Celebration Europe

AS you can see from the pic yesterday we were at Celebration Europe. We arrived at about 10:45 at the Excel Centre, and just about everyone else on the train was going there as well. As we were walking from the station to the centre we saw the first signs that we were there for Star Wars, when we saw a little kid dressed in a Darth Vader outfit, as we got to the entrance there were some Stormtroopers and Imperial Officers hanging about for fans to have their pics taken with them.

When we got inside the centre, the first sight was a model Death Star followed by a Jabba the Hutt model. To the right was the autograph hall, where they had some of the actors/puppeteers from the films. To the left was the merchandise hall and fan areas. We met up with a friend, Steven, who C has known for many years and who I know from the SFX forums, along with some of his friends. We were all wearing T-shirts C had made for us, though mine was not SW related. We had a bit of a wander round the various stalls and the official CE merchandise area, we managed to meet back up with Steven and another of C's friends at lunch time'ish, before heading to the "One Man Star Wars Show" at 1pm.

We started queuing at 12:30, by which time the queue had already double backed on itself, but we managed to get in ok. The One Man Star Wars Show is basically what it says, one man, Charles Ross, re-enacting scenes from the OT. This was really good and quite funny, though some people couldn't have thought so as there was a constant stream of people leaving during the performance. All in all the show took just over an hour.

After the show we had a bit more of a wander around the main hall looking at all the things people had for sale, as well as picking up some freebies, mainly promotional pamphlets and the like. We had a look at an exhibition of Darth Vader Helmets that had been "modified"/"painted", some of them were pretty good.

We then had more of a wander around which allowed C to finally have her pic taken with various characters from SW, from Stormtroopers and Darth Vader to Obi Wan Kenobi. We then headed outside at about 18:00 for the official opening of CE. They had set up a big screen by the small field area, and at 18:30 the SW music started and we were introduced to Steven Sansweet, fan relations, who gave a speech about how good it was to be here in London etc, he was followed by Mark Hamil and Ian McDiarmuid who introduce Star Wars EpIV A New Hope to loud cheers and appluase. Shortly after this we decided it was time to head home and grab some much needed dinner.

Overall it was a good day, and I'm glad we went, though the one day was more than enough for me, and I think C felt/feels the same.