July 22nd to July 26th
This was my 22nd San Diego Comic Con
We stayed at the Intercontinental, which we have stayed at in the past. It's not the closest (about 1 mile), but it's not the furthest by far, and the good thing about this hotel is it's only a block away from the Tram, and then three stops and you're at the con.
Brian and I got there Wednesday afternoon, checked in, and guess who was standing in front of us at the check-in: my friend Rico (from Treks in Sci Fi Podcast), who was staying at the same hotel. We actually got our room a few doors down from his. After we put in our luggage, the three of us walked to the Cheesecake Factory to grab some dinner before the con opened. Around 5:30pm we made our way to the con floor for Preview night. It's only open from 6pm to 9pm, and nothing else is happening, so it's always packed on the sales floor, and for some reason this day it was extra extra packed.
Our friend Dylan joined us and wandered around the sales floor. Rico was lucky enough to get a Mattel lottery ticket, which meant he was able to get in line to buy things, and though he didn't want anything from Mattel, he was kind enough to get in line for me and grab me several wants. We hit other booths, picking up things that we wanted to get. Usually preview night is the best night to do this; even though it was packed, they do limit the number of badges for this night. But we did manage to pick up some cool items. I also ran into some good friends who I don't get to see often enough, so that's always a plus.
Day two, Thursday. Slept okay (I don't usually sleep well in unfamiliar beds). Brian and I walked with Rico to the convention center where we met up with Dylan in the waiting area. Once it opened, we headed down to the sales floor. We also ran into our friend Steven, who hung out with us on the sales floor. The three (Rico, Dylan, and Steven) would come and go as they had other things to do. Brian's family showed up for a time, and we walked around with them for a while. Brian and I had lunch at a tasty Thai place. Later in the day, Brian headed back home so he could go to a wedding the next day. I went to The Guild Kickstarter party.
The Guild is a web series that I loved and also worked on 20 years ago. They are doing a reunion movie that launched on Kickstarter to huge success. They were having a party for their backers, and of course I backed the project as soon as it went live. Anyways, I got to see more friends, including stars of the series Felicia Day, Vince Caso, Jeff Lewis, and Michelle Boyd. I'm not a big party person, but it was nice hanging out for a few hours and catching up with friends. Afterwards, I walked back to the hotel; it was weird being alone. I missed Brian. I was exhausted from all the walking and social interaction, so I called it quits and went to bed.
Day Three, Friday. Today, since Brian wasn't going to be with me, I decided to cosplay in my Orko costume. I had to get to the con by 10 am, as I (well, Brian) had gotten the lottery for Funko and I wanted to pick up some exclusives and had a time slot between 10 and 11am. I got ready and had the complete costume on when I realized that my nipples were a bit too perky in the costume, so I tried to tape them down and couldn't get it quite right, so I had to take everything off and start over. Now there was a time crunch, and I was sweating (as the costume is very hot and I'm stressed). I taped my nipple down and put on the costume once again, and when I went to put on my ears and hat, my headband that holds the ears on broke. I was devastated. I almost called it quits, but I did manage to get the hat on with the ears in the right place. Now I had to get to con; it was 10:15am when I got out of the hotel room. I decided to walk the mile to con rather than deal with the tram (that was a mistake). I was hot, I was stressed about missing my time slot with Funko, but I did manage to get to the convention center around 10:45am.
I went up to a guy and asked where I needed to check in. He said I should have come early, and I was thinking to myself, my time slot is from 10am to 11am, so I'm in time. He put me at the back of the 11am line. Then a man who I assumed was his boss came over to check to make sure everyone had a QR code for 11am. I told him I was 10 to 11am, and he asked me why I was there. I told him that someone put me here. He immediately took me to the front of the line and placed me at the end of the 10am line. The guy handed me a piece of paper and a pen, on which I was supposed to mark the Funko Pops I wanted on the page. But being in my Orko cosplay, my vision is limited, so I couldn't mark what I needed. Luckily, I had a really nice guy, and I told him which Funko Pops I wanted, and he grabbed them for me. Since I was in an Orko cosplay and one of their pop was an Orko, he had one of their staff members take a picture of me holding the Orko.
After all that, I paid for my Pops and took the bag to "bag check" as I didn't want to walk back to the hotel, and there was no way I was walking about with this huge bag. With the bag checked, I was ready to hit the floor as Orko. Mattel has a cool booth with a Masters of the Universe section, so I hung around there for a bit. Got lots of pictures taken of me and had a great time. My buddy Steven ran into me and took some pictures for me. Mattel staff took pictures of me for their socials, and I also did a 2 truths and a lie segment about MOTU for their socials. Thanks to Steven, I was able to find some seating in the food court and grab some lunch. Around 3pm, I was getting tired and considered going back to the hotel to change, but then a new surge of people started taking pictures of and with me, so I stayed, and the next thing I knew it was 7pm and the con was closing. I left the con and started to walk back to the hotel. That walk took a bit longer as I was being stopped for pictures, but by the time I got back to the hotel it was late, and I didn't want to change and go back out for dinner, so I bit the bullet and got a burger and fries from room service. $50 later, I was satisfied (a bit poorer) and tired, and when Brian got back to the hotel around 11pm, we went to bed.
