Sunny southern California has hosted various horror conventions over the years, one is known as the world's largest Halloween and Horror convention around, located at the seaside town of Long Beach! Taking place for it's 8th year running, it's a jammed packed weekend of Halloween fun and all the scary goodness. Taking place at the Long Beach Convention Center the weekend of August 15th through the 17th, the crowds had spoken, with drawing in tons of people, having Saturday single day tickets sell out, along with weekend tickets to this festive event.
Upon given access as part of the media team, arriving for the first day/night would be that Friday evening August 15th, where the main goal was to tackle what was known to all as the "Hall Of Shadows", a darkened atmosphere shredded in darkness, with strobe lighting, fog machines, dim lighting, with mood lighting in various greens, oranges, and purple lighting, fitting that Halloween color scheme.
As crowds gathered round, to explore the numerous "mini" haunted houses set up across the floor, with numerous photo opportunities as well, all were truly excited and rather frightened at the experience, walking through those maze houses, with other scare actors, scaring many within the shadows of the fog effects. Each house and photo opportunity had its own uniqueness and total flare, grabbing your scares and attention at the ready. My team had total fun, exploring the floor, checking out the set up, and taking it all in really.
Following this night would be the next day, second day where the vendor assortment would be drawn out, checking out the numerous aisles selling merchandise, ranging from tasty sweets, appeal, toys, jewelry, accessories such as stickers, keychains, umbrellas, to book cases, clocks, etc. Some of the shops visited included JayQ Artistry, featuring models displayed in glamours costumes and make-up affects.
Two appeal shops offered some mini draped caps for numerous outfits, and dresses, picking up a bat shawl, with pink bat dress from Double Trouble Appeal, with another dress offering with spider webs in blood red from Wax Poetic Clothing. Following more walking stopping by 187 Killer Pads having a mini birthday display with black and white cake and balloons, getting a chance to take a snap was so much fun!
Next up would be a scavenger hunt type of experience from Luminous Comics and Force Of Nature Productions, this booth having black and white decked out characters of their story "Tales of Blaze City", where you would go out and located said characters around the convention center, once found, you got to meet the main character behind it all the Illustrator, with all of this having various characters, artwork, and much else told in their showcase happening this fall at the Sawyer's Playhouse in North Hollywood.
Another booth was Revenge Of featuring pinball games and comic books, such titles included Dracula, Stranger Things, and the exclusive 2 book tie in called "Dark and Twisted Death Mask", by Storm King Comics, where the artist Amanda and Cat and creator were present to provide signings for buying said books! Grabbing some copies and having that done was quite the experience.
Aside from these vendors and booths explored, the whole vendor floor hall, was not just made up of merch displays, but more photo opportunities; with various props and characters roaming about. The other side of the hall had guests doing meet and greets, including the horror master himself John Carpenter! Him being best known for his music and movie working's including Halloween!
Everything done here and there was on the downstairs halls, whereas upstairs in the lobby halls, were more vendors, characters, and panels set up, discussing attractions happening at theme parks, guest speakers, movie screenings, and rooms with eerie experiences of props and decor to witness.
All in all though, this year's Midsummer Scream was a pleaser, because it brought it more of a crowd than year's prior. This year it had my team having more fun than beforehand, and it has us walking away with not just goods and a good old fun time too!
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