This year I had headed to San Diego a day early, which was a good thing because my Wednesday/Preview Night was packed with activities. For all of the various activations I had my Go Pro running, so check out the full-length videos from my experiences.
I will be recapping each day’s events in its own post, and will also be making separate posts for the various press rooms that will trickle out over the next couple months—many of the press room video posts will be posted closer to the premiere/return dates of the TV series. I will also be updating these daily posts with links to those posts as they go live.
Here are some quick links to jump between the various daily recaps, and you can find all of our Comic-Con posts by clicking the Comic-Con entry in the main menu at the top of the site:
[ Preview Night | Thursday | Frinday | Saturday | Sunday ]
Amazon Prime Video Activation
Amazon went all out again this year with a massive activation in the same location that they had the Jack Ryan Experience last year. This time, the area was broken into three separate activations, for The Expanse, Carnival Row and The Boys. When you first entered the area you were given an wristband and a bag of coins. During the regular activation times, patrons would use these coins to “buy” food and drinks. For the press preview, they were just handing us the churros and other food items for free, plus there was a Carls Jr. truck parked on site giving us free burgers, fries and soft drinks. This truck would not be there during the regular hours, and visitors would have additional food options like pretzels and fruit.
In the center of the experience was a massive tower where every hour the actors from the various activations would climb up and do live performances. While we were there we saw a meeting of a Supes support group. The Boys is about these superheroes who do things for fame and fortune and not to be a hero. They often hurt people in the process, so these people got up one by one telling these increasingly absurd and hilarious stories about how a supe ruined their life, each followed by a chant of Supes Suck. The actors remained serious and in character the whole time, even after they were down from the tower and just walking around.
The Expanse Activation
In the activation for The Expanse, you become part of a UN team that’s investigating a situation on a planet where some Belters have squatted. Your team is trying to prevent the situation from escalating. You first enter this ship which lands on the planet, and when you exit the ship, they break everyone up into groups to talk to the various people on the planet. My group ended talking with this woman in a tent, and as we were formulating some sort of plan of attack, there was some commotion outside. There was this big explosion and then we were rushed out of the area. The way it was designed you could do this same thing several times and get a different experience each time if you were placed in a different group. When we exited the experience we were given these nice branded cups.
Carnival Row Activation
When you first enter the Carnival Row activation, they hand you some fairy wings, and ask you to select if you want to be a Human or a Creature. If you were lucky enough to choose Human like I did, then you breezed through the line. In the series the creatures are treated like second class citizens, so they have to wait to enter the experience. And while I get they wanted to make you feel like the show, the difference in wait times was absurd, with the creatures were waiting an extra 45-60 minutes to get in! I had some colleague that were stuck in that line!
When you first enter, the cops ask the reason for your visit, and then you are granted entrance into a marketplace/bazaar where creatures are trying to sell you produce and other items. The cops are harassing the creatures while praising the humans. At one point behind me I could hear a creature trying to sell a potato to another creature. The cop ran over and stopped it, asking if I, as a human, wanted it instead, and so he handed it to me. (I had this stuck in my hand for the rest of the experience.)
Connected to the market was a secret entrance to a nightclub/brothel/lounge. One of the creatures told us that humans had to sneak through the door, while creatures could just knock to be let in. We waited for our moment and sneaked in. There was a creature singing on the stage while others were roaming around pulling people into private rooms. I never got approached but heard from someone else that they were pointed to a peep hole. Eventually the cops then came in and raided the place forcing us all to leave.
When we exited there was a photo opp station for you to get your picture floating like a fairy.
The Boys Activation
Finally, the activation for The Boys was an escape room like experience, based on an early episode of the show. You were in this electronics store that had a car crashed through the front window. This evil guy and girl were trying to find their friend. They gave us clues as to what they were looking for to help them solve what happened in the room, and to destroy any evidence. At one point there was someone in the room that seemed to be just a regular person like us, but they started to yell at him for filming (I had my camera on the whole time so I was worried they were going to say something to me!). Then they accused him of being a spy and stabbed him in the stomach. There was a lot of commotion after that and we were rushed out of the activation.
There was also this hidden comic book shop bonus to this activation. There wasn’t anything advertised, but if you called a number that was on a billboard, they told you tell the secret password to the man standing near the wall of the building. It turned out the secret code was the license plate number of the vehicle that was smashed into the building. Once you told the guard the code, he let you go down this alley to the door to the hidden comic book shop. Once in, you threw darts and received a The Boys comic as well as other comics and swag, depending on your score. I just got the one comic, but then they had you take an instant photo of yourself and place it on the wall with the photos of the others who had found the secret comic shop.
