San Diego Comic-Con 2014: Surviving It With Kids

If you didn't notice already, I'm kind of obsessed with Comic-Con and practically live for SDCC each year. This was our third year attending and our first year taking the kids. I'll be posting more about what we did this year at SDCC, but this post is about how it was with kids. Keep in mind that everything I post about SDCC this year was with kids in tow because we never used their onsite child care.

In line for Hall H

Because kids 12 and under are free with paying adults, you really don't need to decide if you're taking the kids until you pick up your badge. In the past, we have gone back and forth on whether or not to bring them, but this year we decided to turn it into a family vacation. With Sunday being a kids day, Comic-Con isn't that bad of a place for kids especially if your kids are into superheroes, video games, or cartoons. Even if you don't have a badge and just want to take your kids to San Diego during Comic-Con, there are tons of fun things to see and lots to do off-site that is free. Our original plan was to take the kids to Comic-Con on Sunday and then I would go alone on Saturday while Andrew took the kids around San Diego. Instead, we ended up taking the kids to Comic-Con for 3 days and doing almost nothing else outside the Con, which didn't bother the kids very much.

Salt Lake Comic Con FanX 2014: Andrew's POV

Comic Con has always been a mixed bag for me. I enjoy the company and seeing the fanboys and fangirls I know shed any sense of proprietary as a favorite star walks onto the stage. I do not enjoy the crowded hallways and the difficulty of satisfying mandatory bodily requirements -- bladder fullness = 1/time to next panel.

With Simone not going on Saturday, I almost decided not to go. Once FanX announced Patrick Stewart, I felt a strange giddiness that could only mean that I too was a fanboy. With the fanboy tractor beam on, I put on the cleanest nerdy t-shirt I could find and put the 10th doctor's sonic in my pocket in case of car troubles and headed out.

I had only two goals: see Patrick Stewart and get an autograph from Karen Gillan for Simone. Unfortunately, Comic Con is a cruel mistress, and I would only get to do one of these things. Before that epic reveal, let's take a brief detour to the Evermore booth. Evermore is the world's first adventure park built in our very own Utah and as the name implies it is designed to have ever-more things to do.

Evermore has a Victorian England theme

There are no rides at this park, instead visitors are plunged into an English village fully stocked with actors that are pretending to go about their daily affairs and are quite surprised to find such oddly dressed visitors in their mist. Depending on the season, the park carries an additional theme -- in the fall the village has a cursed item that is causing appropriately ghoulish on-goings. I applaud the vision of the park, and I only hope the execution delivers on the immersive experience that is being promised.

Camping and Caching

Wasatch Mountain State Park

We escaped to Midway again this summer for a weekend camping trip. This time we went to Wasatch Mountain State Park for the first time. We've been up to Midway many times before, but we had idea there was a state park up there. This trip was actually one of the more memorable camping trips we've been on because it was surprisingly full of great family activities. The visitor center had some educational exhibits inside and outside featured a playground and children's fishing pond. We didn't research this place before heading out so we weren't prepared to fish, but they did have rods to rent and the kids loved playing at the playground after having a picnic lunch.