This is for those of you who've never been to Comic-Con International in San Diego and have been wondering what it's like. This is a fellow who I think is named Shawn Phillips wandering around last year's con for a little over a half-hour, which is enough time to cover maybe 2% of all there is to see.
Everything he tells you is true and your convention experience could look a lot like what he shows you…or maybe not. This is no criticism of Shawn's expert tour-guiding but mine looks nothing like this except for the parts about navigating crowded halls and escalators. Mine is mostly inside panel rooms or hanging around the tables of folks I know or having business-type meetings or giving interviews.
And yours may look nothing like either of ours. The thing you need to grasp is that there's so much going on, you have to seek out the parts of the con that are of interest to you. You need to study the map of the hall and the schedule of panels and all the other stuff on the convention website and figure out what you want to experience and how best to get to it.
It's a lot like going to Disneyland. Let's say you want to experience the thrill rides and skip things like It's a Small World and King Arthur's Carrousel. You need to figure out where they are so you don't go there and you go instead to Space Mountain and Indiana Jones. It would also help to plan in advance where you want to eat and how to wind up in the right place at the right time to see Mickey's Soundsational Parade or the fireworks show.
Shawn will give you a rough lay of the land at Comic-Con here. If you can't go, live vicariously through him. If you do go, let him show you how to get around…