Comic-con Takeover of Downtown San Diego
Comic-con is one of the biggest Sci-Fi and fantasy conventions and when it comes to town it presence is hard to miss. Not only does it use the entire San Diego Convention Center it spills over into the surrounding areas.
One of the most obvious indications that Comic-con is in town are the enormous building wraps like on this hotel which is promoting a TV show.
A movie is using a parking garage to inform it is coming.
Who knows, this might make the faint-hearted think twice about entering the apartment building.
Even the Petco Park stadium is promoting something other than baseball.
Buildings are not the only things that get wrapped but also some buses,
And trains. These extend the range a lot of where they are seen.
The San Diego Convention Center itself has a somewhat futuristic looking design.
It makes for some interesting views inside looking out.
As well as this view inside the building.
This shows the tubes where the previous picture was looking.
This is the crowd that is taking in some of the Comic-con events that spilled out of the convention center and across the street.
One never knows what one will find, like this car in a fountain,
Or this helicopter on a building. This gives people the opportunity to experience repelling from the helicopter to the building below. Some events need a Comic-con ticket but some don’t.
This panorama is of the bay from the convention center. If you look closely there is a line of people extending the entire length of the bay. This is for the largest hall in the convention center which is Hall H with a capacity of about 6000 people.
A closer view of the line showing how it wraps around. A lot more people want to attend Comic-con than there are tickets so Comic-con has implemented a ticket lottery to determine who gets tickets.
The very imposing Godzilla is there to deal with people who try to cut in line. Some fans will wait in line all day or even over night in order to get into the panels they want to see.
While a lot of things do not have that long of a wait it is hard to avoid lines all together. So what does one do while waiting in line? One might relax and enjoy the pretty flowers and flowering trees, or the barges in the bay beyond.
This banana boat has nothing to do with Comic-con but it can be interesting to watch load or unload.
One year there was a sailing boat promoting something. If you look closely at the dock there are 2 cannons which they would fire every so often which provided quite a shock for those not expecting it.
This is one of the events on the bay side of the convention center. These events are one of the ways Comic-con has been able to increase attendance a little beyond what the convention center holds. Comic-con does not release attendance numbers but there were estimated to be 130,000 people attending in 2018.
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