So, something extremely cool happened to me, and I’m so excited to finally get to tell you all about it! I was terrified of something going wrong, so I didn’t want to say anything about it online and jinx it. You know those surveys, that companies send out, and it’s “Take this survey, and you’ll be entered to win _________!” Turns out someone actually does win those, because I won two four-day VIP passes to MegaCon for this year!
I’ve been going to MegaCon pretty much every year that I’ve lived in Florida. Last year, we wound up only doing one day due to money and time constraints, and still had a blast. Originally, I thought they were just four day passes. Jay and I were trying to decide how many of the days we really wanted to go, since it’s a holiday weekend, and getting vacation on holidays, especially when you work in hospitality, isn’t the easiest. Then I discovered all the awesome benefits that come with a VIP pass, and we decided to fully commit to a mini vacation complete with a three-night hotel stay at the Rosen Plaza, since we’d most likely never have tickets like this again.
Included with a MegaCon VIP Pass:
- VIP lanyard
- VIP badge
- VIP t-shirt
- MegaCon Orlando bag
- “Two exclusive comics from a major publisher”
- Limited-edition superhero print
- An “exclusive collectible” which turned out to be a lunchbox
- Limited edition MegaCon water bottle
- Bring a friend free pass for Thursday
- Exclusive VIP priority entrance
- Access to the floor at 2:00 pm on Thursday instead of 4:00 pm
- Half an hour head start on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
- VIP priority access to all main theater panels
- VIP priority line for all celebrity photos and signings
- VIP lounge
- Coat and bag check in the VIP lounge
- 20% off coupon for the official MegaCon Orlando Store
- Free general admission to all FanExpo (the company that puts on MegaCon) events until MegaCon next year
It also included stuff like first chance to buy celebrity photos and reserve hotels, but since I didn’t actually purchase them through the website, I didn’t have a way to log in to do that. Which was fine, honestly. I got better pricing on my own for the hotel than the MegaCon group rate, and we weren’t doing celebrity photos this year.
I tried my absolute best for us to be better prepared than we usually are, since we had four days’ worth of cosplays to come up with. I got a lot of it taken care of in advance, but due to forces beyond our control and some last-minute decisions, we still found ourselves scrambling in the last week to finish all the props and accessories. By the last week, I mean I was up until 1:00 am on Wednesday night finishing one of the big props.
Thursday
Since it was the shortest day of the convention, we didn’t have much planned. With our tickets, we could get in two hours early at 2:00 pm instead of 4:00 pm, but we couldn’t check into our hotel until 4:00 anyway and we had to take Fiona, Jay’s husky, to the pet sitter. So, we slept in and then I finished packing all the things I couldn’t pack until the last minute like my make-up and the stuff that I’d had in the dryer overnight. Fitting everything in the car was honestly the biggest challenge, since Fiona took up the backseat and I couldn’t put anything with her for fear of her shedding on it. (No seriously, my car’s back seat is still covered in fur.)
Our cosplays for the day were going to be Hogwarts students, since we already had everything on hand. Except Jay couldn’t find his Slytherin tie anywhere. So, I wound up using the extra Hufflepuff tie that came in the set when Doug was here, and Jay took my Gryffindor tie since, in theory, I could be a Hufflepuff, but there’s no way he could. What’s funny is I thought no one noticed, until I got a text from my best friend demanding an explanation.
We wound up arriving at the hotel right around 3:30 pm, and it took us about an hour to get everything up to the room and settled. I put all my make-up out, put the cosplays on hangers, and just tried to make everything as organized as possible. It didn’t last long, but I tried!
We made our way over to the convention center and the walk only took about ten minutes. I specifically picked the least expensive hotel that had a sky bridge connection to the convention center so we could get to MegaCon, without either getting rained on, or sweating to death.
I was super stressed out about picking up our passes. I didn’t have a confirmation number or anything, and I was so worried somehow the fact that we had free passes wouldn’t be on the list, or just something would happen, and the passes would fall through. I couldn’t have been more wrong! The lady just looked up my name, and handed me two VIP badges, and directed us to the VIP Lounge to pick up the rest of our stuff. I was not prepared for how much swag we got! There were actually two t-shirts, and the bags were huge!
There weren’t any panels that interested us, so we just wanted to wander around and get the lay of the land. I hate not knowing where things are! We walked the entire convention floor, took some photos of the vehicles on display, and played a free game at the Geico booth. I won a t-shirt, Jay won sunglasses, and we both got free reusable bags. I wanted to win the stuffed gecko, but it’s fine. Our last stop was with the Wonder Woman figure from the Madame Tussauds Wax Museum they had on display, before they took it back to the museum for the kickoff party. I had looked at the tickets for the kickoff party, but it was $30 a person, and would have meant changing my cosplay line up around, so we passed. It did include the Wax Museum and the Orlando Eye (or Orlando Icon as it’s recently been renamed) but I knew I could get it cheaper with the Florida resident rate.
