Star Wars Celebration II Indianapolis 2002 trip report

Star Wars Celebration II
Indianapolis 2002 trip report

updated May 13, 2002

Friday May 3, 2002

We arrived at 12:30pm. There was a parking space on the street right in across the street from the Convention Center. We took it since we were running late, although we could only park here for two hours.

There was no line to get in.

We entered the Convention Center and picked up the schedule. Here is one of the three-day badges we bought on line.

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The first seminar we wanted to see had already started, "How to make an action figure" from 1pm to 1:50pm. There were about 100 or so people attending.

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The first part was about the early days of action figures from Hasbro. This is back when they were carved by hand. The molds they showed were Asian "bootleg" mold for unauthorized figures. All of the authentic molds have been destroyed, so the bootlegs were the only ones available to show.

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The next part was about the production of current action figures by Gentle Giant. Now they scan the actors with a computer and use computer controlled rapid-prototyping machines to make the figures. They showed a video of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Patrick Stewart being scanned.

Here is the head scanner they had in the exhibit hall. Attendees could get their head scanned and then enter a contest to get their head on a bust.

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After the seminar we decided to go to the Celebration II Store to buy the special action figure and other stuff. The store was in a huge room with eight long lines. There was a large queue that held people back from the main lines until there was room.

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The lines moved incredibly slowly. We finally got to the front at 2:25pm and the last action figures had just been sold. They said the Lucas was allowing half to be sold Friday and the remaining to be sold on Saturday. They were also out of the pin for the convention! Not making enough figures is understandable, but running out of pins at 2:30 on the first day is nuts. We bought programs and t-shirts and headed over to the concert ticket sales booth.

The concert is Saturday night. The Philharmonic Orchestra of Indianapolis is performing Star Wars music. The line for the concert tickets snaked back through most of the convention center and was not moving. There were thousands of people in line. This was easily a 4-5 hour line.

We gave up on that and visited the exhibition hall. The exhibit hall filled two of the Convention Center's ball rooms. LEGO has a large area set up with lots of tables with kids assembling blocks of bricks for the largest Yoda. They also had many Star Wars models built out of LEGO on display.

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They also had a full-size Darth Vader in LEGO.

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Here are some scenes from the movies made of LEGO.

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Ultrarama had a booth selling their Ultrarama action figure stages. They had three different background to choose from. We bought one because they had them discounted at the show and there is no shipping charge.

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They had a replica of the Jedi Starfighter that Obi-Wan used in Episode II on display in the lobby.

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We burned out from the crowds at about 4pm and went home. On the news we heard that they expected 25,000 people over the three day weekend. They had more than that on the first day!

You would think they would have suspected large crowds since they sold 17,000 advance tickets. They picked Indianapolis because it is within a one day drive for half of the US population. The news also said that fans started lining up at 4am! We decided to go earlier on Saturday. Not at 4am, but maybe 7:30.

Saturday May 4, 2002

We arrived at 7:45am, but all of the streets surrounding the Convention Center were closed off due to the Mini-Marathon that starts at 8am. About one-third of the Convention Center was being used for the marathon check-in. Talk about bad planning. This year the marathon had a record attendance of 25,000.

At 7:45 the line was already two city blocks long. Here is a map of the Convention Center showing where the line was in green. The dots are where we started on Saturday (red dot) and Sunday (lighter dot). The photo is looking north from the line on Saturday from the red dot.

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A woman that was parking cars at South Street and Missouri Street said she has been there for 25 years and has never seen crowds like this. The marathon runners went by at about 8:20am. It was pretty entertaining. They were laughing at us for standing in line and we were laughing at them for running for 13 miles.

We got into the convention around 9am and headed stright for the Celebration II Store to get the action figures. The line was longer than on Friday. The first queue was backed up to the door. We got to the check out at around 10:45pm and bought our figures. The figure is Jorge Sacul (Lucas spelled backwards). It is a pilot with the head of George Lucas. It was created as a special edition just for the convention.

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Back to the exhibit hall. Many of the booths were selling old Star Wars toys and collectables. Two were selling knives and swords. There were t-shirt and poster booths. Suncoast had a large area with books and video games. D-K books and Scholastic were also there. Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast had a large area with lots of things going on. They had tables for playing the collectable card games and role playing and displays of all kinds of merchandise. In the middle of the Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast section there were a half dozen action figure scale dioramas for demonstrations of the role playing game. A Wizards of the Coast representative would be the Game Master (GM) and about four volunteers from the atendees could take part in the demo as characters. Our game included a small mission to complete of finding a shape-shifting bounty hunter in a bar. Action figures were used to represent the placement of characters in the scene. Unfortunately, the dioramas were not for sale. They probably would have been too expensive anyway, though.

They also had a life-size action figure box set up as a photo opportunity. An array of Star Wars weapon props were on hand to use for the picture.

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Here is a free action figure poster they were giving out at Hasbro.

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We bought two more Ultraramas with the other background scenes. Now we can make a circular stage with three levels.

Here is a company selling Star Wars guitars.

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Here are some fans in full costume. Boba Fett posing for a picture, some characters in the Fan Club lounge and Greedo. Even Greedo has to wear an ID badge to get into the convention!
Thousands of attendees came in costume.
I should have taken more pictures.

