time that they need to wait to load the panels until 15 minutes before they start.

There can also be a lot of angst if you are in the standby line and waiting to see if you actually get to see the panel you've waited hours for because of their ridiculous and disorganized ways that they load.


Now the reservation system. As far as I remember, 2017 had no reservations save for the small group of Sorcerer's who had front row seating set aside for them. If you were willing to put in the time and wait you got into the big panels. We got into every single one that year.

2019 had that horrendous walking man lottery system. You entered a queue at a specific date/time and so many people were let in at a time. There were basically no limitations and those people who got in first were able to take reservations for almost everything they wanted (including all the signings). So maybe 5-10% of people had the most amazing expo ever, and the rest of us were left with the scraps that were left. There also ended up being an exploit with the lottery site that the Expo used, and some people knew about it and were able to jump the line and get in first.

However, that being said, I don't think 2019 was that bad for standby for the big panels. I don't think they gave out That many reservations. They had D23 gold member lines and standby on top of Sorcerer and reservations. Once again, we were able to get into any and every Hall D23 panel that we wanted to so long as we put in the time to wait. The standby stayed uncapped for a long time period. Our friend was even able to walk up to the Parks Panel in 2019 while it was loading and get a seat in the back.

This year was just such a disappointment. I don't know if this number is 100% accurate, but it sounds like there were roughly 200 some standby wristbands given out for Lucasfilm/Marvel. That is insane to me. We were up very early and in line for security. I heard that a different security line opened before ours and the people in that line got most of the paltry amount of wristbands that there were. We never had a chance.

The standby wristbands for Parks were also all handed out around 5 am. Pretty big difference from being able to walk up as it was seating in 2019.

I also didn't like the reservation system this year. If I had known it was one per day, I would have made my selections very differently. The instructions made it sound like we should just put in for whatever we might like and did not give any guidelines on how they were given out. It does seem dumb in hindsight, and that we should have ONLY put in for the big panels. However, we did not, and had no reservations for any Hall D23 and were not even able to see one this year.

The animation fiasco was from either 2015 or 2017. 2019 had the big combined morning panel with Disney+ on Friday afternoon.

 

[Duckbug.Ducktales]

Most of my complaints stem from line management and the reservation system.

Lines for Hall D23 panels (well, really, any panel) can be a cluster and a mess. The Animation Panel fiasco of 2019 comes to mind. Turns out a bunch of us in one line got loaded before a ton of people who had been waiting for a much longer time in a separate line elsewhere but we got in instead of them. The lines were in completely different places and communication (or lack thereof) had us loaded inside before them. They actually got passes for the next day's Hall D23 panel because the managers acknowledged they messed up really bad.

Other, less severe line mishaps like that happen all the time. People will be told standby is capped and other people who come in later will be allowed in. Or there is a different standby line in a different location that lets people load while the other area turns people away.

They also wait way too long to start loading the panels and a lot of people don't get in until the panel has already started. Now, I do understand needing time for technical rehearsals but it just doesn't seem like they could need all THAT much time that they need to wait to load the panels until 15 minutes before they start.

There can also be a lot of angst if you are in the standby line and waiting to see if you actually get to see the panel you've waited hours for because of their ridiculous and disorganized ways that they load.


Now the reservation system. As far as I remember, 2017 had no reservations save for the small group of Sorcerer's who had front row seating set aside for them. If you were willing to put in the time and wait you got into the big panels. We got into every single one that year.

2019 had that horrendous walking man lottery system. You entered a queue at a specific date/time and so many people were let in at a time. There were basically no limitations and those people who got in first were able to take reservations for almost everything they wanted (including all the signings). So maybe 5-10% of people had the most amazing expo ever, and the rest of us were left with the scraps that were left. There also ended up being an exploit with the lottery site that the Expo used, and some people knew about it and were able to jump the line and get in first.

However, that being said, I don't think 2019 was that bad for standby for the big panels. I don't think they gave out That many reservations. They had D23 gold member lines and standby on top of Sorcerer and reservations. Once again, we were able to get into any and every Hall D23 panel that we wanted to so long as we put in the time to wait. The standby stayed uncapped for a long time period. Our friend was even able to walk up to the Parks Panel in 2019 while it was loading and get a seat in the back.

