Armageddon Sydney
First time travelling interstate for an event, as Armageddon spread to include Sydney and Adelaide events. A group of friends and I met at the airport and flew up to Sydney together. We booked a shared hotel room for the weekend to save costs and to spend time together. We arrived on the Friday, the day before the event so decided to be tourists and explore Sydney. Went site seeing and visited the Sydney Opera House and enjoyed being together. It was nice to get some time with friends, often doesn’t happen with these busy event weekends.
Volunteering & Lance Shirts
I purchased a specialty Stargate pass for this event as did some of my friends. Included in the pass were photos and autographs from each of the Stargate guests. Even though I had the pass I also decided to volunteer for this event. I love working these events, it keeps me busy and I always enjoy myself. This event I ended up working as one of the queue minders in the media guest area. It’s a good place to work because you are always busy, but also have the chance to chat with attendees and guests.
Since I was mostly working around Lance Hendriksen, his manager gave me one of his shirts to wear. They were advertising his book ‘Not Bad for a Human‘ it was bright red and had a sketch of Lance on it. Colin Cunningham was also wearing one of the Lance shirts, so we got a photo together in our matching shirts. I got the photo printed the Saturday night and then signed by both Colin and Lance the following day.
Saturday Memories
On the Saturday I managed to get to the Stargate panel with David Hewlett and Colin. Both men are brilliantly hilarious and there was much laughter had. John De Lancie was at the event as well, but only on the Saturday and not with the other media guests. I found the stall where he was and got a photo with him, I also got him to sign my Stargate shirt.
Also got my Stargate photos with David Hewlett, Colin Cunningham, Christopher Heyerdahl and Ryan Robbins. They are all such lovely guys, I love the big hug I got from Colin for the photo. it was great seeing Christopher and David again too. I joked around with David that I couldn’t bring my costumes and the guns on the plane, so we did gun fingers instead. It was great to meet Ryan and we got a good photo together too.
Saturday Night with Friends
On the Saturday night I ended up going out for dinner with a large group of friends and it was amazing. I love my Con Family but most of the time we are busy working and don’t get the time to just hang out. Having dinner was a great way to catch up, relax and enjoy ourselves. And also to eat, because sometimes during event weekends food is an after thought, it’s easy to forget to eat.
To make the night even better though, some of the guests had tagged along to dinner as well. One of them being Colin, who was entertaining us all with an amazing display of magic tricks. He also shared different stories with us and it was good getting to chat outside of the event.
I’m so thankful to have such amazing friends in my life. These events are as much about seeing friends as anything else. The guests and those experiences are a huge added bonus, but friends are important too.
Sunday Panels
During the Sunday I made sure to attend some of the panels, especially Colin’s panel. Colin entertained everyone with a little musical performance with his homemade pipe flute. Colin is a man of many talents and extremely entertaining.
There was also a panel with Ryan Robbins and Christopher Heyerdahl. Ryan brought his guitar with him and started to play and sing Hallelujah, he was incredible. Chris named himself ‘his bitch’ as he was holding the microphones, one to the guitar the other Ryan was singing into. I didn’t get to see the entire performance live as I came in midway through but it really was great. You can see a video of the performance below.
Dodgem Cars
There was a stage during the day where we managed to get a large group of guests into the dodgem cars. It was hilarious watching as they raced around bumping into each other. There was so much laughter from everyone who was watching and those in the cars. It made this whole moment so much special, it’s not often you get to witness those pure joyous moments. The guests were all amazing and they had a great time in the dodgem cars. I’ll never forget this amazing moment, it was such a fun and special addition to a already great weekend.
Autographs
Throughout the weekend I collected a few different autographs. I got all my photographs with the Stargate guests autographed. I love that they are a great memory of not just the weekend but past experiences too. I thought what Colin wrote was lovely, he said ‘You lit up my weekend’ what a great compliment. My photos with Chris and David were good reminders of past events like the finger guns with David. My last photo with Chris I was wearing my Stargate: Atlantis costume which includes a leather jacket. This explains the Lance clad comment.
I got an autograph from Lance Henricksen, on the photo of Colin and I in his shirts. Also got autographs from Karen Allen, Gigi Edgley and John Rhys-Davies. All the guests at this event were amazing and a pleasure to meet and spend time with.
Stargate Party
After the event on the Sunday night there was a Gifts for the Geek Stargate function. Which was basically a bunch of us getting drunk with some of the Stargate actors joining in. This was a crazy evening of shenanigans, and I drank more alcohol than I ever have before. I don’t normally drink, but I just let myself go this night and enjoyed myself. A lot of crazy things happened this evening. The bar we were in had a massive fish tank wall and I know we were all making faces at the fishes. Things from the night might be a little hazy but I remember that it was a great evening and I had a ball. And the night finished with a Maccas run, shoving falling over friends into taxi’s and having fun.
Some of my friends and I flew home early the next morning, in fact we only had maybe 2 hours sleep. One friend who had stayed in Sydney had not faired so well, so I was checking in on her throughout the day. I drove straight to work from the airport, but the lack of sleep and drinking made the day drag out. The whole weekend was incredible and I immediately started planning a trip to Adelaide for the next weekend.
COMPLETE GUEST LIST |
Colin Cunningham, David Hewlett, Ryan Robbins & Karyn Baltzer, Christopher Heyerdahl, John De Lancie, Karen Allen, John Rhy Davies, Gigi Edgley, Lance Henriksen, Patricia Tallman, Laura Vandervoort, David Anders, Jaqueline McKenzie, Joel Gretsch, Renee O’Connor, Hudson Leick, James Clement and Ami Cusack. |
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