Originally, we were going to go to Big Fin for dinner, but when I called to make the reservation our favorite server wasn’t working, so we headed over to Pointe Orlando instead. We ate at Copper Canyon Grill, which is a place I’ve always wanted to try. The ribs were fantastic, and Jay really liked the meatloaf.
Friday
Friday was the day I was the most excited for. One of the main things I wanted to do this year, not just at MegaCon, but this year in general, was get a Wonder Woman cosplay. I had talked myself out of it due to the price tag, but my friend Kimberly found me one that was almost reasonably priced. (By almost reasonably priced, I mean several hundred dollars less than the others and would still get here on time.) I had already purchased the boots last summer, and my mom scored a toy Godkiller sword on clearance after Halloween. Thanks to Jay’s amazing painting skills, you’d never know it was plastic! No shield, but that’s okay. I figured I’d get tired of carrying it around MegaCon anyway!
We wanted to put together a Steve Trevor cosplay for Jay, but we just ran out of time and funds. So, he slightly modified his cosplay for Saturday and just wore it two days in a row.
My friend Lauren was planning on doing MegaCon for the first time ever, and she offered to come over to the hotel room that morning to help with hair and makeup. I’m so glad she did because thanks to her, everything looked amazing and I never would have pulled it off without her help!
The first panel I had wanted to go to was at 12:00 pm, but it was already too late by the time we got there. It was completely worth it though for how many times I got stopped for photos.
We wandered around Artist Alley for a bit with Lauren, and met up with my friend Grant, from my Universal days. I honestly don’t think I’ve seen him since I left the Hogwarts Express! We went up to check out the Harry Potter Escape Room, that I’d seen advertised online, but it was completely sold out for the day, and we’d have to arrive first thing the next day to try to get a spot. We also found the remote control teapot racing, which I still find confusing.
Kyle Reese, Wonder Woman, and a Pokémon trainer walk into a bar…
Lauren split off to hang out with some other friends of hers that were there. Jay, Grant, and I wandered over to the community room to look at the Lego displays. Then we went to a panel about getting your YouTube Channel off the ground, hosted by The Sean Ward Show and Make ‘Em Laugh Films. They spent most of the time answering questions, and sadly, alluded to things I wanted to hear more about, but weren’t overly helpful for what I was looking for. It did make me feel better about my recent decision to combine the Twenty Something in Orlando YouTube channel with Nice Guy Studios, so there’s that at least.
Chelsea in front of the Lego Wonder Woman art in the community room.
Immediately after the panel were the Improvengers, an improv comedy troupe based in the Orlando area. We tried to just wait for them to come in, but they made us exit and go to the back of the line, since our VIP passes didn’t work for this event. We still got good seats, and got in with plenty of room to spare. A former Jungle Cruise Skipper we know was in the show, and I went up to say hi to him afterwards.
We spent the next hour and a half or so wandering around the area and taking photos. Jay headed back to the room to get something we forgot, and I met back up with Lauren. Jay was going to turn around and come back, but Lauren pointed out we were basically done for the day. I just had two people I needed to go say hello to, so we called Jay and told him to wait in the room, and we’d come to him.
Chelsea and Lauren in the Cosplay Photo Park.
I stopped by Karen Hallion’s table to thank her for all the giveaways she’s helped me with in the last year. She wasn’t actually there at the moment, and I managed to talk to her sister without completely hyperventilating, while Grant and Lauren stood by for moral support. Then we swung by the Braker’s table. In a weird twist of events, one of my friends in college’s dad, is now a sci-fi writer, and they hired me to make a movie for them last summer, so I wanted to stop by to say hi.
Grant headed off towards the buses to where he parked, and Lauren and I made the trudge back to the hotel. The boots that are usually oh-so-comfortable were killing me after five hours in them! Lauren headed home, but left her makeup and supplies with me, since she was coming back on Sunday to help me prep.
Then Jay and I headed off for a trip to the new “Call for Heroes” exhibit at Madame Tussauds to get my picture with the Wonder Woman figure again, but this time in costume.
As we got back to the hotel room from Madame Tussauds around 7:00ish to change for dinner, Jay got a text message that drastically changed our plans and we wound up not getting to dinner until almost 10:30 over at Pointe Orlando, this time at Itta Bena. Everything worked out in the end, but it was entirely too stressful and I was very grateful for how strong they made the drinks.