This year was just such a disappointment. I don't know if this number is 100% accurate, but it sounds like there were roughly 200 some standby wristbands given out for Lucasfilm/Marvel. That is insane to me. We were up very early and in line for security. I heard that a different security line opened before ours and the people in that line got most of the paltry amount of wristbands that there were. We never had a chance.

The standby wristbands for Parks were also all handed out around 5 am. Pretty big difference from being able to walk up as it was seating in 2019.

I also didn't like the reservation system this year. If I had known it was one per day, I would have made my selections very differently. The instructions made it sound like we should just put in for whatever we might like and did not give any guidelines on how they were given out. It does seem dumb in hindsight, and that we should have ONLY put in for the big panels. However, we did not, and had no reservations for any Hall D23 and were not even able to see one this year.

Certainly seems like there's much they need to address to make everything more fair. I don't understand why there would be so few wristbands for Marvel. Did a lot of Marvel employees take up many of the seats or something?

I take it you haven't had these experiences at ComicCon or other such events? How do they manage to run smoothly?

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Certainly seems like there's much they need to address to make everything more fair. I don't understand why there would be so few wristbands for Marvel. Did a lot of Marvel employees take up many of the seats or something?

I take it you haven't had these experiences at ComicCon or other such events? How do they manage to run smoothly?

There were rumors Marvel had set aside a lot of seats, but it's impossible to tell what is true and what's not. D23 Expo will never tell us.

I have never been to THE San Diego Comic Con. However, I have been to a lot of Fan Expo events like MegaCon and Fan Expo Dallas. Been to a couple Star Wars Celebrations. Plus some smaller ones like Fan Boy, Tampa Bay Comic Con, Alamo City Comic Con.

Most cons end up having frustrations, but I have never encountered any quite so bad as D23. Some cons will have the bigger panels at an extra charge, like the 4 Hobbits Panel at Mega Con was an additional $20 some. Most conventions also have VIP tickets which give an assortment of benefits.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Day 2: Parks Day

Fitbit sleep data: 6 hours 26 minutes
I've had much worse on trips. Not too bad all things considered.

We had arrived to our hotel super late the night before, so we made the call to change some plans. We were supposed to meet up with friends in DCA at opening, 8 am. Not being quite as young and crazy as we used to be, we instead slept in until just about 9 am. I did wake up in a panic at one point and look at my Fitbit watch (which had not updated yet to the different time zone) and told Brian we needed to get up. He informed me it was 6 am and we both went back to sleep.

View from our room on the 9th floor:



It's the Quinjet! We had never been to Avengers Campus so were excited to experience something new at a Disney park.



We decided to grab our Disney+ membership cards before we headed to the park. We made the mistake of going to the main entrance, we were sent away and had to instead go to the Katella entrance. Nothing like some wasted steps at the start of a marathon trip.

We finally made it in, no line at security, and got our Disney+ cards. Which...can I just say, why? We never ended up using these for anything. I'm not sure if you were supposed to get discounts or giveaways or what. We certainly never saw a place to use it. Was anyone else able to use it? It was basically a giant waste of our time to get these.

We checked out the giant inflatables outside. Why don't these ever come in stock at Home Depot?






It was roughly 10:30 at this point. Our friend texted that she'd arrived at the hotel, so we decided to meet her. She also wanted to get her Disney+ card, so we went with and there went another hour. The Disney strategic planner in me was not pleased, but I shoved those feelings deep inside and had a nice time hanging out.

We finally ended up getting to the parks around 11:30. Yay pumpkin decorations! Halloween is the best. We met up with another friend at the gate.



Upon entry we got some Disney+ day pins. They had been giving out ear hats earlier but we missed them.



We were finally in the park so we promptly bought Genie+. I don't really like the idea of Genie+, and we don't buy it in WDW because we are locals. However, we had so little time in DL parks we figured we should get it. We immediately got a HM Holiday return time for a couple hours into the future.

First up was lunch, French Market won out and we put in a mobile order. I don't have any pics but I know I got the Shrimp Po Boy and Brian got the Jambalaya and we both got our own Mint Julep. He ended up enjoying his, mine was good to but the shrimp didn't really stay on the bun so I ended up eating most of the shrimp separately and then enjoying a bun with sauce.

