Welcome to the Fandom Podcast. This show is about the TV, Movies comics, and books that you love.  Every week we jump into a Fandom and this is a special episode about FanX Survival. I plan on having this as a series of bonus episodes about little tips that will help you on your way through FanX.  

Which Ticket should I Buy?

If you’re reading this there is a good chance that you have your wristband in your hands and are excited to go to Salt Lake Comic Con FanX, but if you haven’t gotten your bands yet then I have to ask you a question. Why not? This is afterall my favorite convention. It has big celebrities, smaller crowds, amazing cosplay, great vendors, and an artist alley that you could spend all day in (I’ve done just that.) Some people like to push it off until the last minute to buy their tickets to make sure that the guests that they want to see get announced, but my first survival tip for you is to buy your tickets as early as you can.

Salt Lake Comic Con tries to reward the diehard SLCC fans by offering discounts on tickets and slowly peeling them away as the convention gets closer. Pre-ordering your tickets also gets you in on some of the convention swag like the limited T-Shirts, posters, comic cash, and even free kids’ passes as long as you do it soon enough and don’t delay.

Alright, so now I’ve gotten you to the website, but you’re wondering which pass to get. The easiest answer is to say to get a VIP pass, but those are expensive and so let’s talk about it for a minute. Why do you want to go to FanX? I’ve found that FanX is not just one convention, but four conventions that are going on simultaneously with a little bit of overlap and the different levels of tickets have different advantages depending on which things you like the most. The four conventions that make up FanX are the Celebrity Interaction Con, The Panel Con, The Artist and Vendor Con, and the Cosplay/People Watching Con.

The Celebrity Con

If you enjoy one on one opportunities with Celebrities and have the money saved up to do so then you probably will spend your time in Celebrity Row, which is the area of the floor that has been set up for Celebrities to sign autographs and have photo ops. The ticket that you will want to buy to get the most out of this experience is the VIP ticket.  It will let you do more with your day than just standing in line.  For every autograph line there is a VIP autograph line and you can save hours by spending some extra money on your ticket.

When Stan Lee came to SLCC I purchased a VIP ticket and an Autograph.  I went at the beginning of the day to scout the area out and found that people were beginning to line up in the general admission line.  The under appreciated volunteer that I asked told me that Stan Lee would not be coming out for more than four hours. I came back 30 minutes before he started signing and jumped into the VIP line.  Within an hour I was walking away with my signed Spider-Man mask while General Admis

sion still had a hundred people in line.  By spending that extra money on VIP I was able to create more memories from the convention than sitting in line. There is no way to get into the VIP line with a Day Pass, Multipass or Gold Pass. If you can afford it the VIP Ticket is your best bet for the Celebrity interactions.

The Panel Con

The second convention is the Panel Con. This is probably the convention that requires the most explaining to new con goers.  A Panel is another name for a presentation at Comic Cons. You can have panels that have one person explaining a part of Fandom, you can have panels with multiple experts discussing a topic, you can have question and answer panels where the panelists answer questions from the audience about a certain topic and you have Celebrity Panels which normally consist of celebrities sitting down with a moderator and answering questions from the audience about virtually anything.