christmas con kansas city 2023

Wow Christmas Con was earlier this month and I better get my dang thoughts down before I forget them!

Was it the best time ever? Yes! Is there immense room for improvement from the organizers? Also yes. I’ve never been to the New Jersey one but rumor on the street is that the NJ one was WAY more packed with people and had more booths, photo opp vibes around the floor.

First things first: buying the tickets
You have to decide if you’re going to buy tickets for one day or all of the days. Will it sell out? I don’t know- I heard this event was sold out, but all of the panels did have chairs available to sit in. Which was nice, I don’t like the idea that I could pay for an event and then not get into a panel! (I’m looking at you bookcon). We didn’t get the actual schedule of events until about 4 days before the event. FOUR. DAYS. This was insanity to me and made it really hard to plan our weekend. How would you decide which day you wanted to attend if the schedule wasn’t out? I don’t get it.

VIP tickets:
You also have to decide if you want to get VIP tickets. I don’t remember the price difference but it was substantial. If i was gonna do it again- I’d like to know if there were any perks like photops included. (To meet the actors you pay $40 per photo, or $70 if you want an autograph and a selfie/photo- more on that later). If there were photops included, then it might’ve been worth it. But again, without the schedule out, and not know exactly what I was getting into, I just wasn’t willing to shell out the extra cash up front for the VIP tickets.
It’s worth noting that VIP people have a way better life than us peons at the convention. Literally every line, they get to cut you in. Example: there are 5 people ahead of you to talk to Paul Campbell… Okay that’s fine, maybe a 20 minute line. But then the VIPs start showing up. They get to go into a separate section of the line. Depending on who’s in charge at that booth, they might let two VIPs go between every one regular ticket person. So all of the sudden you’re waiting for 45 mins even if you were 6th in line. Hope that makes sense.
For panels: the VIPs also have a seperate line and they get to go in first and get the first seats for every panel. They also get to keep their seats in between panels. The regular tickets have to exit the room, get back into the long waiting line for the next panel- wait for any additional VIPs to gain entry to the next panel and THEN find their seats.
Does this sound unbelievably annoying and remind you a little bit of the madness of people who can pay for precheck at airports? Yep, that was my feeling to.
Again, I’ll mention that we never got an awful seat in a panel. So while it would be super nice to have been a VIP- it was totally fine to have a regular ticket.

The Panels:
We went to almost every panel. I didn’t think we would but we loved the panels! The actors were hilarious and you could ask questions at the end (I did indeed as a question in one of the panels!) There was one panel with Barbara Eden, where she used a derogatory term to describe a Native American (played by elvis in a film) and that was very awkward. Melissa Joan Heart did all of the heavy lifting for her in that panel and it was easily the worst one. It the future, I hope the event hosts will think through aspects like that.
Ok we have to talk about the woman who hosted the panels. She is apparently a Christmas con regular, who works for people magazine. She is NOT a true hallmark fan. She was awful!!!!! We talked to so many people at the event and not one person enjoyed her hosting the panels. And she hosted all of them!!!!! Wow, she was brutal. In my dream world, Jonathan Bennet would host the panels. But a good backup option would be for one of the stars on any panel to be named the host. Maybe the attendees could even text in questions that could be answered! (honestly this would greatly help with when people lined up to ask questions. In one panel, the guy holding the mic had people line up in front of an entire seating section. So that section couldn’t see the hallmark starts answer the asked questions!)

The Red Carpet/ Early Movie Screening:
The Red Carpet was…weird. We’re all lined up and they give us instructions NOT to scream or clap when the celebrities come out because they’re going to be interviewed by press and they won’t be able to hear them. Did they tell the stars that? Because it was so awkward for them to walk out and have us all standing there but then not cheer for them…
The guy with the mic then said leading up “You can either cheer and not see the movie, or not cheer and go see the early screening.” It was very weird- talking to other people at the event, they agreed his “parenting” vibe of telling us instructions was off-putting. Also, after multiple stars came out, that same guy on the mic yelled- remember no videos, only pictures! We all looked around and laughed because 1. that ship had sailed 2. that instruction was never given out initially.
It was really fun to have the q&a with bejamin ayres before the movie and he let us in on some easter eggs for the movie! Of course it was hosted by the panel host- so that was meh. But Ben was awesome and got us all hyped for the movie! And I thought it was so cool of hallmark to let us have an early screening of the movie!

The organization of the event:
There needed to be more signage around the whole building. You had to ask a lot of questions to know where to go for panels, and overall where you were even supposed to go once you got to the convention center. This was a big fail on the organizers part and could’ve been easily rectified.

Meeting the stars:
OK so this was the best part. We had to talk ourselves into standing in line for the selfies with each star. I am incredibly awkward at meeting celebrities (I know, it’s hard to believe because I’m perfect in every way! haha) and I was nervous for what randomness might come out of my mouth. Should I have been nervous about that? Yes. Because I said some insane things. Was it worth it? Also yes! I’m so glad we did it! We didn’t ever stand in line for Tyler Hynes (he had the longest line) or Andrew Walker (second longest lines). Those wait times were around 2 hours. It was $40 to take a photo with them (Lisa and I took photos together with the celebs. It wasn’t $80 to do that. It was $40 per time not per person). Or you could do an autograph and an photo for $70- we didn’t do that option.

