Star Wars Celebration V Review: Day 1 - Family Day

Going into Star Wars Celebration I had a plan, knowing that my Wampa costume had its limitations due to it's size I had to limit my time inside and have it available for scheduled events. I chose to dress up 2 days, Friday and Saturday. This gave me 2 full days out of costume to enjoy the actual event. If I didn't dress up the first day, I could scout locations such as high traffic/high impact locations for the fans and also places to hide and get dressed, or take a break.

I also found out that kids under 6 were free.This was the perfect opportunity to take my oldest son, who is 5, with me for one day. He is a huge Star Wars fan and it would also give me the ability to attend some of the scheduled family events that I would have probably skipped if he did not come. You also get to see the event through the eyes of a child when they are with you. True they are all over the place and have their head on a swivel. You have to be on high alert when there are distractions everywhere, but I think this was a great choice to bring him.

Finally when the big day came, it was my son Gavin, my handler Genna and myself going to SWCV for the opening day. We arrived to the convention center about an hour and a half early. Once I saw the line behind us the time the doors finally opened I think we made the right decision. Gavin was dress my up as Clone Wars Anikin Skywalker and we let him bring one of his many lightsabers. We knew that not every moment would be filled with things to do, so some role playing would keep him occupied. This ended up paying off in our favor when non other than Dave Filoni, supervising director of the Clone Wars spotted him in costume. Dave said ahead of time that if he spotted anyone in dressed up in a Clone Wars costume he would give them the elusive "Plo Kool" button. He used this Plo Kool stamp to approve any designs for the series. Dave personally pinned it on to his costume and to our surprise, the back of it was autographed.

We spent the next few hours wandering the trade floor. One of Gavin's favorite parts was the Lego section. Not only did they have large displays of the sets for sale, large pieces done by master builders, there was areas where the kids can free build their own designs. Their show exclusive was a white Ralph McQuarrie lego minifig. To get this you had to complete a square piece of their giant mystery mural. The mural would be completed on Saturday afternoon. (more info coming on that part!) Also on the trade floor was Jedi Training Academy. A master would come out and teach the kids on the ways of a lightsaber and eventually face off with the dark lord of the Sith himself, Darth Vader. Although we tried to get Gavin chosen for this one, he was not. It was limited to the amount of kids and like a typical 5yo once he wasn't chosen he wanted to move off to the next thing.



There were many sets around the convention to pose with scenes from the movies. In the 501st room there was the Emperors throne and a scene from Mos Eisley, in the Droid builder room there was a hallway from Echo base and the infamous Wampa Door from the cut scene from empire from Mountain Garrison. But one Garrison outdid themselves bringing 10 sets, the Belgian Garrison brought reproductions of the inside of the Milineum Falcon, a full size Wampa, Jabba the Hutt with his minions, Snowspeeder, Speeder Bike and Endor bunker and even a large AT-AT. But the most impressive was the full size Tie Interceptor by the Belgian Garrison. To see an actual ship hanging from the ceiling was awesome. And to add to the illusion, many of these sets had 501st/Rebel Legion members stationed to pose with. My son got to pose with many everyone from Han Solo to Slave Leia. Another fun photo op was the lifesize Hasbro toy package where you could pose yourself as an action figure.

I really wanted to get him to meet some of the Star Wars celebs especially Daniel Logan (little boy Boba Fett as he calls him) but I could see that he was starting to get tired. Soon after we got the call from my wife that she was on her way and the timing couldn't be better. We ended the day a couple hours early so we could get prepared for our first appearance by the Wampa at Ice Bar Orlando. All about that in the next post.