We were done eating sometime around noon. We still had time before our HM Holiday pass, so we decided to take in Batuu West.

This was the first Galaxy's Edge we'd visited, and it had been a while but we remembered it fondly. They are mostly the same, but the layout is vastly different. I also really liked the plants at Batuu West, they were a lot more deserty than what we have in Batuu East.



We spent a decent amount of time looking in all the shops, they do have slightly different merchandise. Including this adorable little guy who I had to get:


Chewie was walking around:



We watched Kylo Ren come out and do his little show.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Side note: apologies for so many posts. I keep hitting a picture limit of 10 per post. It's probably because I just copy and paste them from Google Photos and they are somewhat big. Oh well.

We finished up in Batuu West and met yet another friend (the expo really does bring everyone together) at HM and we finally used our first pass at 1:30 pm.



I'm very glad we had a pass for this as the standby line looked bananas. I also wonder if they don't give out a touch too many passes for this attraction.



I'm not the biggest Nightmare before Christmas fan, but I do enjoy this overlay.







The gingerbread house was pretty cool this year. The guillotine moved up and down.





We kept slowing down during the ride and I didn't mind at all.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Next up I wanted to be sure to meet one of my top characters, Mirable!!! We don't have her at WDW, she does appear on a float in a cavalcade but that's not the same as meeting her.

We quickly headed to her line and were one of the last groups before it was capped. We also showed up 10 minutes before she started, so I assume her line is regularly capped before she even shows.

We were at the front of the line around 2:20. She was lots of fun to interact with, we talked about our sisters.



One of our friends had gone to pick up beignets while we waited and very nicely shared one with us. It was the pumpkin flavor and I thought it was pretty good. The pumpkin flavor was more subtle. I always feel terrible about throwing away the half pound of powdered sugar at the bottom of the bag, but I'd also feel More awkward dumping powdered sugar into my mouth. So into the trash it goes.

Our other two friends had made a Starbucks run while we were waiting, but we were all back together again and ready to move on. We needed to finish our drinks so we did the castle Sleeping Beauty walk through tour. I always really enjoy this. I wish WDW had more little touches like this.



Next up we wandered over to IASW and were able to walk on. Here are my favs:



I really, really like IASW at DL over WDW. It has that fantastic facade and the animals out front. I also love the WDW characters sprinkled throughout, though I do remember the giant fuss that caused on the boards when we heard they were being added.

We saw Alice and the White Rabbit hopping around outside, so we got a quick pic. Name of the game with these characters is walk and click. Walk and click. They won't stop for nothing or nobody, but are more than happy to take a stroll with you.



We spotted Gaston over by the Wishing Well, he was with his last group so we hung out and admired the scenery for a bit. I'm talking about the fountain and figures, people. Gaston is not really my type, I'm not a big fan of antlers.



It was high time to head over to DCA to get our first look at Avengers Campus. I love how easy park hopping is here. On our way we saw Dale and I asked him if we could walk with him for a bit.



One of my main character goals of this trip was to find candy corn Donald and tree Goofy. There were no sightings yet but I wasn't going to give up, it was early in the trip.

We hopped skipped and jumped to DCA. Immediately upon entering we saw Mickey with a very short wait.



Daisy was just coming out when we finished with Mickey so we met her as well. Daisy is always so sassy, she is the best. Our long suffering friends aren't really into character meets, so they were just indulging us and hovering and checking out the headless horseman statue while we chatted with the characters.



We oohed and awwed over Avengers Campus and then immediately spotted more characters!!! Shang Chi had a good crowd around him so we patiently hovered until we were sure everyone there before us had met him, then we stepped up. I asked him if he was still taking bus transportation and he said he was taking a break. He's scared the city is going to send him a bill.



We saw Falcon/new Capt America/Capt Falcon up on the roof so Brian had to try out his zoom.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

We had a Genie+ pass for Guardians After Dark burning a hole in our pockets, but it still wasn't quite time so we got a Disney+ day photopass then stopped by Carsland to check out the Hauloween stuff.





