Since I did the Wonderfest post over at my other journal, I’ll do the COSI one here!
A strange crew on the falcon…
Friday! Ash and I left Chase’s apt and took a cab to the airport. The cab showed up 20 minutes earlier than it was supposed to, so we got to the airport waaaaaaay early. Flight was uneventful, and short.
Columbus weather? Not so great. It was pouring and we had no umbrella, so we both got rather soaked. Ash and I got lunch and lamented over how to get our costume stuff to COSI in the rain. At least we had a beautiful, free hotel room to do our lamenting in.
Luckily it stopped just as we decided to head towards COSI, so we walked. It was a nice walk, except for Ash falling flat on her face. I mean, we were walking, and SPLAT. I, for a fraction of a second, thought she’d been shot she went down so fast. She had the presense of mind to toss the box she was carrying (with her helmet in it) out in front of her so she didn’t land on it, so her helmet was safe, but her ankle and knee were not. Knee = bruised and scraped, Ankle = twisted. So, so far, not a great start to COSI, but don’t worry, things got better!
The minute we walked in (looking lost, I suppose), two COSI employees came up and showed us to the 501st/RL changing room. Every COSI employee we worked with or saw throughout the whole weekend was friendly and cheerful and treated us really great. I can’t say enough good things about how wonderfully we were treated.
Ash relaxes in The Big Yummy before everybody else gets there.
We hung around for a while, got our badges for the weekend. Then we started getting ready as more people got there. I wore Queen Amidala all friday night – from about 3:30 in the afternoon to about 1:30 in the morning. I think that’s the longest I ever wore it. My hair was huge, too. LOL.
“Two fighters against a star destroyer??”
Ash signed all her autographs as Hobbie. We laughed.
We spent all night wandering around, into the exhibit, around the exhibit, outside, getting lots of photos with kids and signing autographs and being on TV. It was a lot of fun but by around 11 my back was killing me from the parasol! Chase finally got in around 11 and I helped him get changed. At 1:30 Ash and I got out of our costumes and wandered around taking pics of the exhibit and other costumers, and eating food from the reception for the midnight opening guests.
Me signing autographs
Me as Amidala with Dee as Rabe, and me and Ash – pics from Glenn (I told you my hair was huge)
Plo Koon. He tried to eat the baby Luke after this, but my camera wouldn’t take a picture. It also wouldn’t take a picture of Darth Vader’s codpiece, so we decided my camera must be self-censoring.
Then Skip gave us a ride back to the hotel and we totally crashed.
Saturday I got to wear my new Leia costume!! Finally yay! We took a taxi over that morning cause we’re lazy like that. We hung around and went in the exhibit and took pics…
The little girl in my lap was SO cute. The minute I knelt down to take a pic with them she threw her arms around my neck and gave me a big hug.
Me in front of the real costumes on display.
My turn in the Falcon hallway:
I loved this retro Space sign.
Some pics of Chase in his clone:
Then we had our big lunch, including the R2D2 cake, and Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett) as our guest! (I got Jeremy Bulloch’s autograph earlier that day – he’s very nice), then we all lined up and went outside to take our group pics.
After the big groups, we did some Southern Outpost pictures, and by that time I’d started feeling icky so we headed back over to the hotel.
We got back up and went and got a quick bite for dinner, then went to the 501st/RL party but didn’t stay long as none of us felt well. By that time I was feeling horrible and feverish so I crashed.
Sunday we got up and packed our stuff up… I had to go ahead and pack Amidala instead of wearing it again sunday, because there would have been no other way to pack it and ship it š I wore my Officer sunday morning until I started feeling even worse, then wore normal clothes the rest of the day.
Highlight of Sunday was getting in the Millenium Falcon cockpit before the exhibit opened!! I really, really regret not going in there saturday and getting some pics as Leia in there. But we did get some cool pics as you can see.
Then we left and went to the airport. The flight crew was HILARIOUS. It was awesome. I felt so tired and sick that night we decided to stay at Chase’s instead of driving home.
I’m still sick as of today – I think it was a combination of the weather on friday, and possibly just being around so many kids over the weekend. I can ignore the getting sick part though, because this was one of the BEST events I’ve ever done. COSI was GREAT to us, giving us those beautiful free hotel rooms and treating us so great, the exhibit was AWESOME, all the costumers (501st and RL both) were top notch. I want to go back!
Now I got nothing until Comic Con š Time to get lots done…