We ended up meeting:

-Taylor Cole (prettier in real life than on tv which seemed impossible but holy moly she was stunning). There was a guy in front of us in line who was trying his darndest to flirt with her (he was failing). We both felt really bad for her and how awkward meeting fans can be. She was super gracious and kind to him but it was noticeable for us!

- Benjamin Ayres (he was so dang tall and so nice! I blacked out during this interaction and can’t remember anything. I was just SO excited to meet him!!). Ps. If you haven’t looked up Romance University, you should! I’ve purchased some swag from him (he donates the proceeds to women’s shelters!) and I bought a personalized signed hat in his line that I love!!! (I also got to go on stage with him and all of the other RU alumni and take a picture!)

- Wes Brown (he had a clear plastic bag filled with Branson, MO swag when we walked up. So I preceded to make time share jokes the entire time. WHY?!) Here’s a snipped of our convo with Wes Brown:
him: is it your first time at christmas con?
me: first and last! (I laugh awkwardly. Why would I say that?!). I’m just kidding!
him: oh, wow. what if that was your game plan, you’d go around all weekend and insulted all of the hallmark celebrities? haha.
Me: (omg am I insulting everyone I meet?!)
him: what are you guys reading? (we had books in line that we set on the table)
Lisa: empire of pain, it’s about the opioid epidemic. It’s really good.
Wes: At the Christmas convention?!
Us: laugh awkwardly.

-Kristoffer Polaha:
He was the first person we met! So in fairness we didn’t know how it worked yet and didn’t realize they would talk to us for a little bit before the pictures. He literally spoke to us and asked a question when we were about to take a photo and we NEVER answered him!!!!!!!! WHAT?!!! Omg- how embarrassing.

-Paul Campbell:
We also blacked out during this interaction. At one point I said something followed by me saying outloud “what?” and Lisa saying “stop talking” under her breath. I then literally put my head down on the table in front of me. WHAT DID I SAY?! We can’t remember!!!!!! But I’d assume out brains immediately blocked it out for a reason hahah. What do I remember? I remember saying he didn’t need to bend down in the photos. (Lisa is tall, I am average height, and I think it looks better when everyone stands up straight in the pictures hahah). He responded with “Don’t worry, I don’t even bend down for the ‘lil ‘lil’s.” After which we all busted out laughing and I immediately felt better about whatever weird thing I had previously said.

-Kimberley Sustad:
She was as tall as Lisa and she clocked Lisa in line as another tall girl! We made a lot of jokes about me being the only black girl there (don’t worry, I think one or two more came the next day so there were three of us total haha) and Lisa being the tallest girl there, so we would stand out in the pictures. She mentioned that we might also be the youngest people there and we all laughed because that was mostly accurate. Definitely an older clientele overall haha. We absolutely loved Kim and are VERY convinced we would be irl friends with her. She is as awkward as we are (which we greatly appreciate) and very dry and sarcastic, like we are. If you could’ve just pulled up a chair at her booth and hung out with her the whole time, we would’ve done it!
Oh I almost forgot, Ben Ayres came by and ripped back the curtain and said “Boo!” - I responded as any normal person would be shrieking. It was captured on camera and I am so happy about it haha.

-Victor Webster.
Let it be known that the whole time, I kept calling him Victor Garber. I blame my recent rewatch of Alias. Noticeably in line, Victor was giving hugs to everyone who was in his line for a picture. He had a whole line of females and every single one was closing their eyes when he would embrace them. It was making me very uncomfortable and I had to try very hard not to laugh about it. I kept making pheromones jokes to Lisa because of this hugging situation. And as we got closer to him in line all I could think was “Do NOT make a comment about pheromones to Victor Garber. I mean Victor Webster. Crap! Don’t call him Victor Garber! Just don’t say his name at all! Wow, this is a lot to remember….” This is the only excuse I have for what would come out of my mouth during this interaction.
Victor: What got you into hallmark movies?
Lisa: I actually watched this christmas movie a long time ago and Benjamin Aryres played the bad guy boyfriend in it!
Victor: That’s so great because he’s like the nicest guy ever
Me: Yes! He was one of the first people we stood in line to meet! He was a great choice to pop our… (trails off. my eyes bulge out of my head as I realize what I was about to say)
Lisa: Stop. Talking. Oh my gosh.
Victor: Were you about to say ‘pop my cherry?’ (he laughs) I think that was a line in my last hallmark movie!
Lisa: (laughing) I mean, it’s very on brand with Hallmark!
Me: Oh my gosh, I couldn’t stop it once I thought it! It’s an issue with me and a filter.
*also his hugs were exceptional and I did NOT close my eyes.

Whew that’s it! Would I go again?! Absolutely yes, I loved it so much. But Lisa can’t go with me if they do it again next year! So I’ll have to find another buddy. A lot of people went by themselves but as you can see, I cannot be trusted to speak to celebrities without supervision.

Wow did you make it through this whole thing?! If you did leave me a comment and I’ll randomly select one of you to send a Christmas is Not Canceled tote bag to!