I love this little witch car. We were once told by a photopass that the snow cars name is Snowy Cones, which is just so adorable.







I also just realized I forgot to include our Disney+ day Galaxy's Edge photopass pics. I think it's a cute pic so I'm going to toss them in here.





I love Carsland at Halloween so much and I've been wanting to see it for years. I could probably post 100 pics here but I'm sure you've all seen it already. I'll just put a few of my favs.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

I think we then waited one or two rotations for Mater's. I was really hoping for the trunk or treat song but we didn't get it. I listen to the soundtrack as part of my Halloween playlist at home all the time.

We then waited roughly 15 minutes for Luigi's. Guido is my favorite little nugget.



We are pretty ridiculous and always spend the entire ride on Luigi's shouting out no so Italian stuff in terrible Italian accents. Like 'Papa John's', 'rigatoni', 'alfredo sauce', Mario and Luigi, stuff like this. I dunno what's wrong with us, but at least we keep ourselves entertained.



We were back to DL at this point because we'd picked up a pass for Space. DL's Space is so far superior to ours it isn't even funny. I also got it into my head that the song sounded like Russell T Davis years Doctor Who. So now I just imagine it like a Doctor Who spin in the Tardis.



Then we headed to Pirates and waited roughly 15 minutes. I do enjoy this version, but I'm always very confused by the last room where the pirates are all drunk and shooting everything. Does that mean they end up exploding themselves there and die and we come full circle to the skeletons at the start?




Now it was time for dinner. Brian and I mobile ordered corn dogs from the Little Red Wagon and everyone else got Rancho del Zocalo.

Next up we had a pass for Indy. On the way we saw this very pretty sky over the New Orleans train station:



This is one of my favorite pre-shows. Love Sallah and there is some great dialogue. You see the excellence of this invention?



We grabbed a pass for Monsters Inc and headed over to DCA again. We like to walk. I guess.





I'm not sure if there's many things better than a Disney park at night. But maybe a Disney park at night at Halloween time?!





Once again, we were happy to have our pass because Monsters Inc's line looked pretty long. After riding, it was FINALLY time for Guardians After Dark. We had planned to ride it with two other friends, but they were warned by the CM that the fast pass line would still probably take half an hour and they had a WOC dining package they had to get to. So we met up and chatted for about 5 minutes then went our separate ways.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

The Guardians fast pass line did end up taking almost exactly half an hour, so good thing our other friends didn't go.







I thought this ride was tons of fun, but I might actually prefer the regular version. I like the random music choices for that.

We had all wanted to have an early night so we'd be ready for the expo the next day, but of course it was already 9 pm. So much for an early night. Since we were already out way past our bedtimes, we decided to pop over to Carsland just to see it at night.











It really was way past time to go so we headed to the exit.



We were back to our room around 9:40. We quickly pre-packed an expo bag, got showered, had an endless debate with our group about what time we were all waking up, then went to sleep.

Step Count for the day: 27,291 with 128 floors of stairs.

Next up: what everyone's been waiting for. Day 1 of the D23 expo!

 

[dina444444]

The Disney+ card did the same a gold d23 membership in terms of giveaways and discounts on the floor. There were a few places that were giving out separate gold and Disney+ giveaways.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Friday: Expo Day 1

Fitbit sleep data: 5 hours on the nose

Friday Reservations:

Brian got the Society of Explorers and Adventurers panel at 10:30-11:30 am

I got the Mark Henn and Eric Goldberg signing at 2-3 pm.

Woke up around 5 this morning and stayed in bed trying to go back to sleep til 5:30. We weren't trying to line up early for any panels, but we did want a good show floor spot and we were worried about how bad security lines would be closer to 9 am opening.

Cosplays today weren't too involved so that didn't take too long. We did some coordinating with two friends to see where they were in the getting ready process. Our other two friends had the premiere passes so they were sleeping in. I am going to post a screenshot of the floor map, not sure if anyone will be able to read the actual place but oh well, still going to post it. Here is the link to the zoomable map that I copied and pasted:

https://d23expo.com/D23Expo_2022_Event_Guide_Map.pdf

The first floor had all the shops and show pavilions. Walt's Plane was on display over in the arena which was off to one side. At first we were worried that they were utilizing the huge arena for the plane. We thought it would hamper the seating for the second largest set of panels but it turned out that the Premiere stage on the second floor was also huge.









