Neither Here Nor There: D23 2015

This weekend, we attended a convention we've never been to before - D23! Held at the Anaheim Convention Center (like many other awesome conventions), D23 Expo had it's 4th show ever this weekend. It started in 2009 as an extension of the D23 fan club, and is held biennially.

We headed down to Anaheim on after work on Friday. As soon as we arrived and checked into our hotel, we walked over to the convention center to see the last couple hours of the show for the day. The first thing we saw was an enormous Buzz Lightyear balloon that had bee in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2007.

The exhibit hall was NOT very crowded at all, and we were able to see a bunch of stuff that would have been too crowded or had a long line other times of the weekend. And there was a lot to see! More than just the regular aisles of booths selling stuff (though there were a few of those) there were a ton of attractions throughout the hall. There were huge displays for Shanghai Disneyland, Pixar, Disney Fine Art, Disney Interactive/video games, ABC/Muppets, the upcoming Avatar-land, Star Wars, Marvel, pretty much all their properties, both old and upcoming. Not to mention, the 3 huge Disney stores with accompanying long lines, and a Disneyland Archives museum.

There were several costumes from Star Wars: The Force Awakens on hand:

Captain Phasma, played by Gwendoline Christie

BB8!

Please note the ugly stepsisters checking out the Stormtroopers...

And gotta have that Marvel stuff as well!

We were there until it closed down at 7 and since it wasn't very crowded at that time, we were able to see practically everything!

I can't wait until these Tsum Tsum figurines hit Target stores in the fall!

Hulk is SO ANGRY he can't make a strike in his little Hulk car.

Needs more Sorcerer Mickey!

They were giving away these Pixar balls at random times throughout the day. I wasn't lucky enough to get one, though. :(

Posters of two of my favorite movies growing up - Polyanna and The Parent Trap!

There was tons of super awesome Disney art from various artists.

I need dis (but not for 40 bucks):

There was a whole wall full of maps from the various parks throughout the years!

Life-size Sven! (looking a bit chunky, might want to lay off the carrots!)

Lego Hulk is ANGRY!

Real life Pizza Planet truck from Toy Story!

Posters from the upcoming Pixar films!

A tiny model Cars Land!!

Oooh, the claw!

Olaf and the Snowgies!

This guy! He looks tiny, but is actually like 6 feet tall. The statue, that is, not Yoda.

We stayed until it closed at 7pm, and then we Uber-ed over to the Lazy Dog Cafe, an Anaheim-convention-time favorite!

The next morning, on Saturday, we walked over to the convention center around 10:30am and were able to walk right in. We got in line for the Disney DreamStore, first thing, only to find out that the Tsum Tsums I was searching for were in another castle--I mean, store. Ugh! I did get a D23 t-shirt and an R4-D23, so it wasn't a total loss!

We did a few of the things that we didn't get a chance to on Friday night, such as check out the Avatar exhibit, which included a scale model of the planet Pandora from the movie, which is coming to Disney's Animal Kingdom.

We randomly walked past a Girl Meets World thing that was going on, and saw Ben Savage, aka Cory Matthews!

At one point in the afternoon, I got a Twitter alert from Parks & Cons announcing a swag bag drop! My boyfriend figured out where the location of it was, and we motored over there, and lo and behold, the swag bag was still there! It was very exciting. Parks & Cons is one of the best blogs/podcasts out there for all things conventions and theme parks! I've been following them for a while and have always gotten incredibly good and valuable information from them. They go to practically every convention and theme park in the area, both large and small, and their reporting is always very thorough. Thanks again, Parks & Cons!

That evening, we went to this place called The Ranch, which was a saloon and restaurant (seperate things for some reason) housed in a 7 story office building. When we got there, they were teaching line dancing, and later, a country band took stage.

On Sunday, we went straight to the Disney Archives line. It took maybe about 45 minutes; I read that it was much longer later in the day, so we picked a good time. There was a ton of really cool historical Disney stuff, it was a really great exhibit!

The very first Disneyland ticket!!

Some of the animatronic heads from Pirates!

This picture doesn't do it justice, but this was a scale model of the entire Disneyland park during the electrical light parade and it was super cool and detailed!

Glad to see this guy's getting some work since he got fired from Star Tours!

A yeti and bobsled from Matterhorn!

A terrifiying anime-ish Ben Franklin costume from an old parade.

It's hard to see, but this is a letter from Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor to Walt Disney, thanking him for his hospitality (which Burton hilariously can't spell) and praising the park.

These will be featured in some of your upcoming nightmares.

A dragon head from Fantasmic! This looked really cool in person and was huge!

A bunch of old Disneyland tickets!

A badass Maleficient costume from Fantastmic!

We also checked out the exhibit for the new Disneyland park in Shanghai! They're so lucky, it looks like it's going to be awesome!!

I need any and all of this:

A super blurry picture of what the castle will look like:

A Tangled ride!

I don't even know.

Fancy!

There was a ton of great cosplay at D23 this year. I would say that this convention maybe had the best cosplay I've seen in a while!! Good job, Disney fans! Unfortunately, this was the only one I took a picture of, but it was probably one of the best ones anyway.

I'm Mrs. Nesbit!