OFFICIAL NEWS Celebration Orlando April 13 2017 - April 16 2017

Since they're taking a year off it seems like Anaheim makes the most sense with the park opening in 2019. I'd be surprised if they never go back to Orlando. The issues they had weren't because of Orlando.

I spent around 24 hours in lines during the three days I was there. Biggest issue with the wristbands is they should give out to the people camping out early. Personally I wish they'd just sell tickets to the big panels.

On Thursday we got there at 5am, Friday at 4:30am, and 5am on Saturday. We got into the overflow rooms on Thursday/Friday and got into main room for the Rebels panel.

Biggest disappointment was not getting The Last Jedi poster during the panel. We were towards the front and by the time we got out all the greedy people who grabbed too many meant that they were short. After spending 6.5 hours in line that's pretty bad.

This was my first celebration. I'm not sure I'll get to do it again, but it was a lot of fun talking to other Star Wars fans.

 

My wife really wanted to go the merch store so we waited in line for four hours in line on Saturday to get into the store. It took another two hours to browse/checkout. It's ludicrous how long the wait was considering how little was in the store. They also sold out of a lot of stuff. Fortunately they were doing some t-shirts on demand so we got a couple of those, but I agree. There's no reason for the merch store to be that big of a cluster.

 

This is awesome. I live in Florida so making the trip to Orlando was easy. Thankfully we had friends to stay with about 15 minutes away.

 

Awesome pic,

 

I figured that his lack of appearance had something to do with his work on "FARGO".

 

We had an incredible experience! This was our first celebration and I honestly don't regret it. It was terribly mismanaged, but absolutely worth it. While we never made it into the Celebration store, we were able to collect some pins, pick up Thrawn, met Timothy Zahn, he signed my copy of Heir To The Empire Anniversary Hardback.

I feel like sharing, though. So here's a pick of us in line for the 40th Anniversary Panel, my family are wearing the matching red shirts, and that's my lovely wife and daughter. I met friends that I've known for 11 years for the first time ever, who came over from Europe, I celebrated my ten year wedding anniversary (April 18) in Florida, and just had a wonderful experience.



Here we are on Friday coming out of The Last Jedi panel, I'm in jeans with the glasses.



I don't know what 2019 may bring, but I hope to attend again with my family and friends. This was a remarkable, once in a lifetime experience and I am still reeling from it as I come to terms that I celebrated the 40th Anniversary in style, met Mark Hamill, Kyle Newman, Sam Witwer, Tom Kane, Vanessa Marshall, and Warwick Davis.

Here we are at the Smuggler's Revenge audio drama live reading from Saturday night, where my friends and family were seated in front of Warwick Davis.



Anyway, I just wanted to share my experience.