For one of their Christmas presents, I bought my wife and daughter plane tickets to Gallifrey 23, a yearly Doctor Who convention hosted at the LAX Marriott on February 17th-19th. And, finding out I’m not traveling for work that weekend, I bought plane tickets for myself a couple of weeks ago.
Anybody else going?
And, just so y’all can say how beautiful she is, [url=http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=627604]here* is my daughter in various DW costumes. 
OMG*!!!
One of the scheduled guests is W. Morgan Sheppard! I loved him as “Blank Reg” in Max Headroom (UK 1986 & USA 1987-88).
If you get a chance to meet Sheppard, tell him there’s a gal deep in the heart o’ Texas with a schoolgirl’s crush on him.
*O, mighty Gallifrey!
All silliness aside, would love to go, but the $$$ just ain’t there. 
WOO HOO!
I’m psyched about this *and *about the possibilty dressing up as a sexy lady Third Doctor.
JohnT, what a great gift for your wife and daughter. Is your daughter dressing up for this one? I’ll keep my eyes peeled for you guys!
Mr. Smaje and I will be there with our 15-month old daughter. We had such grand plans for costumes for her (baby Davros in her wheelie-saucer, a mutant maggot from “The Green Death”) but I ended up spending all of my time finishing the 12-foot 4th Doctor scarf I’ve been knitting for my husband.
Toucanna, do you want me to try and get an autograph from W. Morgan Sheppard for you?
Where in Texas? I’m in San Antonio and, if I can, wouldn’t mind getting an autograph for you. I’m not going to be doing anything much, could very well skip some of the convention just to drive around LA. It’ll give me something to do.
PM me if interested.
If he’s cool with it, a signed photo* would be great! But if that’s a non-starter, just give him my fond regards.
*I’ll PM you about the logistics of this. 
ETA:
SimulPost[sup]TM[/sup]
Will PM you.
Hope to see you this weekend, JohnT! You’ll recognize my family immediately – Mr. smaje will have his Tom Baker scarf, I’m dressing as a lady version of the 3 doctor (with that purple velvet jacket) and baby smaje will be dressed as Adric!
You’ll recognize me for sure - I’ll be the guy in slacks and a tie.
Yup, that’ll narrow it down, for sure! 
We’ll probably be there on Saturday if we can get the dog sitter sorted. I’ll be in my Tom Baker scarf and my 11-year-old daughter will be wearing her fez.
All right, so confirmed Doper attendees are:
The Hamster King
Smaje1
JohnT
And their families and assorted hangers-on.
Anybody else?
So we made it!
Plane landed early (around 6:05 instead of 6:20), so we got the car and went to the hotel. While I checked in to the room my wife flew down to the convention to register us before the 7pm deadline, literally making it with seconds to spare.
Sophia put on her Tennant glasses and a hat we bought in NYC this summer and gained all sort of attention and ribbons (they’re doing this thing with ribbons that you can attach to your convention badge, which is the perfect thing to catch a 10 year-olds fancy… and her mother’s, too.)
Surprise! Amber Benson is going to be here signing autographs. Laura has this Buffy book with 20 cast-members and production people’s autographs, so now she gets to add 2 more autographs to it: Amber’s and Jane Eppenson’s (a writer for BtVS and Torchwood.)
Toucanna, I think W. Morgan Sheppard is doing autographs and photographs this afternoon, so I’ll keep you up to date on the status of your signature.
We had dinner with two local fans at a restaurant here at the hotel which was very nice - we were standing in line and Laura started talking to them. When we got our table I asked them to join us, and so we spent well over an hour discussing DW - how we got into it, who our favorite Doctor’s were, how we would make it better ( 
) and, of course, how disappointed Laura was with the X-Files (a topic that gets brought up quite a bit at these things.)
I have a couple of business lunches scheduled for today and tomorrow so I can help write off portions of this trip and we’re going on a driving tour of Hollywood tomorrow morning, but for the most part, we’ll be in the Marriott, Who-ing it up.
Lots of costumes… this one guy looks so much like Tennant that he was constantly swarmed by people wanting his photo.
Updates will come as I can get time to post them…
Say Hi to Barbara Hambly for me if you see her.
Already catching some of the “first night” costumes online - I love social media!
Hope everyone is having/will continue to have a lovely time!
Toucanna, I got your signed, personalized picture from Mr. Sheppard. Check your PM’s!
Skweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! OMG! OMG! (sighs, swoons, fans herself)
It’s not that I think WMS is hot, it’s just that I absolutely adored “Blank Reg” in a “just wanna hug 'im and skweeze ‘im like a big ol’ teddy bear” way.
Thanks ever so much!
Hey, Lynn, I hated to be a bit presumptuous but we went through this long line for the “Premiere” autographs, and Ms. Hambly there… and, remembering this post, I spontaneously asked her for a personalized “To Lynn…” autograph for the signature book.
If you want it, just PM/email me your address and I will be glad to mail it to you. If not, just let me know as well.
… I will say that it just occurred to me that your real name may not be “Lynn”… :o
It’s over! Everybody had a great time and Sophia won the “Hidden Who” raffle: free membership to next years’ con! Signatures were gotten, pics were made with Jackie Tyler and “Little” Amelia Pond, and there were over 3,000 attendees - just 2-3 years ago they broke 1,000 for the first time, so this one is growing by leaps and bounds.
The big news ( ), of course, is that we met Inspector Spacetime, who is apparently starting a web-based show of some sorts.
God are we tired. Good thing we’re staying one more night because I’m not up to flying out tonight. Fortunately, our flight is for 11:40am tomorrow so we won’t have to rush either.
Lasciel, where did you see the online pics? I can only find the 2011 pictures…
I know someone who went, and they google+ some shots.
Maybe if you search that specifically? (has no idea how google searches work now that the whole “personalize everything” shit has gone down)
I buy my tickets 2 weeks ago, got a confirmed seat. Bought my wife and daughters two months ago today and they’re on standby. Same class, same family, only God knows if they’ll be able to board.
This is United, by the way.
