Day One
Friday 13th July

After all the waiting and all the anticipation, it as finally here, I was finally there, at the first star wars celebration to be held outside of America. It was everything I hoped it would be and more. There were stormtroopers, literally, everywhere. A huge AT-AT stood in the centre of the enormous room, visible from practically anywhere in the convention hall, and most importantly, there were fans, like-minded people, surrounding me. Some in costume, some in star wars t-shirts, some simply in normal clothes, but all of them wearing a smile, all happy to be there at last, all excited as I.

First thing after having a quick look around I headed over to the "artists alley" and picked up Joe Corroney and randy Martinez's prints. Both of these artists were great guys and Randy Martinez was nice enough to sign my show guide and he explained to me how he made the cool picture for the front cover.

I walked round for a little longer then decided to take the prints back to the hotel to save them getting damaged when I returned to the con I walked in to find a line waiting for one of the shows then someone in the line called me over, it turned out to be none other than jedimca0! And I joined the queue to see a talk with ray park, only to discover the schedule had changed and it was now "R2 and beyond", with Don Beis and Kenny Baker joining host Warrick Davis on stage to talk about R2-D2 and some of the other droids of star wars. It was a really interesting talk with some fascinating insights into Kenny Bakers work beneath the familiar dome.
After this jedimca0 and I went our separate ways, knowing we'd bump in to each other again at some point.

I walked around some more looking at the various traders' stalls and found a huge painting being created. There were some fantastic sights around the convention not least were the R2 builders club, I even got some tips from one of the members about building a droid myself, something I plan to start in the near future.

There were some simply awesome displays around, especially from the 501st Belgian Garrison. It was they who had brought the AT-AT but they also had a Speeder Bike, a scale model of an X-Wing and a selection of Star Wars weapons including a Snowtrooper manning an E-WEB heavy blaster.

After lunch I decided to check out the Vader project, which showed some amazing work, the things some people can come up with when simply given a Vader helmet is astonishing. This exhibit turned out to use up about a quarter of the space on the cameras memory card. I took pictures of almost every one!

Another of the really cool displays was the LEGO. As well as a cool mosaic being created, and a Star Destroyer they had a huge display of Mos Eisley! It was immense, there were vaperators, a sandcrawler and even the new Millenium Falcon with the docking bay built around it! Unfortunately most of my pictures were too blurred to make any sense of.

At about 4 I decided to start queuing for the Mark Hamill talk, I figured as it didn't start till 5, one hour would be enough time to leave to get a seat, wrong! I headed over to the celebrity stage and saw the queue disappearing round a corner, I followed it and it took almost five minutes to reach the end, the line covered half the perimeter of the hall! But I decided it would be worth the wait, so I got in line, although I had my doubts about the number of seats vs. the number of people, I waited.

After few minutes someone else saw my bloggalot t-shirt and came over to say hi, blogalot creator nob01 and his wife pidluk. Pidluk took a few pictures of us, and we chatted for a few minutes before he headed off to get a good seat for the opening ceremonies.

Half an hour later an announcement came over the PA system that the opening ceremonies were starting at 6, the same time as the Mark Hamill talk was due to end, the ceremonies weren't supposed to start till 6:30. So at this point I decide to weigh up my fears of queuing then not getting in to see Mark Hamill, against how much I wanted to see the opening ceremonies

Anyway, the opening ceremonies won out so I decided to go outside and find where it was happening. When I got outside I found a truck there with a big screen on top of it and figured that was where the opening ceremonies and the big screen viewing of ANH were going to be.
I walked around the front of the truck to get a good patch of grass, ready but there weren't many people sat there at all, so I decided to have a walk around the main hall again. When I got back inside the queue for Mark Hamill was incredibly long, about three quarters of the way around the perimeter of the convention! So I decided to take advantage of the fact that most people were queuing and headed over to the arcade machines, which had been crowded most of the day, but were now rather quiet. So I had a few games on the star wars trilogy arcade, flying the battle of Yavin, which was great fun although the controls seemed to be the wrong way round so left sent my X-wing right and right sent me left. It took a few lives to get used to the controls but I was determined not to give up, and, after a while, I was shooting down TIEs all over the place. Then I got down to the Death Star surface where I crashed into a laser turret and it was game over.
This spent the last of my change, so I promised myself I'd come back some other time over the weekend. I never did though.

