Starfest 2007 — The Event

Because it seemed to take so long to get any what I would consider “decent” guest to come to Starfest 2007, I had my first warning indication that this year might not be as good as Starfest 2006. However, if nothing else, Leonard Nimoy coming would be worth the trip down. More on him in another post.

The first thing we noticed that were in short supply were Storm Troopers. Last year, there were tons of them all around and it added to the sense of fun of the event. Heck, they even had at least two people playing Darth Vader last year, but this year, I only saw him briefly (which Marc managed to capture a photo of). After that, he was gone and even at the group photo at the end, he wasn’t there. In fact, a lot of people commented on the lack of Storm Troopers this year. Here’s the shot I took of all they had (sans Vader):

Compare that to the shot Marc took last year:

It looks like they had a few more people come this year, but less Storm Troopers. Frankly, the Storm Troopers are the coolest and I wish there’d been more of them. Oh well.

As usual, there were a lot of people in costume. There were no anime cosplayers this year, though I did see one teenaged Caucasian girl in a kimono. Here’s a sampling of what was there.

As happened last year, the balconies were decorated for some contest Starfest ran for the guest who were spending the night at the hotel. However, this year I didn’t really see many elaborate ones like last year.

Outdoors, there were a couple of props. One was a Ghostbusters car. The other was a T-rex skeleton for the movie Night at the Museum.

We checked out all the rooms and made a brief stop in the model room. Here, a life-sized replica of Darth Maul stood along with Yoda. There were a couple of The Robot life-sized models too, not to mention various elaborate ship models and the like.

However, our trip to the model room was cut short. An alarm sounded, which everyone initially thought was The Robot since it would often make noises or say things. However, it wasn’t The Robot, but instead was the fire alarm. So, we were shooed out and told to evacuate, so the crowd of us there slowly started making our way out. Since the model room was on the second floor, it just happened to be right above the area where Leonard Nimoy would be doing autographs. I was curious to see what the lengthy line of folks who’d paid $60 a person to have an autograph with the man were doing. They weren’t moving, and I dare say would have burned to death rather than give up their spot in line.

Turns out, some smeg head was smoking inside the building which set off the alarms. Before we could get down to the first floor, the folks below were cheering the news of a false alert.

As we returned to doing what we were doing, we happened to run into the 2-man film crew from HD Net, a channel on DirecTV. I know Marc and I had to make it into a shot or two. Marc and the guy doing the interviews talked off camera a while. Marc made the guy’s day by getting a snapshot of him talking with Erin Grey of Buck Roger’s fame. Granted, he had film of the event, but no still shot. So that was cool. We also happened on local radio personality Reggie McDaniel from 850 KOA. He does segments as well as a show on movies and the like, so it was only natural for him to be there doing a live radio cast. I didn’t go on the air, but I decided to get a picture with him.

We wandered through the dealer room and saw everything else we wanted to see before heading into the main room for the main events. Those, I’ll post in another entry.