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I bought some T-shirts and a Star Wars domumentary DVD. We left the exhibit hall and bought some Dippin Dots - Ice Cream of the Future. These are little hard frozen pellets if ice cream. It makes it easy to mix them for new flavors.

Went to the Fan Films room but nothing was going on.
The program said that films would be on continuous loops all day. Hmmmmm.

In the Diorama Builders Room there was a display of fan-built Star Wars scenes. Also here were a couple of "boxed toy" diaramas.

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The main goal in this room was to build a large diorama of Mos Isley. It was to be completed by the end of the convention and then parts of it would be raffled off. In one area fans were making Mos Isley buildings out of foamcore board. In another area they were covering the buildings in paper mache and painting them. In another area, the one we joined, fans were making the non-building props out of Sculpy and a big box of miscellaneous parts.

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They needed things like evaporators and scenery. Here is what we made.

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A little girl asked me what mine was and I told her it was a 134 Evaporator from Episode 4. She believed me. Maybe it really is!

We attended the RPG seminar from 4-6pm on the development of the role playing game and new Wizards of the Coast books on it. Although we don't play the role playing game yet, we were interested in the new reference books to come out. Wizards of the Coast will release about five books a year and will eventually be a set of a dozen.

Here is the lounge for Star Wars Fan Club members. It was just a quiet place to get away from the noise and the crowds for a while.
It is normally a concession lounge during Colts games.

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I met a girl here who had an autographed picture of Carrie Fisher. She said they got to the Carrie Fisher line pretty early and they had to wait 7 hours.

The lounge is next to the Colts football field in the RCA Dome. The doors were locked, but I took a couple of pictures.

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Sunday May 5, 2002

Today we arrived at 8am and the line was even longer than on Saturday. This time we were around the corner on South Street. The line moved much faster than it did on Friday. The conflicting event today was the Mayor's Breakfast that kicks off the month of May at the Speedway. The Mayor has a big sit-down breakfast with entertainment and the 500 Festival Queen. After breakfast the attendees all drive their cars in a caravan out to the Indianapolis 500 Motor Speedway for a loop around the track.

We got into the convention around 9am and headed for the exhibition hall to get autograph coupons. One of us got in line for the actual autographs and the other in line for the coupons. The coupons were $15 apiece or 10 for $120. A coupon could be used to get one item signed. There were about 40 celebrities there.

Carrie Fisher was the big draw. She had her own room on the other side of the Convention Center. Before we got to the front of the line to buy the coupons a staff member came around to announce that the Carrie Fisher line was already full for the whole day!

The other celebrities in the autograph area:

Billy Dee Williams - Lando Calrissian
Kenny Baker - R2-D2
David Prowse - Darth Vader
Peter Mayhew - Chewbacca
Phil Owens - Uncle Owen
Amy Allen - Aayla Secura
Shannon Baksa - Mara Jade
Jerome Blake - Rune Haako, Mas Ameeda
Paul Blake - Greedo
Bruce Boa - General Reeiken
Michionne Bourriague - Aurra Sing
Jeremy Bulloch - Boba Fett
Silas Carson - Nute Gunray, Ki Ada Mundi
Michael Carter - Bib Fortuna
Ken Colley - Admiral Piett
Warwick Davis - Wicket, Wald, Weezle
Peter Diamond - Tusken Raider, Stunt Coordinator
Mike Edmonds - Logray, Ugnaught
Julian Glover - General Veers
Rusty Goffe - Jawa, Kabe, Gonk Droid
Garrick Hagon - Biggs
John Hollis - Lobot
William Hootkins - Porkins, Red 6
Nalina Krisham - Barriss Offee
Richard Le Parmentier - Admiral Motti
Ian Liston - Wes Janson
Angus MacInnes - Gold Leader
Mary Oyaya - Luminara Unduli
Bonnie Piesse - Beru Whitesun
Mike Quinn - Nein Nunb
Tim Rose - Adminar Ackbar, Sy Smootles, Salacious Crumb
Alan Ruscoe - Plo Koon, Daultry Dofine
Michael Sheard - Admiral Ozzel
Femi Taylor - Oola

Here are some pictures, including a couple of David Prowse and Billy Dee Williams.

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Another loop around the exhibit hall.

We checked out the Diorama Builders Room again. Many buildings were now painted. Still a long way to go.

We decided to go through the Star Wars Archive Exhibit Room to see the movie props. There were about 50 people in line. We decided it was worth the wait. Wa Ha Ha Ha!

This line turned out to be the little part that enters the room. The rest of the line was across the hall. We followed it back for a while and after a long walk we concluded that this line was several hours long and not worth it.

We watched a couple of the Fan Films.

The crowds today were the worst of the entire weekend. My theory is that with the concert over and the action figures sold out that all of the people that would have been in those lines are now in other lines. The entire convention seemed gridlocked so we left at about 11:30am. We had seen about all we were going to be able to see and were exhausted.

I heard on the news that if they have the convention in Indianapolis again they will rent the entire Convention Center, instead of two-thirds of it. We had a good time, but never really got to do the things we went to the convention for. Next time they need more space and more activities to spread the crowd out. Also, why not presell autograph time slots and concert tickets and maybe even seminar tickets on the web? I can't believe they really want everyone to be standing in lines the whole weekend.

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