Saturday
The busiest day of MegaCon, and when I picked the most comfortable cosplays. I was Pokémon Trainer Korra and Jay was Pokémon Trainer Mako, and we had an actual Pokéstop we built with two big bags of Pokémon eggs. (I got toy Pokémon off Ebay, and my mom got me a bunch of Easter eggs on clearance, and I put little slips in with Twenty Something in Orlando’s social media info.) The idea was that we wound hand the eggs out when people came up to spin the Pokéstop. This didn’t go quite as well as I hoped. We definitely needed a sign. I assumed people would figure it out.
We did have a lot of people who commented on it, and we handed out a little over half of our eggs over the course of the day. PEOPLE WERE SO HAPPY! My favorite part of the day was the reactions we got, and how excited people were to see what Pokémon they got. Jay said he saw one guy turn into a five-year-old when he opened a Mew. Sadly, I missed that part while giving one to someone else.
I still don’t understand how I bought 432 Pokémon and didn’t get a single Vulpix.
Our first panel of the day was Jeff Goldblum, and this is where our VIP passes really came in handy. We arrived about half an hour before the start, and went straight in, passing the line of people that wrapped around the escalators. I’m assuming people showed up at least an hour and a half early, if not more. We were in the first several rows, and basically went for the closest we could without having to climb over people.
Most panels I’ve gone to are usually questions and answers, and they even had the microphones for the audience set up for guest questions, but Jeff Goldblum doesn’t roll that way I guess. The announcer/host person came out first, and then he and Jeff basically sat and talked for half an hour. They didn’t take questions, but he sort of interviewed Jeff and they made jokes. I feel like it was like being at a late-night show taping, not that I’ve ever been to one of those, but it’s how I imagine it. They had Jeff read a series of Tweets about himself out loud, so that was hilarious and better yet, I got it on video.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjRDB5kJnW0[/embedyt]
After Jeff, we had two hours to kill until we had to be back for Charlie Cox, the guy who plays Daredevil, so we headed for the convention floor to hand out more Pokémon eggs.
We were some of the first people to arrive for Charlie, so we managed to score front row seats. This was a more traditional panel. It started late and ran long, and Charlie took questions from the audience. Well, tried to rather. He hadn’t seen Infinity War, and he doesn’t know anything about Harry Potter so he didn’t know his Hogwarts house. The host cut off any “speculation” questions about the future of Daredevil, because they just wrapped filming season three (which is apparently why he was too busy to see Infinity War, but I don’t feel like that’s an acceptable excuse). He did let it slip that there is a scene that is a tribute to the continuous one-take fight scene from season one, and he personally thinks it’s better than the one in season one or season two!
He looks so smug that he hasn’t seen Infinity War.
We thought the Charlie Cox panel would only be half an hour, and it was closer to an hour so we got out around 3:30 pm. We were starving and just wanted food. I thought the Catherine Tate (Donna Noble from Doctor Who) panel was at 4:30 pm, and the MegaCon app crashed every time I tried to pull up the schedule. We hurried to get food at the hotel and come back, because we figured we could walk a little farther and spend about the same amount of money but end up with much better food. We were right, but I was wrong about the Catherine Tate panel. It was at 3:30 and in a completely different room. We could have squeaked into the Jennifer Morrison panel, which I guess is the time I mixed Catherine’s up with, but Jay’s only seen about three episodes of Once Upon a Time so we decided to pass, and go hand out more Pokémon eggs in Artist Alley. We also picked up a couple of the prints I’d been eyeing all weekend.
We finally ran into Grant, who somehow turned into our handler/camera person every time someone wanted a photo. All day we’d just had our bags in the photos, but he started taking everything so it would just be the Pokémon stuff and taking people’s photos for them. I felt so bad but was grateful.
I found a regular Korra and Mako!
Our last panel was Jewel Staite, Kaylee from Firefly, and it was in one of the rooms I wasn’t sure if we had VIP access for or not, so we went early to check it out. Turns out we did, which was a good thing, because the line went all the way down the hallway.
Jewel was every bit as adorable as I expected her to be, and funny. She took a lot of questions, and firmly shut down a couple of fanboys who asked “if engines really do get her going”. She talked about some of her work outside Firefly, and when asked what her favorite shows to watch were, she mentioned a few cooking shows, and said she watches a lot of Paw Patrol and Moana because she has a toddler.
We made our way back to the hotel to change for dinner, and we finally got to go to Big Fin after three nights of trying. It was amazing and wonderful as always, and Ryan took great care of us.
Steak at Big Fin!