Here is the second floor with the giant Premiere stage, the Hyperion stage and the Archives stage. In case you can't read the print below, my red arrow is pointing at the D23 Expo shop, which carried all the year branded expo merchandise. I think the shop was kind of hidden and I wonder if a lot of people missed it. Especially on day 3 as they seemed to open all the stores to walk ups.



The third floor had the backlot stage and the special marketplace annex, which you couldn't get into without a VQ. This had all the dolls and the special Obi Wan Kenobi lightsabers.




I ended up making my own schedule on an excel sheet since it was easier to look at it laid out that way to tell what was during the same time. I don't think the expo provided a schedule like this until the app was finally updated a week or a few days before the expo.




Here is my original schedule of what I hoped to get done:

Friday
9 am
Enter and try for shopping pass
9:50 am line up for stage pass for Explorers and Adventurers 10:30-11:30
12-1 pm Main Street Windows
1:30 pm line up 2-3 Mark Henn/Eric Goldberg signing
line up for Disney movies? 3:30-5:30
3-4 pm Disney Family Museum 3 Andreas Deja meet
6-7 pm Walt's Plane

I thought that was mostly achievable. I knew being able to line up and get into Disney Movies after our signing was a long shot, but I thought maaaaybe if we lined up early and were first we might have a shot at the big Hall D23 panel.

Everyone in our group tried for shop VQ with varying levels of success. I think one friend got a MOG in group 35 and that was the earliest any of us got.

It was a very short walk to the convention center and we used the main entrance at almost exactly 6:30 am.








Security had no wait and was very low key. They didn't care that we had a half empty water bottle. They were a bit confused by the magnets in my bag, but I explained they were cosplay related. I definitely walked off and left my phone behind, but the security guard called me back.

Our friend and Brian's sister were waiting for us by the doors and in we went, down to the all too familiar dungeon. We settled into our spot for the long wait until open at 9 am.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

We hung out in the basement and tried to keep entertained. No one was exhausted enough yet to attempt sleep on the hard, cold floor.

Around 9 am the anxiety of 'when will we move started'. We actually did not get taken out of the basement until 9:17 am. Then we hit the hallway running (or at least doing a fast speed walk) and entered into the fray.

Between the 4 of us we had our assignments and would be splitting up to start. Brian and his sister took off for the Music Emporium. In expos past they usually had in person music signings, we had met Auliʻi Cravalho (Moana),
Michael Giacchino and Anthony Gonzalez (Miguel from Coco). Sadly, they weren't having any in person signings this year. Brian grabbed a Hercules record pre-signed by Susan Egan (Meg) for our friend back home for $25.



Our other friend and myself made a beeline for Mickey's of Glendale. There was absolutely no standby and we walked right in at 9:24 am. I was actually pretty disappointed by this expo's merch. I spent a lot of money in 2019 because they had a lot of neat attraction based merch. This time they had some Muppets HM stuff (a few things different than they'd had at Destination D23) and one or two Runaway Railway things. Then just a lot of other stuff we weren't interested in. We sent our group pics to see if they wanted anything. Only one friend wanted a Muppets HM spirit jersey, so we got our small selection of items. Virtual checkout wasn't working so we just walked up to a register and checked out.

Brian's sister's spirit jersey:



I did like this shirt with park characters a lot:



And I also found a Muppets HM t shirt for myself that I liked:



And that was it for MOG.

Here is some other random merch I took pictures of for the group:








Brian and his sister had immediately gone next door to the Lorcana card game line. At this point it was 9:45 and Brian had his reservation for the Society of Explorers and Adventurers panel at 10:30. We had no idea how strict they would be on the 'line up half an hour early with a reservation' so he ditched the Lorcana line and we went. They had a cap on two card packs per person that day (switched to one for the other two days). I think they released about 300 packs and Stephanie got two, one for her and one for us. In hindsight, should have just let Brian stay in that line as people are selling those cards on ebay for upwards of $2,000.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Brian and I scanned in and were in line for Society of Explorers and Adventurers at roughly 9:50 am. We were in the third queue switchback for reservations, so we were pretty far up in line.