After walking around some more and checking out a few of the dealer stands, I headed back outside for the opening ceremonies. Where I once again met nob01 and pidluk, along with some of their friends, who I sat down with to watch the opening ceremonies. After walking around all day, it was nice to sit down for a bit.

Since the PA in the hall had said the opening ceremonies would start at 6, I didn't think we'd be waiting long for it to start, but, it ended up beginning at half past, exactly when the programme had stated it would. But it was nice to sit for a while and chat to some of the people I've got to know here. For those of you who haven't met them nob01 is a great bloke, and although we didn't spend much time together it was very enjoyable, it really was great meeting him, and pidluk is wonderful too, and she has such a great accent, unlike nobby who doesn't seem to have an accent, contrary to what many of you said after CIV. We also saw jedimca0 again there so it was almost like a little blogger get together.

The opening ceremonies were fun, the wind seemed a bit of a problem for Steve Sansweet, but he got through it, even with interruptions every ten minutes from the imperial fleet . After, Warrick Davis came on stage with a giant remote control and introduced a film about the medicinema charity, which helps people who are in hospital for long periods of time to see films. Then Mark Hamill came on stage giving a bit of a talk and demonstrating his amazing vocal talents before introducing the emperor himself, Ian McDiarmid. Ian was a great crowd pleaser, putting onthe Emperor voice to wish everyone a "Happy Friday the 13th" and he had us all laughing at his comparison of the crowd to a music festival with his "a new dope" comment, before introducing the only Star Wars film he's not in, A New Hope, on the big screen.

Before the film started though, the army band who had been stood patiently through the ceremonies, started the movie off with the 20th centaury fox fanfare before the familiar words appeared on the screen, and to add to the atmosphere, just as the star destroyer appeared across the screen, a jet airliner took off and flew overhead, making the ground rumble as we sat watching the immense imperial ship, making it feel like we were really there.

Not far in to the film nob01 and his group had to leave, but we knew we'd see each other again over the course of the weekend. I stayed to watch the film, lying back on the grass, and relaxing as I watched. I watched up until Obi Wan and Luke first meet Han solo, then my stomach started to rumble, and I decided to return to my hotel, in search of food.

On my way back to the hotel I met another great fan, Mike, who had an amazing costume, very original. Over the weekend I bumped in to him a few times, and it was really fun to chat with him.

I returned a while later, just in time to hear the music accompanying the credits and headed over to the pub adjacent to ExCel to get to know some of the other fans. The place was full of fans, and I spoke with quite a few, not least of all were janlomona, tar_ranth and frans latka, or Mark, Louis and Bex from lightsabre. These three were great to get to know and I ended up hanging out with them in a bar every night, I think. (Some memories are a little blurry)

The night was a great experience, how often do you witness a lightsaber duel in a pub? At CE, very often! It was great to hang out and be around other star wars fans, talking about the GFFA but also getting to know one another, and I made a few friends that night. The pub eventually closed at about 1am I think and after standing around without a drink and talking with other fans, and being asked to leave because the pub was now closed. We decided to go and find somewhere still open where we could drink. we never found anywhere but it was good to hang out some more with fans from around the world.

I think I got back to my hotel at about 2:30 to 3ish, that's when, instead of going to bed I decided to start writing this blog on my phone (it has MS word) which I found the next morning, it was full of spelling mistakes and about half way through stopped being narrative and became simply a list of things that happened. Since my holiday, its taken me over a week to read through, correct the mistakes and finish it off, it probably would have been quicker to start again from scratch!



I have to apologise for not having many pictures, I was using my sisters' digital camera and she forgot to tell me that holding the button down gives a longer exposure, so most of my photos ended up horribly blurred, like this one of Warrick Davis appearing to have 3 arms!



Come back soon for the next part of my Celebration Europe adventure, featuring costumes, celebrities and a lightsaber battle!


If you can't get enough of Celebration Europe, why not check out lightsabre for more CE stories from another point of veiw