Okay, she says with a heavy sigh...and you know that's never good.
Let's start by saying I'm a big fan of the TV show Supernatural. I live in Vancouver, where it is filmed and every once and a while there's spottings, particularly in my local bookstore. I have the series on DVD. I play Jensen's "Eye of the Tiger" clip whenever I need a laugh.
So when my niece "Buttercup" called to say she was coming to town and wanted to spend some time with me and maybe we could go to Creation Entertainments "Supernatural" convention, this seemed like a win-win.
Except that Buttercup was too late telling me this and the tickets were off-line. Which turned out to be a good thing because Sunday's admission was $200 U.S. a pop.
Now, I get that the stars need to be paid (more on that later), but charging fans this kind of dough, in American bucks no less (that's a big hit on the Canadian dollar) for a show that's filmed here is more than outrageous...it's on the highway robbery side.
Since the show wasn't sold out that day, a friend spotted discount $80.00 Cdn. tickets on GROUPON. So I got two. They turned out to be seats like you'd get released just before a concert after they knew the stage set up, i.e. they were on the far aisles so you had to stretch your neck, but hey...at least in the room, right?
Now to be fair, I didn't see the first day of the show, or attend the karaoke night, and maybe they were fab, but... c'mon.
Three, count 'em three, vendor tables. That's it. Photo ops were also hundreds of dollars, and for the most part sold out. So fans are willing to shell out that kind of money to see Jensen, Jared, Micha et all, which kind of freaks me out.
So what did you get for your 80 smackers? You got to see the panel interviews.
They were hosted by Brianna and Kim, a couple of players on the series. They tried to cover when Misha was late, and I know a lot was ad lib, and they're probably really funny when they're over at your house and you've had a few, but uh... perhaps the humor pushed the line a little too much for that sort of venue, just sayin'. It took them a half an hour to read the "rules". And the pretend "cardboard cut-out" of Micha talking bit was like a high school talent night skit.
Micha lost control of the audience, which surprised me, since he's quite funny when he's on talk shows. He took a question from someone he actually seemed to know, which was kind of weird because she seemed ticked off at him about something. Jared and Jensen seemed very much like "the boys" they are in the series, quick with the wit. So that part was fun, but again the questions didn't seem to come from ordinary fans. And while that's probably good for control, it's always fun to have a loonie-toons ask a few questions to see how the stars react.
Which brings me back to the one big issue I had with the day. While the stars work on a union show and make big union bucks, and deserve to, don't get me wrong...what's with the "volunteers" at the show. Sure it's great that they didn't have to pay the outrageous (hey, over 1000 bucks for a front row seat) ticket prices, but anyone working that show should have got paid. Period. Especially with the money CE took in.
I don't have any photo's today because I'm cheap. And there wasn't much cosplay at this show. I saw one person in a Castiel trench coat. That was about it.
So save your bucks for when Fan-Expo comes to town. It'll still cost you, but it's a lot more reasonable and a lot more fun. And you'll have pictures.
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