Our friend got in standby for D23 Expo Marketplace at 9:53 am (thank you FB messenger time stamps). The line was short and she got in at 10 and sent us 500 pics of merch. She ended up getting 3 Tron backpacks (I got one and two other friends wanted one). I'm not sure when they sold out at the expo but they weren't there Sunday afternoon. They later showed up on Shop Disney and you could use discounts...so happy I got one at the expo (sarcasm). She also got a Tron pin set and just one or two more things for herself. I also got a Darkwing duck t-shirt.

Anyone wanna get dangerous?




The panel started loading about 10 minutes before it started. We got good aisle seats so I had a great view of the stage.



And the panelists:



Our panel was good if maybe a bit dry. One thing of note is that they did reference the Disney+ show with Ron Moore, so looks like that is still happening. Julie Kagawa was the moderator and she also talked about the YA adult book she wrote in the S.E.A. universe. I do like some YA books, but I really wish this one had been aimed at adults.

They opened it up to audience questions at the end and someone asked if the Space Mountain re-imagining at DLP would involve S.E.A. elements. There was lots of stumbling and silence from the panelists, so I'll take that as a yes.




The panel was over a little past 11:30. We headed downstairs to meet our friend who had been lugging around all our merch. We wanted to eat at the food trucks and we 3 headed outside. The hot dog food truck (Dragon Dogs) was just opening so we jumped in line. The hot dogs were wonderful and the wait was 10 minutes or less. Some of the food trucks had pretty long lines.

The 3 of us settled down to eat in the main hallway. We were soon approached by a Marvel rep who asked if he could film us in our cosplays for Marvel once we were done eating. Our friend took a creeper pic of us while we were participating in the filming:



I was President Loki and Brian was Loki from the Loki TV show. We also had a Sylvie running around in the preferred seating lines.

Much to my everlasting surprise, we actually did show up in the official Marvel D23 video, which you can view here:

Pretty cool!

Here is a closer up of our cosplays. We made the little Alligator Loki shoulder animal. Bought the alligator from Gatorland, sewed a magnet onto the bottom of him and then 3d printed and painted the horns.



Our friend went immediately after lunch to get in line for the Disney Movies panel. She was in line at 12:25 pm and the standby line closed a few minutes later.

We had some time to kill before our Mark Henn and Eric Goldberg reservation, so we wandered by the Talent area and saw that Daniel Logan's name was on there for today from 2-3. He played young Boba Fett in Attack of the Clones.

This is probably as good a time as any to say the D23 Expo app never properly worked for us during the expo. It may have been Apple phones versus everything else, our friends who had Apple phones had no problems. We could never get the map to load, the schedule wouldn't load along with the panel descriptions. It was incredibly annoying. We uninstalled and re-installed the app several times a day and it never worked. Just extremely frustrating.



So I really do not remember at all what we did from around 12:40 until we got in line for our signing with Eric Goldberg and Mark Henn at 1:50. I think we walked around the show floor but I have no pictures and no memory. So we lost an hour...

The line for our signing moved pretty quickly. We did notice a little gag on one of the doors into the interior of the Disney/Pixar Animation Booth:



The line moved fast once Mark and Eric came out at 2 and we got a really sweet Eric signed Genie drawing and a Mark signed baby Simba drawing.



We also asked Mark Henn if he was an Ohio State Buckeyes fan since we knew he was from Ohio. He showed us his Block O phone case in answer.

 

[ashley0139]

I love reading Expo trip reports from someone who was there but did completely different things! We must have been near you at SEA (not sea!) though because we had a similar view. I thought the speakers were lovely but the moderator/author was kind of terrible.

 

[Duckbug.Ducktales]

I've been enjoying following along. I had no idea what Lorcana was prior to the expo. Selling them for $2K is insane!
I did pick up a couple of Mickey watches from the citizen store at great discounts. That was probably our biggest expense because we only got a couple of shirts and a blanket at the other stores. Was definitely expecting more at MOG.

Anyway, I'm really jealous that you got to do the Eric Goldberg/Mark Henn signings! I really wanted to do that but didn't know it was happening on Friday.