When I went to my first Supernatural convention back in 2017 in Toronto, I went to it thinking it was going to be my first and only Supernatural convention. The main reason my mom and I went was because we thought it was going to be the last Supernatural convention in Toronto. And then it turned out that there was going to be one in 2019 and now 2020 as well. So you could say I had been waiting a while for this weekend to come.
Day 1:
The first thing I had on Friday was Rachel Miner’s panel. I missed the welcome with Rob Benedict because I was putting my form in for 2020 upgrades. Rachel’s panel was great, she was adorable as ever and had glitter in her hair and on her face, I guess from the unicorn themed ops. And of course Rachel got us all discussing Hogwarts houses and which ones we were in, and Jared and Jensen’s houses. Then Jason Mann’s panel was right after and it was also great. He took song requests from people who asked questions like he always does so it was kind of a mini concert in a panel. We all got a good laugh at the end because Jason was using his guitar to covered up a sweat mark on his shirt, and then Rob took the guitar not realizing what Jason was doing so it was funny. Afterwards I had my Bri and Kim photo ops.
I had Briana first and after the handler showed her the reference photo I went to hold hands with her and she was trying to link our fingers I guess, I’m not really sure. I was fumbling with my hands a little bit and she said “No, under babe” and then we did some sort of hand holding and she leaned towards me and it came out really cute! Then I did the same pose with Kim, and Kim like she always does, hugs us first so as I’m hugging her she asked what we’re doing, the handler shows her the reference photo and we hold hands then Chris takes the photo and this one also turned out really cute and I’m so happy with them!
After my Bri and Kim photo ops it was Gabriel and Chad’s panel. Ever since the first convention where they were both guests and had a panel together they called themselves the Friday Fluffers. They fluff up the Friday people getting them ready for the weekend (at least that’s what I think they meant). It was a really great panel and it was super funny. Gabriel and Chad have a good dynamic with each other and can kind of bounce jokes off each other that makes it very entertaining to watch. Also Gabriel was kind of doing what Rachel does during her panel for The Giving Back Tour playing Mad Libs. But this version of Mad Libs was called “Mad Libs: After Dark” so not your typical prompts to make a story. When there panel was over the next thing I had was autographs with Kim and Briana. I was first in line for Briana’s autograph and when I went up Briana was saying how quiet it was so one of the Creation staff members brought over there phone to play music on it and Briana was kind of struggling to figure out how to turn the volume down on it so they just moved it onto the middle of the floor behind the tables. Briana was really sweet and thought the op turned out great, which made me even happier that she liked it as well. Then I went to Kim’s line and got her autograph and she also thought the op turned out great and I loved how she wrote “So lovely” on my op with her autograph.
Next, I had Lisa, Gabriel & Chad photo ops all back to back. The good thing is that this was the first time I was meeting all three of them so I was getting a hug with each of them. So that made it easier to do all three photo ops. They were all super sweet and I got really good hugs. For my Chad op when I went up I hugged him and when I looked towards Chris to take the picture, he was turned away talking to someone so Chad said we’ll just hug it out. So I got to hug him for a bit and then Chris took the picture. Then it was Lisa, Kim & Briana’s panel, it used to be just Kim and Bri but then when Lisa got added to more
conventions I guess they decided to add her onto the panel. Which was great, it added another wayward women to the panel so that was fun. There panel was really good and funny. Lisa at one point starting talking about motivation and how she was the one in the gym where you yell at the person to encourage them to keep going and she said “You can cuss at me, you can cuss at me all you want but you gonna hold that plank, you gonna hold that plank” and that got me and everyone else in the auditorium laughing a lot. It was probably my favourite panel next to the gold panel and the J2 panel.
After the panel, there was autographs with Lisa, Gabriel, David, and Adam who were all signing for Gold. All of my autographs went really well. I got David and Adam to sign our photo op from last year at Jacksonville. Then I had Lisa and Gabriel sign the photo ops we did that day. I told Lisa how much I enjoyed and appreciated the newsletters she sends out. And if you haven’t already you should definitely sign up for them, email your name to lisa@lisaberrylive.com (that could be wrong so go check out Lisa Berry’s twitter to be sure). Then the last thing of the day was karaoke! I put my name in to sing at karaoke but didn’t get picked, which is okay. I have gotten to go up one time even though it wasn’t my name that was called but that is also okay. Karaoke was really fun and all the cast members who were there made it even more fun.
