The decision to go to Planet Comic Con was fairly last minute, and I’m amazed we managed to pull it off successfully. But, my mom and I have a weird amount of skill in handling last minute trips fairly well.

So, why the random journey?

Simple answer: My mom wanted to meet Jason Momoa.

I’ve never been to Planet Comic Con, nor have I ever been to Kansas City, MO – so this was definitely an all around new adventure for me. And while I’m not super fond of long drives, especially at night, this one seemed manageable at 4-5 hours.

So, we packed up and left after work in our rental car on Friday night, car packed with yummy snacks and caffeine to keep me going. A huuuuuge letdown on this trip was the fact we had no aux port for my iPod, and no CD player, and the radio reception was AWFUL 99% of the time. Had I known this before renting the car, I would have paid a little extra to have Sirius XM.

Anyway, we arrived at our hotel – Holiday Inn Aladdin, which was one of the cheaper options Planet Comic Con listed for hotels. This was actually a pretty great little hotel. Super friendly staff. Conveniently located for the con. We opted to park in the parking garage across the street because it was a little bit cheaper, and the parking garage connected to the convention center, so that worked out well. Mostly. I got a little lost going back to the car once, but that’s my own fault haha.

However, we did do something we haven’t really done before. There was an option to pay $10 more to include our breakfast at the restaurant in the hotel. We figured we might as well spend the extra little bit to have a decent first meal of the day before a very long day of con. This was actually a GREAT idea. We got up pretty early – which is easy for us, because our day jobs require early rising – and went down to breakfast. It was pretty empty, because everyone was still sleeping. We explained we had breakfast vouchers, and they told us we could order off the menu, or take the buffet. We decided to take the buffet option. SO. WORTH. IT. A variety of tasty breakfast foods and drinks. And when they brought us our bill at the end, it was $30 something – which having the voucher completely covered. Um.Yeah. WORTH IT.

So, we went back to the room, packed up, checked out, and put unnecessary bags in the rental, before wandering down to the con to pick up our Jason Momoa VIP things and figure out what we were doing.

My main game plan was to get everything Jason Momoa related figured out and over with ASAP, so the rest of our day could be more relaxed. I was hauling around a massive stack of comics and my Art of Harley Quinn book, and wanted to get as much of that taken care of as I could while we were there. It was an ambitious venture.

 

He signed sort of in his beard and hair, if you can see it.

Luckily for us, aside from a brief couple of stops on the con floor for my mom to buy an Aquaman shirt and an 11×17 little poster for him to sign (She didn’t want to haul around a movie poster like me. Can’t imagine why…), we got our Momoa stuff over with fairly quickly. We got our autographs, I ran that stuff back to the car (and got lost…), and then back in time for our photo op. Jason is a SUPER nice guy, and I’d definitely recommend meeting him if the opportunity presents itself.

Around noon, we were done, and the focus shifted to my two con bags full of comics and the Harley book.

I met several people I’d already met once at Fan Expo – Scott Snyder and Tom King remembered me! – and then met some new people I haven’t before. I’ll cover all of this a bit more in depth with my haul post.

But, over all, this was a HUGE con. Maybe not quiiiiite as big in size as Fan Expo Canada, but definitely a very quality con. We’re already planning to go back next year, hopefully with a bit more time, money, and planning.

Anyone else go to Planet Comic Con this year? Or ever before? What do you think?

~Angel