San Diego Comic-Con 2023 took place starting on Wednesday, July 19, with Preview Night and continued through Sunday, July 23. Unlike last year, when we only had 4-Day badges, this year, we actually had 4-Day badges with Preview Night, so we were able to walk the SDCC 2023 Exhibit Hall Floor on Wednesday evening after getting into town!
But first, we had to check into our hotel, the Manchester Grand Hyatt. Like last year, we requested an early check-in at 1pm, as the official check-in time was 4pm. We were a little worried that what happened last year might happen again this year, that because the early check-in request is based on availability, that our room might not be ready when we got there, and we would have to wait. So we took our time that morning, getting our usual workouts in before doing some last minute packing. To our surprise, we got a notification before we were even ready to leave that our room was ready! We still had an hour and a half to two hour drive ahead of us though.
When we arrived around 2:30pm, there was a massive check-in line, unfortunately. Although we were technically “checked in” we still needed to get our keys. Luckily, there was a staff member coming around to apologize for the wait (apparently the credit card system was down), and the group behind me showed her that their room was ready, so I informed her of the same about our room as well. A few minutes later, she was able to bring our keys to us and have us manually fill out a form with our info. Not long after, we were rewarded with a nice view from our room on the 22nd floor.
By the time we settled in and walked over to the convention center, it was around 4pm. Pickup time for badges (which had previously been mailed to us), bags, books, and lanyards had begun at 3pm. We were directed to enter at Hall G and went up the escalators. The line was long, but moved fairly quickly. We ended up getting American Dad and Family Guy bags. They also gave us each a nice Comic-Con pin!
After picking up our things, since Preview Night wouldn’t open until 6pm, we decided to go get some dinner. We cut through the Marriott, where we found the Dragon Ball Z offsite already open behind it. Then we walked along the boardwalk over to Seaport Village, where we got some yummy cajun food at Louisiana Charlie’s to go and brought it back up to our hotel room to eat and relax for a bit before heading back to the convention center for Preview Night.
We weren’t after anything in particular, so we didn’t care about lining up early for Preview Night. Instead, we preferred to get there after the doors had opened, so that we could just walk right in. Upon arriving back to the convention center, it was a little after 6pm. At that time, they were directing attendees to enter at the C2 entrance.
When we entered, the first major booth we encountered was the Marvel booth, which was perfect, as that is one booth we always like to see. They had a few costumes on display, and even life sized versions of Rocket and Lylla!
We then worked our way over to Hall A, where all the video game booths were located, such as Blizzard with their Diablo IV activation, and gradually worked our way back across the convention center.
It was pretty crowded as we made our way down the aisle and eventually all the way to the other end of the convention center, where the Funko booth, “Funkoville” was located. Their area was huge, even bigger than last year! While over there, we ran into our friend Trevor (of Secondary Heroes) and chatted with him a bit while he was waiting in line, so that was nice to catch up with him, as we had not seen him since last year at SDCC.
Heading back in the other direction an aisle over, we came across the Nickelodeon booth, which had cool setups for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem and Good Burger.
Right next to the Nickelodeon booth (as you can see in the reflections below) was the Doctor Who booth, which had the costumes for the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Doctor on display.
Another booth of note was the LEGO Brickbuster Video booth, which was designed to look like a Blockbuster Video.
Between the Paramount+ booth, Hero Within, and Her Universe (not pictured), Star Trek was well represented. We were able to easily grab some swag from the SandLand booth right next to it. Star Wars was well represented as well, with a whole pavilion of vendors, including a separate Her Universe booth, but somehow I only took one photo of that area — and it was only of a lightsaber hilt!
After a couple hours of walking around, it was feeling pretty crowded, so we headed up to the Mezzanine to take a peek at how things looked from above.
We felt kind of done with the crowds at that point and decided to call it a night. We took the scenic route back to the hotel, opting to walk to the Hilton Bayfront and see the offsites that were over there, since we hadn’t walked to that area yet. We got to see the Gaslamp lit up at night, as well as see the Shogun wrap in all its glory. Then there was the FX activation, as well the Adult Swim and Hulu Animayhem activations. We were also treated to the remnants of a beautiful sunset as a backdrop to the VooDoo Ranger pirate ship.
After we walked back to the hotel room, we were pretty tired. The lack of carpeting on the exhibit hall floor again this year already had our feet hurting — and it was only the first day! I went down to meet up with our friend Pablo and some other friends in the hotel bar. But I was pretty exhausted and didn’t stay very long. The good news was that there wasn’t anything we needed to be up super early for the next morning, so we would be able to actually get a good night’s sleep!
Stay tuned for more of our recaps and photos of our experience at SDCC 2023!
You can view more of our photos from Preview Night in the photo gallery below.
