Written by: OmegaBob

Wednesday 8/19

Today was mostly uneventful, as we spent the entire day at Disneyland, but I managed to experience much more of the park than I did during my previous trip to Anaheim for BlizzCon 2008. I really wanted to check out the “It’s a Small World” ride as it was closed for renovations last October. I wanted to see if the ride is as insanity causing as everyone says it is; however, I didn’t want to become a brainwashed Disney stooge (especially since Steve Jobs and Disney formed their evil Empire). Much riding, much shopping and mucho eating were accomplished by the end of the day.

Leisure time aside, I had two quests to complete today: 1) sunglasses and 2) stealth convention center pics.

Quest 1: Last year I picked up a pair of sunglasses from a souvenir shop near my hotel. I’m very picky about my sunglasses because I rarely find ones I like, and I also tend not to purchase expensive, name brands because eventually, the sunglasses end up broken. As fate would have it, the pair I purchased last year broke. Argh! Knowing that I was returning to Anaheim, I made sure that we would make time in our busy schedules to search the shop to see if they had another pair. The logic behind my reasoning was that I figured no one really purchases crappy sunglasses (except me), so the store would still have a pair. As luck would have it, they had multiple pairs! Joy! I decided to purchase two! Quest complete!

Quest 2: After we checked into the hotel last year, I set upon exploring the immediate area to get my bearings. As we were doing so, we stumbled upon the fine folks at Blizzard setting up what would be the badge/goodie bag registration area. After a short time, a guard came out and chased us away but sadly, before we left, I realized I had not taken any pics of the setup, This year, I vowed would be different! My plan was to head over late at night, after the registration booths inside were complete and use my camera’s mega zoom to capture stealth pics of the interior.

I headed over to the center at around midnight and all seemed to be going along as I had envisioned. No one was around except for the cleaning crew and some Disneyland stragglers and a single Blizzard fanboy snapping pics. As I approached my prey, I decided to test the waters by sitting on the concrete benches to snap some pics and test my zoom. The fanboy snapped two pics, met up with some friends and left the area. I was alone. One final glance around, and then I was off, inching my way closer to the front doors. I captured a few images of the exterior signage then moved in even closer until I was at the front door. The set up looked different this time. There was the standard bag check area that leads to the interior of the hall; however, the registration booths were nowhere to be seen. Odd. Hanging above the interior entrance doors, were large vertical banners like the ones from the previous year, except Arthas (The Lich King) was unhelmed on one banner. I could not make out what was on the other banners, but they appeared to be Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 related. Just after I snapped a pic of the welcome banner, a guard appeared from within and came towards me. He opened the doors and said, “You have 36 more hours, man.” and implied that I should be moving along. As I left the area and walked along and snapped pics of where the line would be in the morning, I said to myself, “36 hours, indeed.”

OmegaBob is a long time Avault reader and forums contributor that has volunteered to cover all things BlizzCon for us this week.