Patricia's Paradise City Comic Con 2016 Experience

A few days ago, I went over to Paradise City Comic Con over at the Fort Lauderdale Convention Center. It was once known as Magic City Comic Con which was at the Miami Convention Center, but the Miami center is currently being renovated and the remaining South Florida anime/video game/comic book conventions will be held at Ft. Lauderdale. With it being a newly named convention, it was smaller than Florida Supercon, but there were still plenty of fun activities to do and lots of awesome guests to meet.

Michael Maronna and Danny Tamberelli



Mike and Danny were both in The Adventures of Pete & Pete as the Pete brothers. I had already met Mike a few years ago at the Slimed! book event at NYC, but this was the first time I met Danny. They were really awesome guys as we briefly talked about Pete & Pete, the book event, and them even talking about a possible reunion next year. I even wore my Polaris t-shirt proudly as I got my picture with them. Danny autographed my Slimed! book next to Mike's autograph.



Later that day, I went to the Pete & Pete panel where Danny and Mike answered questions from the fans about things from the show, Home Alone 2, The Mighty Ducks, and All That. They told a lot of stories that made everyone in the audience laugh. It was even better when an unexpected guest showed up. Joey Fatone from NSYNC appeared asking a bunch of questions that the fans had already asked making the audience laugh even harder. He even called himself Frank saying that he wasn't Joey Fatone, but we all knew he was. It was, hands down, the best convention panel I've been to yet.



After the Pete & Pete panel, I walked over to Joey's desk and got a picture with him.




Lori Alan



Lori Alan is a voice actress known for characters such as Pearl from SpongeBob SquarePants, Diane Simmons from Family Guy, and even voiced Chairry on The Pee-wee Herman Show in LA. She was very nice and next to her was Rodger Bumpass, the voice of Squidward from SpongeBob. I had already met him at Florida Supercon two years ago and it was nice to see him again. I even went to their panel where a lot of kids showed up asking a ton of questions about SpongeBob. I was the only one who didn't ask questions on SpongeBob asking Lori about her experience with Paul Reubens at The Pee-wee Herman Show and Rodger about his experience working as the Chief in Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? It was a lot of fun, especially when seeing the kids smile whenever Lori and Rodger quoted lines as their characters.



Afterwards, I went over to meet up with Melissa Fahn, a voice actress well known for characters such as Edward from Cowboy Bebop and Gaz from Invader Zim. I asked her to autograph my Invader Zim DVDs adding her signature to my collection alongside Richard Horvitz, Rikki Simons, and Rodger Bumpass.



Next, I went to a few more panels such as Dante Basco's panel, an actor known for his roles as Rufio from Hook and Prince Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender. It was pretty awesome that a group of people remembered that the day he was doing the panel was the 25th anniversary of Hook and surprised him with a cake. There were questions about Hook, Avatar, working with The Nostalgia Critic, working with Mako, and representing Filipino actors. I met him afterwards and he was a pretty cool guy.



I later went to the Disney trivia panel and paired up with two Disney fans who were cosplayed as Esmerelda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Cooking Mama. We worked together to answer various questions from animated Disney movies, Star Wars, Marvel movies, and the Disney theme park attractions. We won 3rd place and had gotten Disney tattoos and an Ariel pin. I gave it to my sister as a gift since The Little Mermaid is one of her favorite Disney movies and Ariel is her favorite Disney princess.



I stayed until almost closing time and walked around to enjoy the last round of activities. I walked towards Tad Stones' table and asked him for a picture with him. Tad Stones is known for being the creator of Darkwing Duck. He even gave me a sketch of Darkwing Duck that he was drawing for free and autographed it.



I then went over to the video game room and played some Super Smash Bros. Melee with some people until it was closing time. I came home tired and starving, but it was the happiest I've been in months after going through a lot of personal issues and depression. It was just the thing I needed.

That's all for now. Tune in next time as I countdown my top 20 Hey Arnold episodes, do an analysis video on the Hey Arnold Christmas special, and release the last podcast of 2016. Hope to see you around Old School Lane soon. Thanks for reading.

-Patricia

Patricia's Magic City Comic Con Experience 2015

Last week, I decided to venture into Magic City Comic Con around the Miami Convention Center to try some new conventions other than Florida Supercon. I felt the same way when I went to Florida Supercon back in 2013 in which I felt a bit crowded due to too many vendors and tight hallways. However, the energy of all the people cosplaying and having fun with their friends and family is always great to see. There were so many great people that I've been wanting to see and have had the chance to meet them rocking my new JV Club t-shirt courtesy of Janet Varney.



Kevin Conroy has been the voice of Batman since Batman: The Animated Series since the early 90's and has recently done the Batman Arkham games on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. For many people, he has been the definitive Batman, even beating the likes of Adam West, Michael Keaton, and Christian Bale. He's a really nice guy and even told me that he has a sister and aunt named Patricia, which is pretty cool.



Jim Cummings has been a veteran voice actor for almost 30 years mostly known for doing a lot of Disney TV shows and movies such as Darkwing Duck from Darkwing Duck, Don Carnage from Talespin, the current voice of Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, Ray from The Princess and the Frog, and more. I had to wait for at least 30 minutes due to him and other voice actors being at a panel. When he did arrive, a lot of people lined up to get his autograph and take a picture with him. There was even a girl who almost cried when he did his Winnie the Pooh voice. He was so sweet and had even gave me a hug after we took this picture. I definitely want to have him as a guest on Casual Chats in the future.



Tom Kane is another voice actor who's mostly known as Yoda from Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Professor Utonium and HIM from The Powerpuff Girls, Darwin from The Wild Thornberrys, Mr. Herriman from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and more. Similar to Jim Cummings, I had to wait for 30 minutes for him to arrive. He was a pretty quiet guy and didn't really say too much, but he was pretty nice.



This was the main reason I wanted to go to Magic City Comic Con. To meet this guy! Greg Weisman has created some of the most critically acclaimed animated shows of all time such as Gargoyles, The Spectacular Spider-Man, Young Justice, and Star Wars Rebels. Unfortunately, pretty much all of them were cancelled before its time. His style of writing, creating characters, and making complex worlds are all amazing! He was such a really nice guy and has been really patient on getting this picture done right after my camera made it blurry.



Tim Seeley is a comic book writer mostly known for writing the Grayson, Revival, and Sundowners series. While not much of a reader, I've heard of his work from the Comic Book Cast and knowing he was going to be at Magic City Comic Con, I had to meet him.



Another well known comic book writer I really wanted to meet was Dan Slott, who's mostly known nowadays for writing the Spider-Man and Silver Surfer comics. He was such a fun guy making everyone that took pictures with him shoot webs like the Webhead hero himself. That was a ton of fun!

Overall, not much to say, but I did have an fun time. We'll see what else 2015 has in store.

That's all for now. Hope to see you around Old School Lane soon. Thanks for reading.

-Patricia