Day 2:
The first thing I had on day 2 was the Welcome with Rob. I missed it on Friday because I was getting upgrades for 2020. It was a fun welcome and lead right into the Ladies of SPN panel. I always love this panel because it has all the ladies that are at the convention that weekend and it’s a great way to start off the Saturday of the convention. Then there was the Vendor’s Room Jam, which is an “impromptu” concert that Louden Swain does. It was really good and funny because Rob forgot some lyrics so it made them all laugh. After the vendor’s room jam they did there autographs. If you buy any merchandise from them, they will sign it for free. I had always wanted one of the vinyl records of their music. And at this con I decided to get the vinyl of their Saturday Night Special album because it was in my hometown so it was easy to take home.
Then there was the R2M panel, unfortunately Matt’s travels did not go as planned and he was late to the panel but it was fine. Rob and Rich did a great job and then Matt joined the two of them about halfway through. It was another great panel, all three of them are really good together and are really funny. Next we had photo ops with Baby. I wasn’t originally going to get this because I thought it was a little ridiculous to pay for photos done by your phone but that it was kind of blocked off unless you had a ticket, which was understandable. And it was only $20 so my mom and I split the ticket. It was kind of surreal to get to sit in an impala. I also got to take some pictures of the car, I was going fast to not hold up the line but they turned out pretty good. And might I say the seats in the car are really comfy, I can now see why the boys are able to seat in the car for long periods of time if there is a long scene in the impala.
The next thing I did was yes/no trivia. It was fun because Jason Manns was hosting it. He was kind of teasing me saying if anything is wrong with Billy’s guitar at SNS that night to blame me because I was standing next to the equipment. I just kind of smiled and nodded like “okay, you do that”. I got a question wrong that I regretted choosing the answer for because I was a little unsure and then I knew the rest of them. But that’s what usually happens. And something I’ve noticed from the cons I’ve been to is that they ask a question about what weapon did Demon!Dean use either a knife or a hammer and that tends to get a lot of people out. Then there was Misha’s panel and I actually got picked to ask a question…again. I was number 7 on the right side and I’m telling you all this because of something that happened on Sunday. Misha was kind of stalling/fooling around during the beginning of the panel which kind of delayed questions being asked. So when I was the next to go the handlers said that they won’t have time for any more questions so I didn’t get to ask one. Which honestly I was kind of glad about because I did not really have a question to ask him.
Afterwards was autographs with Misha. And I actually missed my row being called because I was handing out lights for the Saturday Night Special. But it was fine, I just joined the row behind me in the line. I had Misha sign my journal page that I did for the Cleveland convention. It was a slightly weird interaction. I gave the handler the journal page and she handed it to Misha, he starts signing it looking down then midway through signing it he looks up at me, winks at me, then proceeds to finish signing the page. And then he says thank you and I say thank you and leave. After I was just like…what the hell just happened???. Last was the Saturday Night Special which Jensen was going to be signing at. I never thought I would get the chance to see him sing live. When I found out I was ecstatic, and I was on the bus home so I had to kind of hold my excitement in until I got home. It was a great concert, everyone did amazing. Jensen sang Simple Man which is one of my favourite covers from him and then he also sang with Lisa which was so cool. And getting to take pictures of it all from gold row H was a dream come true. It’s only gonna get better next year when I am in gold row B!! And that was the end of day 2 and it was a really good day.
Day 3:
This Sunday started a little differently than previous Sundays I have been to for conventions because this time I had a gold pass. So I had the gold panel with Jared and Jensen. I had only ever seen them on youtube and even watching those videos you can kind of tell it’s a bit different. They keep the house lights on, you just raise your hand and Jensen and Jared will call on you to ask a question, and it kind of feels more relax because there’s a lot less people there and they can see us all in the audience. I am very grateful that I had the chance to experience that and that I will be able to experience it again next year. The next thing I had
was my J2 photo op. The last time I did one of these was at the last Toronto con in 2017 and I was with my mom. This time I was all by myself and I was remembering everything from
my first con, how I felt, how nervous I was and still am, what I thought when I saw them for the first time. I wanted a sandwich hug for my first one but ended up sharing it with my mom so I couldn’t do that. So this photo op was kind of two years in the making. I asked for a sandwich hug and hugged Jensen because I feel like from all the photo ops I see, he doesn’t get hugged as often as Jared does in these ops. And I look less short next to Jensen compared to Jared. They squished me really tight and it came out exactly how I wanted it to.
