The Twilight Experience at Comic-Con: a Look Back to the Day I Forever Lost All Rational Thought

My very first in-person encounter with Twilight cast members was in July 2009 at the “Twilight Experience” in San Diego. Little did I foresee that this would be the day my enthusiastic love of all things Twilight would take the final leap into a full blown, inexplicable and nearly incontrollable (but in a good way) quest to meet the whole Twilight cast. The transformation started out simple enough: Twi-daughter Nicole and I thought it would be fun to see some Twilight cast members and watch the movie on the big screen again. The event took place at Comic-con, where there was a New Moon cast panel to preview the upcoming fall release. Ironically, I remember watching the news the night before and seeing that people were camped out in line overnight for a chance to see the panel and thinking they were kind of nuts. Ah, how times have changed.

The whole thing was actually quite cool. It was a sold out, one night only simultaneous showing of Twilight on 15 screens in downtown San Diego with a pre-show Q&A by New Moon cast members. It was set up like a movie premiere, with a red carpet and a ton of media and press there to cover the event. The line to get in started early in the day and eventually wrapped around the building and all the way down the street, plus people were lined up along the sides of the street hoping for a glimpse of the cast arrivals.

Billy Burke, Rachelle Lafevre, Elizabeth Reaser, Ashley Greene, Peter Facinelli, Kiowa Gordon, Taylor Lautner, Nikki Reed, Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Chistian Serratos, Kellan Lutz, Anna Kendrick, Justin Chon, Michael Welch, and Girl-Who-Played-Heidi-Who’s-Name-I-Don’t-Know-And-Am-Too-Lazy-To-Google (photo source: MTV). Does Christian Serratos have the best spot, or what?

(photo source: JustJared)

(photo source: twilightersanonymous)

When it was our turn to enter the theater, we headed straight for the front row. I mean, duh… the actors were going to stand in the front of the theater. Can you believe there were people who actually chose their seat based upon the best spot to watch a movie that we all already owned on DVD?

The cast was split into smaller groups and sent to various auditoriums to answer questions before the movie. We ended up with a really great group: Kristen, Nikki, Rachelle, Kellan and Billy. It’s true, the person I wanted to see the most was not in our group, but let’s not bring up that painful point.

Please accept my apology now for the poor quality of my pictures due to a combination of lame camera, shaking hands, and dead battery. My camera literally shut itself off after each picture because the battery was so drained. The cast took questions from the audience and passed the microphone around to each other to talk. Rachelle seemed most comfortable in front of an audience and handled the bulk of the questions. Poor Kristen looked like she desperately wanted to bolt from the room, especially when someone asked if she and Rob were dating. Nikki quickly took the microphone from Kristen, put her arm around her, and jokingly announced, “No, we are!”

Billy didn’t answer many questions and sort of stood off to the side looking very non-Charlie-Swan-like and making small talk with the front row. I remember thinking he seemed like such a sweet guy.

Kellan was a huge favorite in the room and my daughter was completely mesmerized by him.

It was such a surprise to see Kristen with her “Joan Jett” look.

I don't know if you can tell, but Kristen's eyes are glowing red in this picture. Apparently I was way ahead of my time, snapping this first, exclusive picture of Vampire Bella. Yeah, I know it really is a terrible shot, but I couldn’t not include it.

Nicole must have been staring at Kellan quite obviously, cause Billy noticed and asked if she wanted Kellan’s autograph. He got Kellan’s attention and brought him right over to us. This picture is of him signing her New Moon Burger King crown.

As the cast was leaving, the young girl next to me asked Kristen if they could take a picture together and handed her camera to me. Being the camera genius I am, I couldn’t get it to turn on and had to give it back to her to fix. The girl was so flustered and couldn’t figure out her own camera, but Kristen was incredibly nice, talking with us while she patiently waited. She also signed Twi-daughter’s BK crown. Kristen’s body guard kept urging her to leave because she was the last one left, but she ignored him and waited until the girl could get her picture. I was so impressed by that.

Once the movie started, I headed out to the lobby to use the restroom and could not believe the utter chaos. Hundreds of tween girls (and the rest of us with tiny bladders and Rob fixations) swarmed the lobby trying to catch a glimpse of Taylor and Rob. There was not an inch of space to walk and the frantic theater manager was on a bull horn trying to control the madhouse and get everyone to go back into the theaters. Eventually people retreated after he repeated his “Rob has left the building” announcement enough times. I heard afterwards that when they took Rob into some of the theaters, audience members rushed the front of the room and they whisked the cast right out again without a Q&A.

On our way out after the movie, they gave us lots of free Twilight goodies and a New Moon poster autographed by a cast member. I got Peter’s signature and Nicole got Rachelle’s. This was such an awesome event to attend and I hope we have an opportunity to do something like that again.

Yes, yes, I know this is a picture of Rob from the Water for Elephants premiere in Germany (photo source unknown). I have now instituted a new bloggy rule that all of my posts shall end with a random, hot picture of Rob. I suspect there will not be any complaints in the comments.

TwiloveSue XOXO

P.S. Check back on Friday cause I have some awesome pictures from last weekend's 100 Monkeys show in Los Angeles. Ashley Green and Nikki Reed were there too!