Remember how I talked about BFF and I getting our Barrowman sandwich on?  Well, in order to do these photo ops, you must first show up early and get in a line to wait with other like-minded geeks and nerds that are waiting for the same opportunity of a lifetime.  Last year, you will recall that we did the photo-op with our Wil Wheaton and this year we opted to do two of them.  The first we did with Nathan Fillion and the second of course was our Barrowman sandwich.  So, one the day we were to meet Captain Mal, AKA Fillion, we had purchased an early time of 1015 because we HAD to get upstairs to see our love Barrowman talk afterwards.  We asked one of the workers at the Comicon the day before where and when we needed to show up and were told that we needed to be there about 45 minutes early and that we would line up outside the doors to the exhibition hall since that would not open until ten anyways.  Armed with that info, we made plans accordingly for the next day.

We aried for our photo-op with Captain Mal at the said 45 minutes early to be astounded by the HUMUNGOUS crowd already gathering outside the doors we were told to go to line up.  Holy cow…there were hundreds of people all around the area where we were supposed to line up and in no particular order.  Here is where Phoenix Comicon could take a lesson from Disneyland.  Disneyland is the expert on lines and making them not feel like lines.  There were no line markings, no barriers and for sure no singing anials to entertain us.  They could have at least gotten a few of those people dressed up like Furry woodland creatures to sing and dance while we were waiting.  We tried to make sense of where we were supposed to be but really it was a giant horde of Fillion fans waiting to push their way into the hall to get their precious few seconds with him.  Finally, BFF spotted a worker who was holding the sign that said End of the Line.  Perfect!  We shall go to his sign and get in line.  We walked over only to have this worker explain to a group of us that there were too many people in line and we would all have to go away and come back later. Wait…what?  Um….no.  We paid for this time slot and we were not about to come back later and risk missing our photo-op or the panel where Barrowman was speaking right afterwards.  He kept telling us to come back later and BFF and I looked at each other.  We were not going anywhere. Geeks around us were all appalled as well and we still could not tell where the line actually was in the crowd.  We started discussing the absurdity of the situation with our fellow Browncoats behind us as we wandered a short ways off but kept the End of Line Guy in our sights.  All of a sudden, BFF grabs my hand and wiggles her tiny little Mexican body into what she had determined was the line and we were in front of the End of the Line Guy!!  BFF has mad line cutting skills I tell ya.  We kept quiet and silently just stood there and he continually turned people away.  We grinned at each other, knowing we were now the End of the Line.  Our fellow geeky Browncoats that we had been talking with see us in line were astounded that now we were in the actual (at least we hoped) line to get our photo.  There was so much craziness going on that we figured what is a few more people.  So we quickly grabbed our new-found group of friends and pulled them into line with us.  When someone questioned us, we said these were our friends who had been looking for us the whole time and we had gotten separated in the crowd.  So they let it go.  We even did a selfie with our new friends in line like we had all known each other forever

One snafu to BFF’s mad line skills came when a lady who was standing right with the End of Line Guy complained that we had line jumped.  We quickly denied we had line jumped and instead stuck with our story that we had been there and our friends had just joined us.  The End of the Line Guy, obviously now frustrated by his job and all of the fans, told the lady he could not prove we had line jumped so we were going to stay.  She continued to complain loudly and finally BFF leaned over and told the End of Line Guy to just let her come up with us so she would shut up.  He graciously agreed and let her be the official end of the line.  There was still no order to the line and we had no clue where the line was going.  Finally they opened the doors to the exhibition hall to alleviate the crush of people that was obviously now a fire code hazard.  Somehow despite the lack of line markings and people randomly doing what we did by just joining the crush of people we got in to see Fillion and get our picture taken with him.  It was as awesome as it sounds.

The next day when we arrived to get our Barrowman sandwich on, we got there even earlier but the mad crush of people was for Stan Lee this time so we were able to go right inside and join the other Barrowman fans.  Who do we spot once again behind us in line?  The complaining lady who now acted like we were her best friends at Comicon.  Sigh.  We talked with her even though she annoyed us and almost made us lose our spot in the Fillion line with her complaining.  I mean we were about to stalk…I mean meet Barrowman so that high was gonna last all day…as you previously read.  Photo ops are totally worth it!  But Phoenix Comicon planners:  next time plan for such big crowds and line markings will help immensely.  Also dancing and singing woodland creatures.

Oh yeah.  I didn’t die today.  I did think e might not be able to decipher the crowd/line to get to see Fillion but I didn’t die.  I am Fat Girl with a BFF who has mad line cutting skills and who made some new geeky friends in line Running.  The experiment continues…