Convention Center Preview Night
After I left the Amazon activation, I headed right to the convention center where I got my bag (Steven Universe) and got in line for preview night. When we were let into the convention center, I made my usual mad dash towards the Twentieth Century Fox booth to grab a poster tube. Then I headed to the WB booth where they were giving everyone a huge pile of swag—I got my EW Comic-Con issues, a Superman Returns CD soundtrack, a batman keychain, a huge Stephen King novel, and more. Then I headed to the Starz booth where they had a machine where you pressed a button and it would spit out a ticket to say if you were a winner or not—the two possible prizes were a ticket to the autograph session for The Rook, or a fan survival kit containing swag from a bunch of their shows. The machine was accidentally spitting out 2 tickets at a time, but neither was a winner. I saw the folks in front of me get back in line (which at this time was non-existent), so I did the same. My second time through, I was a winner, and got the prize I was hoping for—the fan survival kit! On my way out I did the photo opp to get a The Rook themed photo.
After this I walked around some more, got a photo with my favorite new Toy, Forky, and picked up some swag at the Shudder booth, which they nicely gave to me after I mentioned that I would be doing the Creepshow press room later this weekend. I also stopped by the Snowpiercer booth where they had machines set up to dispense cricket protein bars like the characters eat in the show/movie. I was excited to try it until I saw it was peanut butter flavored (of which I am not a fan).
I then lined up to see Netflix’s Dark Crystal booth, however, there was some hold up and the booth still hadn’t opened. So after waiting in line for 15 minutes and no opening in sight, I just left. On my way out I hit the Entertainment Earth booth to pick up the annual Titan SDCC pre-release Doctor Who figures for a friend.
It was a very fast trip through the convention hall this year (I spent longer in line waiting to get in). It was sad not having the Bongo Comics booth this year—I would stop by there every year to get a Simpsons fan. But I had to rush back to my hotel and drop everything off so I could get to my next scheduled appointment.
NBC Activations Press Preview
I had been invited to the press preview night for the Booklyn Nine-Nine activation in the Gaslamp, which NBC has set up as part of its annual takeover of the Tin Fish restaurant. I checked in, given an RFID wristband, and handed some donut holes. I then headed into the line. While waiting to enter the experience, TV screens played funny messages from Scully & Hitchcock.
When we first entered the experience, we were in a briefing room, where an actor playing Jake Peralta gave us the rundown of what was going to happen. They were splitting us up into four colored groups, who would be assigned to an officer once inside the station. The groups would race to compete their four puzzles the fastest.
When we walked into the main station, things were going nuts, with so much craziness happening all around the squad room. These were the various puzzles that the groups were going to have to solve. Some involved interrogating people in the jail cell who were dressed like Star Wars characters, others involved searching the records room using a black light, and more.
My group got assigned to the surfer dude like officer, who was very encouraging to us even though we were incredibly slow at our puzzles. We only got to our third puzzle by the time another group had completed all four of theirs. (I found out later that the other officers had split their teams in half, having each tackling 2 of the 4 puzzles at the same time, so perhaps we would have had a chance had we done that).
We then watched a video of Jake Peralta congratulating the winners, but since this was a generic video, he just thanked two random names, one of which happened to be Kyle…so I guess I was a winner after all!. As we left the experience, we were handed a pin shaped like the Nine-Nine shield.
The nice thing about this experience was that you could have done it several times and get different puzzles each time if you were assigned to different groups.
We then made our way over to the Hard Rock Hotel where the lobby was set up like the Cloud 9 Superstore. We scanned our wristbands and were handed a nice The Good Place branded bag (not sure why it didn’t say Cloud 9!). Afterwards, we had our Employee of the Month photos taken, and then we walked through a couple aisles of crazy products, such as child size chocolate bars that were actually the size of a child. The Cloud 9 employees were a lot of fun, staying in character as they interacted with us.
Afterwards, I met up with some friends for dinner, and that marked the end of my first official day at Comic-Con 2019! The show floor was a little disappointing compared to past years, but the activations were so much fun. I look forward to seeing what Day 1 brings.
(Check out all of our SDCC 2019 Daily Recaps: Preview Night | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4)
