Meeting Kim Possible at the Allentown Comic Con

I was just about done with the Allentown Comic Con after the debacle in July. We'd had a couple good times before. It was Lily's first con in 2012, and we returned in 2013, where we had some memorable experiences, but even a year ago, I was thinking, "This is getting way too big for its venue."

It all came to a head in July. Parking, always bad, was worse than ever before, and the Summer heat was intense. The line wasn't moving at all, and the rumor was swirling that the hall was already at capacity at 10:30 in the morning and they wouldn't let more people in the hall until other people left. I wasn't sure if that was true, but we didn't stick around to find out. We went back to our car and went home from there, and the whole experience was frustrating and disappointing, and I decided not to return until they took some steps to correct the problem.

We had gone up to Rhode Island Comic Con last year with some friends, We couldn't make it this year, and I was kind of disappointed, because Christy Romano was going to be there, and it would have been nice to meet her, as we're all huge Kim Possible fans.

As if in answer, a friend posted to my wall on Facebook that she would be at the Allentown Comic Con, this weekend, as a last minute addition. We didn't have anything planned, and I decided to suck up whatever vicissitudes the con would throw at us.

I started with Kim Possible before Lily was born.  I caught it for the first time when my niece and nephew were just little kids. We were watching it at their house a couple years back and my nephew said, "I love that backflip she does," to which I replied, "It's actually a back handspring", because, you know, kids love pedantic corrections. It had a fun, sly sense of humor.

I shared it with Lily as soon as she was old enough, and she loved it, because we're all about the girl power around here.

So, of course, we weren't about a miss a chance to meet Kim herself.  And the difference between this con and the previous one was night and day. I had seen on Facebook that they were making some changes to address the crowds (expanding the con to two days, tweaking the hours, allowing for overflow parking, and opening four lines for ticket sales/redemption) and they really paid off. We had no trouble parking despite arriving later than previously, we sailed through ticket redemption and the crowds were much more manageable.

We found Christy Carlson's table pretty easily. Lily had a sudden attack of shyness and I was trying to psyche her up when Christy called us over! She talked to Lily for a while, though I had to serve as an intermediary at first, because Lily was still feeling shy. Christy was engaged, she was attentive, she talked to Lily without talking down to her, she was everything you hope someone your kid idolizes will be if your kid gets the chance to meet them. She was, in a word, nice. She even played along and answered some Kim Possible trivia. (We gave her an easy one, Kim's middle name.)

Here's our picture with Kim:

The whole experience was great. Lily also picked up a Loki Charms t-shirt from Level-Up studios, which she really enjoyed, as well as some posters from the very talented Angela McKendrick, whose work can be found and purchased at her Deviantart page.

"So long, suckers."

We'd had a very negative experience with the Con previously, but I'm glad we gave it another chance.
 Special thanks to Frederick, for telling me about it before it was too late!