BizzCon 2007: Travel Report

Myself (Leord) and Rushster are here in Los Angeles waiting to attending BlizzCon. I'm here to cover StarCraft as well as WoW so there's a lot to be getting on with. Being a huge StarCraft fan (as well as WarCraft & WoW) and working for IncGamers I'm invited here for the first ever Blizzard RTS Community Summit (and a visit to BlizzCon). This SC2 community event hasn't received the publicity that BlizzCon has, but we're here to play test the game and talk about its development with the Blizz dev team.


Nice Sunny day	Finding parking	Checking in

We have been "on foot" for the last 26 hours, getting from home in the UK to the hotel in Los Angeles. We're both very tired and weary, but also excited about the days ahead. At 6.30 this morning (GMT or WoW time -1 hour), we set out towards London and Heathrow. Feels a bit odd that after weeks of raining, the great weather starts just about the same time we leave for sunny California. If you have checked our news page the last days, you have already seen the snazzy IncGamer T-shirts we made for this, and we'll be wearing these at BlizzCon (feel free to grab any of us to say hi!).


Leord Onboard	Plane Food. Mmm	Form-tastic

At Heathrow, we found a parking spot after a long search then checked in our luggage. The "leak" about Northrend being the next expansion got to us there in the airport, but not much you can do about it in an airport. A few hours later, following the generally excessive (and useless) security procedures they have at airports, we finally got to board our plane, and find our seats. It felt a bit odd to look forward to 12 or so hours of flight and then arrive just "three hours later". One of the drawbacks with two different invitations to LA was that we had to sit one on either side of the plane, basically unable to speak for the entire trip. The plane was ok though, besides both of us getting the whole passenger lists' record holders in toilet visits, interrupting valuable sleep.


Welcome to the US	Queues and more queues	The nice driver

The lunch was OK for airplane food. Being my first trip ever to the states, I hade the dubious pleasure of learning how to fill out all the little papers that are needed to gain entry to the USA. "Are you now, or have you ever been a member of a terrorist organisation?" lol! I also took the time to watch TMNT and some TV shows. Plenty of time to do that on a long flight...
My little screen welcomed us to the USA, but there was still several hours more to go across the continent. When we arrived we were unlucky enough to hit a queue of planes that were landing at the same time which delayed us disembarking. The problem had spread to the terminal building as well as all the simultaneous flights and created huge queues at passport control. The flight took just 10 hours 40 minutes, but with the wait for "taxi" to a gate and to get our passports and papers checked, it was then 12 hours since we had left Heathrow.


Freeway driving	Hotel Check in	Big Rooms!

After calling a free number, we were picked up in a white Ford van, and we were finally on our way to the hotel. Due to the passport delays we ended up in mid rush hour and got a close look at the lovely LA pollution. We checked in to the hotel, did some primary setups of laptops and other equipment and then I finally could lay down properly for just a minute and stretch my legs (and toes!). As we were both getting pretty hungry, we set out and searched for a good place to eat. Preferably with a decent assortment of vegetarian food for Rushster.

After a short walk towards downtown Disney we found somewhere to eat and finally sat down to have a proper meal (well, while edible, "airplane food" just isn't really proper food). Going home on a full stomach felt great, although all blood disappeared from my head to take care of all the food that had piled up after dinner. We made it back to the hotel and checked the schedule for tomorrow and the RTS Summit. I am going to join Karune, the RTS Community Manager, together with other SC fansites and have a tour of Blizzard Headquarters. Make sure to swing by StarCraft.IncGamers.com and post some questions you would like me to ask when I'm there, in regards to Starcraft 2 in particular, but I guess any questions on RTS games should be OK.


Feet up	Food hunting	Disney Awaits

Being really tired at the moment, I will hit the sack and be up early tomorrow. BlizzCon is the day after tomorrow, and it is probable that we could find interesting pieces of news for all Blizzard fans in the coming hours following our Blizzard visit. Stay tuned!

Note from Rushster

A quick note from me before we wrap up Wednesday here in sunny L.A. As Leord mentions we are pretty dead on our feet but will be hooking up with the Pig and Elvyra tomorrow afternoon as they live locally in L.A. Tomorrow night is dinner with members of the Blizz team so there will be some time to kick back and relax before everything goes mental on Friday morning. The hotel room is looking like NASA right now with camcorders and cables all over the place but tomorrow daytime we will be sorting it all out to make sure we have everything running smoothly.

Anyway, bed time here, been up 30 hours now and the words on the screen are starting to go all blurry :)

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