Home > News, Info & Expos > Star Wars Celebration IV Expo

Also see:
• Celebration IV Day 2
• Celebration IV Day 3
• Celebration IV Day 4
• Armageddon Expos Main Page

Sarah and I were lucky enough to be able to travel over to the USA for the Star Wars Celebration IV Expo in Los Angeles in May of 2007. We got to meet some great people and see some amazing Star Wars goodies. Following are reports written by Sarah about our visit for the 501st Outpost 42 forums, re-edited for our website.

Images and reports from the Star Wars Celebration IV Expo, Los Angeles, May 2007.
(Click on any of the images for a larger image in a new window.)

Day One - Thursday 24th May 2007.

Having already spent three days at Disneyland and two days at Universal Studios Hugh and I were suffering from severe ‘no-room-left-on-my-memory-sticks-atitis’. Fortunately our good friends Matt & Kristy of SWNZ were able to prescribe the perfect cure - downloading all of our photos onto Matt's laptop. We headed to Matt & Kristy’s hotel room in the morning to catch up with them and for Matt to do the necessary surgery. Out of complete flukiness (and nothing to do with Hugh and I running across reception and leaping into the lift as the doors closed), we happened to bump into Jay Laga’aia in the lift. We had a quick chat and told him we had a ‘Home of the Clones’ t-shirt that we had specially brought over from NZ for him. As the doors opened on the 30th floor and we started following him down the corridor towards his room he seemed to become a little concerned and twitchy about his new stalker friends. It was only then that we all discovered he was staying in the room(s) next door to Matt & Kristy! I think he was relieved to see us knocking on their door not his.

CIV opened at noon so after downloading our photos we headed off to collect our VIP passes, courtesy of Warwick Davis (to whom we owe one hell of a big favour!) I had a mild heart attack and strange feeling of amnesia when I was told that Sarah Dobson was on the VIP list but had already picked her pass up!!! “What??? Did she have my ID??? I’ve got my ID! Look, it’s ME!” Apparently Mary Franklin had called to say that I had been replaced but the lovely ladies on the VIP stand seemed happy to give me a pass as well so it was all OK in the end. (Ooh, there would have been a lot of trouble there otherwise, believe me!)

Spotting a Gentle Giant Ltd animated Leia and R2 maquette upon entering the Exhibit Hall we immediately set upon a mission to rid the whole hall of any remaining such items before the rest of America got a chance. Ten minutes later we were struggling to walk under a pile of Leias and Koto Snowtroopers, along with a Gentle Giant Ltd Jango bust purchased specially for Temuera Morrison to sign. Big thanks to Randall from TFAW for holding aside his only animated Leia for us (we had popped in to his shop on Universal Citiwalk the day before).
Along with Matt & Kristy we then joined the queue to get into the queue for Gentle Giant Ltd, yes that’s right, the queue to get into the queue. Before we got anywhere near the front we heard that both the R2 & Yoda maquette and the Luke & Han Bustups were already sold out. Our hearts sank, until we discovered that it was only Thursday’s allowance that had gone and that another 100 would be released each of the remaining days – still plenty of chance to get them then (or so we thought!). We decided to remain in the queue and get our full allowance (one each) of Commander Grees and a couple of Darth Malaks when we reached the front a couple of hours later.

Matt & Kristy then introduced us to Gerald Home - what a lovely lovely guy (Hi Gerald!) - who introduced us to Aussie Bruce Spence, then later on to authors Karen Traviss and Troy Denning. Sorry we didn’t get much of a chance to talk with you more Gerald.

The rest of the day flew by. Hugh and I popped back 'home' (the Los Angeles Athletic Club) to drop off all our purchases and happened upon the maid refreshing our fruit basket - well that solved the lunch problem! We then went back to the Convention Centre and queued again to spend about a million dollars on autograph and photo coupons to use over the next few days before checking out the Lucasfilm Archives and awesome Vader Project, 70 (or so) MR 1:1 scale Vader helmets each customised by a different artist. The results were absolutely amazing – you have to see them. Fortunately, I took photos of every single helmet which Hugh is hopefully going to be able to put together into a quick animation. (A quick preview of the helms below)

In the evening, we returned to Matt & Kristy’s hotel (the Westin Bonaventure) to partake in a little room service and a bottle of wine (Skywalker Ranch no less!) M&K disappeared upstairs while we searched the cavernous interior of their hotel for an ATM. A friendly face (Jay Laga'aia again) walked by and offered us some help. This time we actually had a 'Home of the Clones' t-shirt on us so we swapped it for a small unofficial autograph (Jay isn't signing this weekend) before heading up to M&K's room. After a very pleasant evening eating pizza, drinking M&K’s Skywalker Ranch Merlot (beautiful, thanks so much for sharing it!) and trying unsuccessfully to take timer photos of the four of us with the LA skyline in the background out of the window, Hugh and I headed home. The easiest way to get from the Bonaventure to the LAAC without feeling nervous in a strange city at night was to wait for the shuttle bus to the Celebration IV 24-hour store and then get another shuttle bus home from there. Seeing as we had a little time to spare we decided to check out the store on the way. Everybody moans about having to queue for hours to get in but I dunno what all the fuss is about, Hugh and I were the only ones there! It was weird actually, a huge empty hall with people just waiting to serve us - the sellers were all so bored that we felt the need to entertain them.