Then it was Rich’s panel, his panel was good. He talked about directing Supernatural and his new album coming out produced by Jason, which I am very excited about. It’s interesting to me when people like Rich have their own panels that aren’t in a group cause they sometimes get asked different questions than they would in a group panel. Next was Rob’s panel, and his panel was good too. Like I said about Rich’s panel it’s good that we get solo panels for them, cause then there’s more direct and personalized questions towards them instead of a broad question to all three of them. Then there was Ruth’s panel, I always love Ruth’s panel. She walks around the audience at the beginning each time and calls out people for leaving or coming in late. My friends and I were talking before Ruth’s panel and started running to it so we weren’t late and didn’t get called out by her.
Photos Above Credit: Joanne Allard
The last panel of the day was the J2 panel. I always put my name in to ask a question for the J2 panel but had never gotten to ask a question before…until this convention. I have noticed that if you are in the middle area of the questions close to 10. You’re most likely to get picked for the last question. And of course I had number 7 on the left side, which was somehow the same number I had for Misha just on the opposite side. I didn’t know if I was gonna be able to ask them because it was getting close to the end of the panel and then I was nervous about possibly being the last question to go up. But I did get to ask them a question and I’m kind of glad I wasn’t the last one cause it is nerve racking going up there especially with the two of them. I asked them what was the hardest death of Sam and Dean to film, because they’ve been asked about all character deaths but I was more curious about specifically Sam and Dean. And then Jared heard hottest death instead of hardest death but Jensen heard correctly so that made me feel better because I tend to talk fast and mispronounce words, so I was afraid I did that but Jensen heard me correctly so it was all good. It is a memorable experience, having them answer my question and look towards me even though they couldn’t really see me.
After the J2 panel, my mom and I had our J2M photo op. Which was a complete splurge con buy because my mom went to buy an R2M op and the creation staff member thought she meant J2M and she was surprised and so was I when I heard about it because the website said sold out and so did the schedule and so did the signs for the ticket table. So I have no idea why there was extra tickets available but we bought one. And because we did not plan to buy one, we did not have a plan for the photo op. I went through the album on the Facebook group for convention photo ops and found one we both liked. When we got into the room I saw that Jared and Jensen were in different spots than what was intended for the photo op so when I gave the handler my phone to show them the reference photo I asked if I could move them around and she said yeah sure, and then said she’d do it for me which I was so thankful for because I was not gonna be able to tell them that. I went over to Jared to put my arm around him and then my hand was still in my sleeve so I was gonna take it out of my sleeve and then grab Jensen’s hand but Jensen just grabbed my hand so it was still in my sleeve. During the photo op I felt something prickly touch the top of my head and it freaked me out because I had no idea what it was. Until I saw the photo op and found out it was Jared leaning his head on my head. I absolutely love how this op turned out and I am so happy that I got a chance to do it.
The next thing I had was autographs with Jared and Jensen. I had them sign a painting that Illy “Superinspired” made based off the firework scene in 5.16 “Dark Side of the Moon”. I especially wanted to get it signed after Illy said she couldn’t attend the Toronto convention anymore. Jensen was quiet which was fine, I am also quiet so it’s a little bit easier on me. Then when my mom was getting her autograph I could hear his voice but he wasn’t saying anything, I was very confused until I noticed that it was his album that was playing on a speaker at his autograph table. Also if you have not listened to it yet, then you should definitely go listen to it. And then I went to get Jared’s autograph, I was in a bit of a daze and when he asked me if black was okay for the pen colour to sign it, it took me a second to register what he said. I am happy that he signed it in black because it looks really nice matching Jensen’s autograph. Then the last thing I had was choosing my seat for the 2020 upgrades. I never had the chance to do an upgrade before because usually I didn’t know if they were coming back or if I was gonna be able to come back again. But because this con is in my hometown, my mom and I decided to upgrade our gold seats for next year. So I am now going from H34 to B22. That should be fun!
SPNFamily from SPN TorCon 2019
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