Thursday, August 7, 2014

In Which I Joined the Adventure

Well, guys.  FantasyCon was a month ago (July 3-5), but I never shared my pictures from it with you.  It was pretty epic and if you like going to cons, but missed this one, you really missed out.  They really raised the bar for cons in my opinion.  There was so much to see and do!  There were celebrity panels, educational panels, autographs, meet and greets, celebrity photo-ops, cosplayers, and merch - typical con stuff.  But there was also a fire show, blacksmiths, glass blowers, LARPing, an archery range, dragon training, performers doing scenes from Shakespeare (that's what I did) and other various scenes, ballet, cirque de solie type stuff, a puppeteer.  Goodness!  I was so tired when it was over, I just wanted to sleep for days.
I took over 200 pictures, so here's 67 of them.  I think that narrows it down a bit, right?

 First day of FantasyCon, the whole family went.  Zach and Kaleb wanted to dress up, but they didn't tell me that, so they decided to go as Pokemon masters.


 Stilt walkers dressed like wood fairies!

 I was supposed to perform in Gargoyle Alley, but Thursday our scene got cancelled.  Someone forgot to get us a cauldron for our witch scene. So unfortunately, my family didn't get to see my little show.

 Kaleb, the Pokemaster.

 The blacksmiths were my kids favorite.  They kept coming back and wanting to watch them work.

 This dragon is very hot.


 The archery range was in Drifter Woods.  Along with Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother.

 This volunteer is explaining how to shoot to us.

 Zach, the Pokemaster.


 This guy explained all the safety rules of archery.

 Riley and I got the small targets, and I almost hit one, but nope.  I didn't hit any.  Neither did he.

 Then we found this lady with a real live dragon!

 He's pretty cool.

 This is the FantasyCon dragon.  I forget his name though.

 And they had a castle.

 And you could pretend to storm the castle.

 The dwarf mine.

 Kaleb wanted his picture with the Ewoks, but not Jabba the Hut (whose tale you see just on the right.

 The battle grounds were totally awesome!







 This water statue was totally awesome!

 Mermaids!

 Oh, they're so beautiful.

 A closer shot of the water statue.


 This is Rocky.  He was animatronic.  He growled and moved.

 This guy looked cool.

 Here comes the Dragon Team!

 Totally awesome.

 The blacksmith again.

 Kaleb and dad with the dragon.

Riley with the dragon.

 He also went to the stocks.

 Kaleb, too.  I have some really bad kids. ;)

 Then Kaleb sat on his throne.  He is King of the Pokemasters!

 We watched the drum performers.

 They were pretty sweet.


 Fire show!






 These are the Sentinels that greeted you as you entered the con.

 On the fourth of July, we had a parade.

 Guenevere getting her hair done by a fairy.

 Me, in my witch costume, with one of my witches!  Oh my goodness, it was hot.


 And this is also one of my witches.  She's a space girl for the parade though.  She didn't have time to pick up her costume the night before.

 One of the cosplayers.

Me and my witches before we went out to do our scene.  We did Macbeth.
I'm First Witch, Devon was Second Witch, and Arianne was Third Witch.
"Double, double toil and trouble!
Fire burn and cauldron bubble!"

 On the afternoon of July 4th, we were in the middle of our scene when I noticed someone sit down to watch us.  Our scene went wonderfully and everything went off without a hitch.  We took our bows and I looked up to thank the person who had sat down for watching us.  Low and behold, it was non other than Billy Boyd (Pippin from Lord of the Rings)!  I was not expecting THAT!  How amazing to have been watched by a man of great talent.  He said, "That was good! You guys were great!" And then he recited the next part of the play to us.  He told us he had done Macbeth last year.  Then he bid us farewell and was on his way.
This picture was taken of "Second Witch" not long after our encounter.
Third Witch freaked out a little.  It was awesome because I think we were both really freaked out by the whole experience.

 Then because it was the fourth of July, after I got home, we lit fireworks.

 Neji doesn't like fireworks.

 Saturday I forgot my camera and so I had to settle with using my phone.
This is Simon Pegg.  He's an actor and Arianne really wanted to see him, so all the witches got in line and checked out his panel together.

 He was funny.

 After our time for scenes was over, I hung out with Arianne for a bit and we watched these guys.

It was such a good experience.  I was really nervous about being a volunteer performer because I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I'm really glad I did it.

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