Day Four, Saturday. Brian and I took the tram over to the convention center and then went to Subway to grab some breakfast flatbread sandwiches (kind of a tradition of ours). Afterwards, we headed into the con floor. We met up with Steven and walked around a bit. I pulled away from the group so I could get to The Guild panel. Thankfully, I got in an hour early to another panel (before The Guild's Panel), as I heard later there was a line of 500 people waiting to get into an already packed room. The Guild panel was great. I got a shout-out from Felicia and stood to applause; that was very sweet and kind of her. I can't wait to get started on the new movie. Afterwards, I got to chat with a few more of my Guildie friends before heading back down to the floor to meet up with Brian and Steven. And to my surprise, they were able to get into the Hasbro booth line and pick up items that both Dylan and I had wanted....woohoo!! For lunch, Brian, Dylan, and I grabbed some lunch at a place on 5th before heading back to the con and continuing our walk about the sales floor. Once the sales floor closed, Rico finished his Press duties for the Star Trek and Marvel panels and joined us for dinner. We walked to a Mexican restaurant close to our hotel, but the wait was too long, so instead we went across the street to Claim Jumpers and grabbed dinner there (though there was a wait there as well).
Day Five, Sunday. Brian and I got up and headed over to the Hard Rock Cafe for some tasty pancakes. Afterwards, we headed to the sales floor to walk around. I was trying to take more video for my TikTok (KennysCollection), but I felt bad making Brian and eventually Rico and Dylan (who joined us later) wait around while I shot video. Even though we walked the sales floor for many hours, I still wasn't able to see everything. We left the sales floor to check out and an offsite event for Star Trek. This was probably one of my favorite things we did. The best part was the pictures that we got as characters from Star Trek. The con closed at 5pm, so we headed back to the Mexican Restaurant to see if it was busy, and luckily it was not, so we grabbed one last dinner with the gang before Brian and I headed home.
Overall, I didn't get to see every single booth, I didn't get to see as many of the panels that I wanted to see, and I didn't get to hang out with everyone I was hoping to hang out with. But that is a typical con; there are only so many hours in the day, and as I get older, I can only do so much before I have to call it a night. But even with all that... it was another successful Comic Con.
Can't wait for San Diego Comic Con 2027!
Kenny Mittleider is a Post Production Supervisor for TV and a seasoned veteran when it comes to podcasting. He's been podcasting for over 12 years, he started guest podcasting on 
Jenni Powell is the Emmy Award-winning producer of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Welcome to Sanditon, lonelygirl15, Emma Approved and The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy. For two years she was Director of Content and Social Media for VidCon and was a producer at Felicia Day’s YouTube Premium Channel Geek & Sundry, where she produced the Geekie Award-Winning Talkin’ Comics Weekly. Most recently, she was Head of Production for NewMediaRockstars before co-founding Discourse Productions, a boutique production company specializing in digital media content and events. She doesn’t have a lot of free time.
Joe Cucinotti is a media production and management professional with more than 21 years of experience in the Dallas/Fort Worth radio market working on and off the air. He co-created, directed, wrote and starred in the short-lived “Variants” web-series about the misfit crew that works in a Dallas comic book shop. Joe is also a Professional Voice Actor and can be heard in “One Piece”, “Star Blazers 2202”, “My Roommate is a Cat”, “Midnight Occult Civil Servants” and “ID: Invaded” and the video game “Max Payne 3”. He co-hosts The Editing Bay podcast where he and his friends, Joel and Tes, talk way too much about movies that probably don’t deserve to be talked about. He loves “Star Wars”, “G.I. Joe”, “Scott Pilgrim” and once sang karaoke with the cast of “Supernatural”. His crowning achievement, however, is being Sara’s husband and Harper and James’ dad.
Kevin Rusley is a filmmaker from Denver, CO and a lifelong superhero nerd. He and his twin brother Douglas graduated from University of Colorado at Denver in 2008 and moved out to Los Angeles in 2010 to go pro in film and television. They co-founded Evil Clone Productions and produce the Evil Clones Podcast, featuring the podcasts X-Men Watch, the History Box Binge, and Right in the Childhood, along with opinionated episode reviews for "Batman: The Animated Series".
