- 5 am... Leaving Moncton Airport, so cool in a small city, NO CRAZY lineups like in the BIG city.
- Stop over in Toronto, of course flight OVERBOOKED, speakers asking for passengers who want to stay behind and go tomorrow instead. NOT !!!! Will I make it onto my connecting flight ?
- YES !!! Thank god 3 people stepped up to the plate andavoided the eveil airplane lottery. This is my HAPPY face that I will soon be seeing my diorama crew family.
- Small plane, not much leg room, thankfully just a 1.55 hr flight to Chicago.
- Time for my lunch. mmmm. NIBS 🙂 LOL. So nutritious LOL. I am so glad I had these in my bag because the sandwhiches I wanted to buy, are ONLY for 2 HR + FLIGHTS and ours is 1 hr 55 minutes. SORRY. Ridiculous !!!! How DARE YOU prevent me from buying my 15$ overpriced ham sandwhich 😛
- Here we go.... Chicago downtown skyline, landing in 10-9-8...
- I have to give a HUGE THANKS to JOHN MOSCA who came to pick Duke and I at the airport. Not only did this save me a few bucks, Canadian dollar is a KILLER in the US, almost 1.5x MORE the cost of everything you spend. so $60 cab ride is like $100. John also allowed us to use his garage as storage for all the amazon art supplies we sent to Chicago. It pays to make friends with the fans 🙂 John came to build for the first time way back at Celebration IV 2007.
- Arriving at the hotel, look how amazing the distance is to the convention center ! All we have to do is walk accross the street in the catwalk. Just PERFECT in case it rains or SNOWS (cough cough friday night)
- The McCormick convention center, destination right. The teamsters were just starting to put up the tents for the public Queues. The ONE thing in 17 years I never had to deal with, I don't know if I would have the patience to wait 12 hours in line to come build a diorama ;p
- Ok, luggage dropped off, we had to wait till 2pm, to go get our badges and start the set up. A real shame since we were all here from early morning. But wait... my pissy mood was quickly changed LOL
- WOW - We are actually ON the INFORMATION BOARD !!! How cool is that ? We usually get "forgotten" and one year people had no idea how to find us, we got yelled a lot that year, as if it was MY fault that I say DON'T put us on official placcards LOL
- More signs waiting to be placed, looking cool, we must be getting closer to the head office.
- NO - RE-ENTRY !!! UhOh, I don't wanna go that way 🙂 You don't want to upset a SITH 🙂 Wise choice Reed Pop LOL.
- Ahhh, finally, we found the room we are looking for. Arriving on the Tuesday - 2 full days before the public to get our badges and the boring chores out of the way is always fun. This is a part of the convention fans don't get to see, once you guys arrive, there will be HUGE HUGE LINE UPS here.
- Only 3 people waiting, excellent it shouldn't take much time to get our badges that allow us to walk around the convention center and allow us to also walk around and get a sneak peek at the layout of other booths and what you guys will get to see thursday.
- One of the art panels, oh oh, the SITH DARK SIDE... I should have known coming here would give me BAD LUCK !
- After the bad luck at the hotel of mixing up our arrival check in dates, I now had more bad luck of no one finding my name in the computer for the crew badges. Noooooooo as Darth Vader said so elequently in Episode 3. Kidding, but that's what I wanted to do. Can you try DIORIO ? D IORIO ? D'IORIO ? DORORO? DIORAMA BUILDERS ? DIORAMA WORKSHOP ? nope - nope - nope - ARGHHHHHHHHH !!!!!!!
- Alissa was smart and went to the LIGHT SIDE and asked for LUKE to help us find the badges which SHE DID !!!! Way to go Luke I mean, Alissa 🙂
- OK, a 5 minute walk from the office down the main hallways and we arived at the VERY WIDE - Jabba size doorway to the Exhibit hall, now WHERE is our booth ? I know the floor plan said it was right here at the front... Wait... What is THAT ?
- OMG !!! How COOL IS THIS ??? A LIFESIZE Rogue One TANK !!! What a coincidence ? that they put this right next to our booth. Sooo soo cool. Photos don't do this justice. Have more pics of this later in the wek for our CREW photo day.

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Did you attend this Star Wars Celebration ? If you took photos and would like to have them included in this gallery, please email me DIORAMAWORKSHOP.COM@GMAIL.COM … If you have a facebook account, why not join the Official Diorama Builders Fan Club today, simply click the logo link below.
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Catch up with fellow visitors and exchange stories, read cool interviews with the crew, exchange photos, fun surprises and grab some FAN ONLY merchandise next year at actual future conventions 🙂
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