After dinner, we got back to our hotel to find the after party I’d seen online was happening at our hotel. They had blocked off the pool bar, but you could still get in the pool which was all we cared about. ($40 for an after party? No thank you.) We went down to the pool and honestly lasted less than five minutes in the water because it was freezing.
Sunday
Sunday was the day Jay was the most excited for because it was Star Wars day! We had already bought our Galactic Nights tickets for that night, so Jay was using his Darth Valice cosplay, which is an original Sith character he created, long before he moved to Florida. I had originally been planning on commissioning a Rey costume from one of my friends, but wound up using Etsy because I was scared of time getting away from us. Since it still showed up with only three days to spare, I’m not sure I made the right call. I’d been debating between building Rey’s staff or buying a lightsaber, and we wound up doing neither. Instead Jay designed and built a BB-8 Keyblade for me, and I wound up being Kingdom Hearts Rey. Which honestly just made things easier, because I was able to steal my leather accessories from Jay instead of buying new ones!
Sunday honestly wound up being a bit of a letdown. Lauren and I ran late on hair and make-up and Jay had to pack up the car, so we missed the Elijah Wood panel. (Lauren once again made me look fabulous, so really, I’m okay with it. I’m not a huge Lord of the Rings fan unless it’s Legolas.)
We went to make a last pass at the show floor and get anything we missed. I finally found a booth I’d been looking for all weekend and made a few impulse purchases I probably shouldn’t have, but it happens. Did I really need a wallet with magical cats on it? No, but now I have one. We also stopped by Karen’s booth to get a pin with the cute little cat Reverie on it, and said our good-byes to the Brakers.
We planned to do one last panel then head for food before Galactic Nights. We were headed to the main theater for the Black Lightning panel with all three stars at 2:30 pm, to find a notice pinned to one of the doors on the way, that it had been rescheduled. For 11:00 am. Which means we would have missed it pretty much no matter what.
So, we headed to the VIP Lounge to try to sort out what we wanted to do, or if there was anything else we could squeeze in to end MegaCon on a better note. We wound up just packing up and heading for dinner then onto Galactic Nights, which wound up being the best part of the weekend! You can read that full report here.
As a whole, our MegaCon experience was a ton of fun, and having the VIP pass was great even if we didn’t really use it to its full extent. On Saturday alone though, it probably saved us about five hours of waiting in line for panels! So, if you want to do a lot of panels, that would be worth the investment. We didn’t use it for any of the celebrity signings, but that’s because there weren’t any I really wanted to meet this year. I usually only do people from Avatar: the Last Airbender or Legend of Korra. Last year I did the Buffy stars, because my friends had already purchased it, and let me go with them for a third of the price. However, Jason Mamoa’s line was rumored to be hours long on Sunday, and I could have cut it if I chose to, so that’s something. The VIP Lounge was nice, but we didn’t use it as much as we could, since our friends couldn’t go in. I did go in a couple of times to score free water for everyone so that was nice.
It’s been a few years since I’ve done MegaCon for more than one day. There was a lot of “Well, we can do that later,” or “We don’t have to do that now,” except then we never got back to it. We walked through Artist Alley numerous times, but we never really, truly looked at what the tables had to offer. Which is probably a good thing, because every time I looked closely, I end up buying something. I don’t really have any regrets about anything I bought. I’m happy with my purchases, but mad at myself for spending the money at the same time.
A huge collection of photos taken over the weekend:
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I can’t imagine I won’t go back to MegaCon next year, but it’ll probably be for only one day, unless they’ve got Marvel Cinematic Universe actors or Arrowverse. I can’t see myself ever paying for the VIP passes, but I do look forward to using this VIP pass to get into Tampa Bay MegaCon in September! Jay and I are planning on handing out the rest of the Pokémon eggs then. I’m also happy because I never would have bought the Wonder Woman costume without these passes, and I can’t wait to wear it to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party this fall.
Cost: The VIP tickets were $429 before tax. Ours were free! The regular four-day pass is roughly $99 before tax for comparison. You can get a premium pass that includes one day’s admission to other events for $139, so if you think you’ll do Tampa Bay keep that in mind.
Value: Mine was free, so completely worth it. I feel like a normal four-day passes or the premium passes are a good value if you want to go more than one day. If you have a lot of lines to skip or panels to attend, VIP might be worth the price. This was my fifth time going to MegaCon, if that tells you anything.
Duration: The event is four days. We spent anywhere from two and a half to five and a half hours at the convention on any given day. Admittedly, last year when we only had one day, we were there closer to nine hours I think.
Add Ons: There’s a different after party almost every night, there’s celebrity photos and signings, and all sorts of stuff. The VIP upgrade was sort of the ultimate add on.
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