I wasn’t too too disappointed because life happens and she wasn’t the piece I wanted most out of Comic Con last year anyway. However, I did pick up a Batman Beyond pop that I had been looking for for ages and I did receive last years poster to go with it. After that, I resumed my regular funko hunting and for weeks after, both locations of Barnes and Noble still had ALL of their comic con pops except for Elsa. I honestly couldn’t believe that they weren’t selling out. At one point, my biggest location even had a few on clearance trying to get them gone. This year was so so so much different. Since both Hot Topic and Barnes and Noble were doing their Comic Con event the same day only an hour apart where I lived, I planned to go to both the biggest stores of each in my area and with traffic and weather the way they were, only about a half hour apart distance from each other. I planned to arrive at Barnes and Noble a half hour early, but complications from getting out of the house in time only got me there 15 minutes before the doors opened. Pulling up, there were only two other cars sitting - waiting with people in them. One had an old man who clearly wasn’t there for the funko pops (he headed elsewhere inside) and a young woman with two kids in her car parked beside me. The minute I pulled up next to her, she jumped out of her car and only grabbed one of her kids and bolted for the enterence to start a line. My first thought was “Really? We’re going to start this now?” I had been on Facebook all morning and everyone on the East Coast who was an hour ahead of me who had already had success at Barnes and Noble were saying they had no problems, there was no line, nothing. Not for me. Right after the lady left one of her kids in the car for the front door (nice, by the way) both my boyfriend and I got out and proceeded to get in line behind her.  About five minutes before they went to open, a group of about five men got behind us and joined the line. The moment a lady came and unlocked the big double doors to go inside, the lady in front of me got in her face and asked her where the Comic Con collectibles were. If she had just gone it, it would have been a lot faster because she was blocking the left hand door, making us go in through the right. What was in front of the right door? The Comic Con table display. Jesus. So, I was first at the table. I was only there for two single funkos: Sparkle hair Joy and Flocked Snuffleupagus. I grabbed Joy first (I don’t know why because there were so many of her on the table and the store only got in three Snuffys) and picked one with good eyes and a clean box. The woman who was in front of me came over and grabbed an Unmasked Captain America and an Ant Man and I was reaching for Snuffy, she grabbed him too. I grabbed the one behind him and picked out of the two, the one with the cleanest eyes.  After that, the swarm of people came in behind us. My boyfriend held my Snuffy and my place in line as I went back to switch out my Joy for one with a cleaner face and by the time we checked out and got our posters (they held them behind the registers taped and gave them to us as we left) (last year, they were rubber band bounded in a basket next to the table) the table was wiped and all the Snuffy’s were gone. After we got in the car and headed for Hot Topic, a huge storm of rain came down so freaking hard that it was so difficult to see the road and we had to pull over and wait until it died down a little. Thankfully it waited or my poster and the pop boxes would most likely be destroyed because they did not put them in the right sized bag. No, they did not. By the time we got to the mall, it was still raining hard and we braced that to get inside to be able to wait outside Hot Topic. We were 7th in line and impatiently waiting.  My original Hot Topic goals were just to pick up Glitter Sadness and Gold Bender until I got onto Facebook that morning and found everyone was finding French Mistake Castiel and Crystal Blue Heisenberg. Two more added to the list. I didn’t hear about all the horror stories until I got home, so I wasn’t too too worried about my Hot Topic visit. The staff working opened the door ten minutes early and when the doors opened, everyone veered right to the table, so I went left. Luckily, I was able to grab Castiel and a Bender and was right smack dab next to the Heisenbergs. I was able to pick a nice one with a pristine box and picked up a Sadness as well. Everyone in the store was super kind and super respectful. Even with a three piece limit per style, no one took more of one. After getting home and hearing the horror stories, it was so weird to hear all the scary stories when everything went smoothly for us. A couple days later, my boyfriend and I went to the movies and during the previews, the trailer for the new Ant-Man movie came on and it looked fantastic and I knew that if I didn’t get the funko pop now, I would regret it. We went to the smaller Barnes and Noble in the area (because it was closer) and found that their table of SDCC exclusives was full of only one thing: Ant-Man. The luck! Picked up the nicest looking Ant-Man pop and another free poster and headed out of there. All in all, that was my SDCC funko experience. Way different than last year and much more hectic. Here’s to what next year brings.