After missing out the day before we were determined to get in line early enough for a GG Yoda & R2 maquette on Friday. Thanks to our VIP passes we were fortunate enough to be able to arrive at the Convention Centre just before it opened and walk straight in without joining the mile-long queue that had been accumulating since early that morning. Unfortunately it didn’t really help (apart from allowing us an extra couple of hours rest) - we were held up at the bottom of the stairs inside until the line outside was let in, and of course that line included several Olympic sprinters who, despite security’s constant ‘no running!’ yells, ran. We did manage to get into the queue for Gentle Giant Ltd thanks to a little pushing and shoving but were still in it when they announced the Yoda & R2 maquette had sold out again. We decided to stay in the queue anyway and get another Gree, another Malak and some exclusive bustups – just in case they sold out before M&K got in and, well, just because we could really!

Next? Let’s go and queue to try and draw a winning ticket from Lego. Each day 100 winning tickets were released. Only those fortunate enough to pull a winning ticket out of the box were entitled to purchase an exclusive Star Wars Lego piece (only 500 produced). The piece was plastic cube that contained a mini-Imperial throne room complete with Darth Vader, two Royal Guards, and a couple of Stormtroopers – it was cool – I wanted it!
The only challenge was to draw the right number, which on that day was anything between 700 and 799… in goes the hand, out goes the prayer… and there she is holding number 701!!!! Yey! (Hugh also tried but drew number 432 or something useless like that ). Unfortunately we then had to join another queue to actually purchase the piece.

Being incredibly fond of queueing we then decided that we would go and start a line for Carrie Fisher (even though she wasn’t expected to turn up for another hour and a half). I was feeling a little lightheaded and dizzy anyway from a lack of sleep, food and everything else vital to human survival so a little nap in line sounded quite pleasant. Once she did arrive the officials made it blatantly clear that we weren’t allowed photos… bugger that – I need proof that I met her! So as Carrie was signing our photos I very quietly and politely asked ‘Carrie, is there any chance at all that we could get a quick photo with you?’ to which she replied ‘Yes, but be quick ‘cos the guys here are being really anal about it!’ She even leaned forward to make sure that the guy taking the photo got her in it (resulting in her looking a little turtle-like – but a lovely gesture nonetheless!)
As soon as the photo was taken we got shouted at by security ‘I said no photos! Carrie doesn’t like the flash!’ – yep, anal is the word, especially when Carrie herself authorised it! Hugh got several of the Slave Leia photos signed – for some reason they are quite popular…

So there we were, out in the open, with no queue. I felt lost, alone, friendless, my queueing addiction had to be sated – so we went and lined up to see Tem, give him a Home of the Clones t-shirt and get a few things autographed (including the Jango bust).
He seemed quite pleased with the t-shirt, said he had run out of clean clothes so we had just saved him from having to find something to wear the next day – ‘hmm, we’ll believe that when we see it!’

We then went and picked up droid hunt badges from the 501st booth and were given full instructions on how they were supposed to work. ‘Wear it on your lanyard and if a 501st member approaches you and asks ‘how long have you had these droids?’ you have to hand it over in exchange for a raffle ticket’. Seemed easy enough.
After that we headed to the first of the two costume pageants, hosted by Scott Chernoff. This was divided into five sections – Children, Galactic Apparel, Glorious Gowns, Hardware and Outer Rim. The highlight from the kids section for me was the boy dressed as the Swamps of Dagobah (basically just camo pants and a camo t-shirt with a yoda stuck on his head – simple but classic, and apparently all his own doing).

There were a couple of very cute Twilek girls as well though. Oh and a couple of baby Darth Mauls who demonstrated their lightsaber skills on their Maul FXs (one end each). From the look of their sabers they’ve obviously done a few demonstrations before – there were black spots all the way up. Actually, it was scary the amount of kids running around playing with FX sabers during the course of the weekend. Seeing them smashing them around and just throwing away the boxes after all the care we take with ours… just wrong! These kids were cool and deserved FX sabers though!

Anyway, back to the costume pageant…
Galactic Apparel – a bit tedious – jedi after jedi traipsing on stage… all good but none really standing out. I also had a headache by this time (forgot to eat lunch again!) and the guy next to me was clapping so loudly it hurt – so inconsiderate! (Hugh would like to iterate here that it was indeed a seriously loud clap).
Being a girlie the Glorious Gowns section was the one I was waiting for – heaps of effort had gone in to produce some absolutely fantastic Padme Amidala outfits... so jealous! Other memorable costumes from the Friday were Durge, the Spideytrooper, Aunt Beru, an English guy who dressed as his own father who was a captain in ANH, a Clone Wars captain with jouster, a fantastic Shaak Ti and the winner of the ‘Best in Show’ award that day…the Gamorrean Guard.

Friday evening was devoted to the Celebration IV Opening Ceremony. Our passes got in us before the queue for this so we managed to get a seat about 15 rows back (by the TV cameras). We then waited for the other 7998 people to file in while a pianist on stage played Star Wars tunes. (Apparently only 6500 people got in as there was a bomb scare outside and everybody who hadn’t made it in yet was sent away for safety’s sake… but we didn’t know anything about this until we got back to NZ – and even with 1500 less than expected there were a whole lot of people in there!)

The evening started with the Mayor of Los Angeles being introduced and officially opening the event pronouncing 25th May as official Star Wars Day in the state of California from now on. Then came a clip of our famous friends in the Rose Parade (yey!) followed by a quick re-enactment of that day – a band filing through the audience followed by marching Stormtroopers carrying flags. I didn’t see the NZ flag there but I guess that’s ‘cos Cen wasn’t there and wouldn’t allow anyone else to carry it! The troopers were hustled off stage by a large ewok, which was then attacked by Indiana Jones… and who did the ewok turn out to be? None other than Steve Sansweet himself!

Steve introduced previews of new stuff happening in the Star Wars world – Robot Chicken, Family Guy and a new game soon to be released ‘exclusively on PSP’ (there was a big groan at that). We also got a taste of the Slave Leia bellydancing... (I've got this on video if anyone needs to see it!), the One Man Star Wars Trilogy (awesome) and the history of George Lucas done by the ‘Star Wars in 30 minutes’ guys. Steve Sansweet apologised that George himself was unable to attend – we got a recorded video of George saying “Welcome, wish I could be there but I’m too busy with Indy” – then Steve said that they had since managed to arrange a live link…

The celebrities were then all introduced onto the stage, there was a lovely piece of footage in memoriam of all those involved who were no longer with us, and we all sang Happy Birthday and watched the celebrities very self-consciously eating birthday cake on the big screens! (Gerald will vouch for that, he seemed quite embarrassed about it the next day). Fortunately there was enough cake to go around… all 6500 of us! Trays and trays of cake were brought out. And it was really nice too. The guy behind me was actually taking photos of his and talking about putting it up for sale on Ebay – not sure how that ended up. Jay Laga’aia sang Celebration and unsuccessfully tried to get people up and dancing and he and Scott Chernoff did a quick rundown of the various guests appearing on their stages over the weekend.

Then the Vice President of USPS took the stage to officially release the new Star Wars stamps, on sale from that day. (We had all been given a special Opening Ceremony first day cover on the way in too).
After this people started to leave which I thought was quite rude seeing as Steve Sansweet was still on stage. He told them to hold up a second just as a huge feedback/speaker blowing up/hissing noise hit us. Everybody stuck their fingers in their ears and looked around… to discover Boba Fett literally flying from one side of the stage to the other with his jetpack – cool! Then we all got covered with confetti falling from the ceiling... so purdy!