One of the most coveted tickets at San Diego Comic-Con is a ticket to a taping of Conan, the late night talk show hosted by Conan O’Brien. This is a ticket that cannot be bought, but which must be won through an online lottery.
On July 9, 2018, the week before SDCC 2018, Comic-Con International sent out an email to all SDCC attendees notifying them that tickets to tapings of shows of Conan in downtown San Diego at Spreckels Theater during Comic-Con were available. This email contained the link to register for tickets, along with a secret code for SDCC attendees, and instructions to also enter your CCI Member ID. You could request any number of tickets between 1 and 4 for each of the four dates that Conan would be taping during SDCC: Wednesday, July 18 through Saturday, July 22.
Once you submitted your request, you were automatically waitlisted until a couple days later when attendees were randomly selected to receive tickets for each show. Josh and I each only requested tickets for Saturday, because that is the only day that would work with our plans. We each requested 3 tickets, because our friend Carlos would also be attending. I ended up not being selected to receive tickets, but Josh was selected! He was sent an email telling him he was selected, and instructing him to click on the button to “confirm ticket.” He was then able to access an e-ticket, which contained instructions, and which we printed out and brought with us.
According to the instructions, the deadline to check in to pick up your physical tickets was 2:30pm. However, it seemed that the event was somewhat “oversold” based on Twitter reports on Wednesday that they had run out of tickets by 10:30am or 11:00am. This did not bode well for us, because we had planned to attend the Warner Bros. panel on Saturday morning, which would not be over until 12:30pm. It seemed that this was the case on Thursday as well. As such, I had resigned myself to the fact that we probably wouldn’t be able to make it over to the box office to pick up our tickets before they ran out.
But at the same time, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to try.
After the Warner Bros. panel let out at 12:30pm, we dropped off our stuff at our hotel room (we had some camping chairs with us from waiting in line earlier that morning), then made the walk over to the box office. There were a couple of reps standing outside, and I asked if there happened to be any tickets left, fully expecting the answer to be “no.” She in turn asked me if we already had tickets, which we did, and she said there should be plenty left, and to go on in.
There was a guy sitting at a table with a large stack of tickets! It was around 1:30pm at this point, so I had not been expecting this result. After checking Josh’s ID and our printed e-ticket, he gave us our 3 tickets, which were in the Orchestra section, and told us that even though it said “obstructed” view, that it was just because it was a little off to the side, and that these were actually pretty good seats. He also put a wristband on each of us.
Once we had our tickets in hand, I finally allowed myself to get excited. We were finally going to a Conan taping! I’ve been a fan of Conan since I was a young teenager. I remember working on a French project late one night when I was 14 and it was his 5th anniversary show. Fast forward 20 years, and he’s now been on the air for 25 years. For those 20 years, I’ve been wanting to go to a Conan taping. And now I finally had that chance. I walked out of that box office in disbelief.
We had some time to kill before we had to be back by 3:30pm for the taping, so we went over to the Mr. Mercedes offsite (click here to read about our experience) and grabbed some lunch.
Upon approaching the Spreckels Theater, we were a little hesitant and unsure of where we were supposed to go, as there was a massive crowd standing outside. But we assumed this must be a standby line, and figured that since we had tickets we could just go inside. In the lobby, there was a merch area where you could buy Conan T-shirts and other paraphernalia. Then there was a bag check area where they searched your bags. And finally, an area where ticket takers scanned your ticket. I was wearing my camera on my neck, and the ticket taker made sure to warn me that there were no photos allowed. I went ahead and put the camera away so that no one else questioned me.
Friendly ushers directed us to our seats, which were on the lower level, a little more than halfway back, and all the way to the left. We were a few rows behind where the band was. Even though we were to the side, it was a pretty good view, just as the guy at the box office had said. I was pleasantly surprised that we were able to get this good of seats despite having picked up our tickets so late in the day. I took a couple of pictures with my phone while we were waiting for the show to start, as I saw other people taking photos, and I assumed the no photos rule only applied to when the actual taping started.
The show started out with a hype guy coming out and warming up the crowd. He got some volunteers from the audience to come up on stage and dance, and they were all given a special Conan T-shirt for participating. Then the band came out and played a couple songs while the audience clapped along.
Finally, it was time for the actual show to start! As soon as Conan came out on stage, Josh turned to me and said, “There’s your boyfriend!” Hahaha. It was really cool seeing a Conan taping after wanting to attend one for so long, plus the fact that it was for a special occasion, which the show dubbed “ConanCon.” Our taping included the director and cast of Aquaman. I’ll also note that the taping was not continuous. They did take breaks just as if there were commercial breaks, and the band would play during these breaks. After the taping was over, Conan came back out on stage and said a few words.
Upon exiting the theater, we were each given an exclusive Funko POP! figure of Conan as Hellboy. There was a crowd of people outside the theater clamoring to buy them from us, including people with large pre-made professional looking signs offering $60! There was also a guy that kept coming up to people asking, “Would you take $40?” Wow, was not expecting to be bombarded that! We decided to hold onto ours.
So, not only was this was a really fun experience, but also we got a cool souvenir out of it – and all for free! I’m so glad we were able to go! I hope we can make it in again next year.
It was about 5:00pm when we got out of the taping, and we headed back to the convention center. Twitter reports indicated that the Deadpool 2 panel in Hall H, which started at 5:15pm, was near capacity, while the Purge panel in 6BCF, which also started at 5:15pm, had plentiful seats, so we headed to the Purge panel. Sure enough, we were able to walk right in. Stay tuned for our recap and photos of that panel!
