Thanks to one of my friends, I randomly had an opportunity to attend The Walt Disney Company’s D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event at the Anaheim Convention Center in California. To be clear, I am not a “Disney adult,” and even as a kid, I didn’t really watch any Disney media and wasn’t familiar with Disney intellectual property. I have been to Downtown Disney a decent number of times because I like to go for a walk through it when I’m in the area, but I hadn’t been inside Disneyland until only a handful of months ago. Even then, when my friend offered to bring me along with her, I agreed to go because I thought it would be a novel and interesting experience. (As a point of clarification, the friend who invited me is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Co.; this blog post is simply me sharing an interesting part of my life, and it is not a commercial endorsement in any way.)

I heard that getting a ticket to D23 is a difficult process, so I feel very fortunate that I was an invited guest. Prospective ticket purchasers apparently need a certain kind of premium membership with Disney’s fan club, and then from there, they need to line up in a virtual queue and hope for the chance to buy a pass before they all sell out. With that being said, I really respect and appreciate how Disney runs their ticketing system. Scalpers and ticket resellers have become a major problem with basically anything limited nowadays, so I think the fact that Disney filters out ticket buyers to only be genuine fans of their brands is a good move.

I’ve been to a lot of conventions before, but D23 still stood out to me. The first thing I noticed about it is how nice everything was. The build quality of everything was far more premium than what I’ve seen at other conventions, and I found it surprising that even just the regular aisles and walkways were covered with plush carpeting. In conventions where they have to sell exhibition space to third parties, it is obviously not possible to maintain this level of quality and consistency among all the booths—different exhibitors are going to have different budget availability, and some brands will have to cheap out on materials in order to be able to afford being there. However, the fact that Disney is handling the entirety of the convention floor by themselves made it so that they had an incentive to uphold their reputation and make everything nice.

Another first impression that I got was how there were little to no children at the convention. It was very easy to tell that this was designed to be a convention for adults, and the only children I saw were infants in strollers who I assume had to come along because their parents either couldn’t or didn’t want to find a babysitter. This made the environment far less chaotic, and I felt like I was at an actual civilized gathering instead of a circus. For comparison, this was the polar opposite of VidCon where a majority of attendees were children, an unfortunate many of which were quite obnoxious. On the other hand, D23 reminded me more of the most recent BlizzCon; most classic Blizzard game fans have grown up to be adults now, so the last time I attended BlizzCon, it felt like I was there enjoying my time with fellow adults reminiscing and being nostalgic about their childhood.

As I spent more time at the convention, I began realizing just how big the Disney brand is. I kept on seeing logos and characters that I either knew or recognized, but I previously had no idea that they were at all affiliated with or owned by Disney. It seemed like any other brands that were present that were not owned by Disney were there due to corporate partnerships or other business-based alliances in connection with Disney’s products.

My friends who I went with have recently developed an interest in collectible cards, so they were particularly excited for the opportunity to buy sets and merchandise from Lorcana, Disney’s trading card game. There was a wide open space for people to play Lorcana together with other convention-goers, as well as a store run by Ravensburger selling physical Lorcana products.

There was obviously limited stock of Lorcana card sets, and many people at the convention wanted to buy one, so D23 had a virtual queue system on their mobile app where you “line up” online rather than in-person, and then you show up when it’s your turn to shop. The ability to join the queue opened up at certain designated times, so you had to sync your clock to coordinated universal time down to the second, and then right as the release hit, you had to press a button to request to be added to the queue.

Everyone in my group pulled out their phones to prepare to join the queue. Even though I personally wasn’t interested in making a purchase, I figured I would still participate, because it’s better to have more reservations and then withdraw extras later, as opposed to not having enough. So, I also opened my D23 app, made sure the time on my Garmin watch was synced, and then counted down the seconds. The exact moment it hit 1 PM, I pressed the button to join the queue and got inside batch 50. They were currently servicing people in the early batch 40s, presumably still people who were being taken care of from the previous queue, so I realized that I ended up with a really good spot.

Then I checked in with my friends. I don’t know if I just had a more responsive phone because I uninstall all bloatware and barely use any apps, or if it’s because I keep 5G disabled on a routine basis so there is a chance that I had better ping with my 4G LTE service (because keep in mind that 5G is usually faster, but 4G is usually more stable), or if I’m just godlike at counting seconds. But, the next best person in our group got put into batch 99, and everyone else landed above batch 100 (with the highest being in the 140s) and got waitlisted.

Each reservation permitted the reservation holder and one guest to stand in the physical line and make a purchase, so I brought my friend along so she could buy two of everything she wanted—one from my reservation holder allocation and one from her guest allocation.

One thing I extra liked about the Lorcana activation was how there was a deckbuilding quest where you had to interact with other people to trade cards and build a set of four that you got assigned at the Ravensburger store, and once you completed your mission and brought it back to the turn-in spot, you would receive a bonus card. With the decline of social third places nowadays, I almost always support opportunities where strangers can come together in-person and build interest-based connections with each other through a medium that is not online.

Adjacent to that, my friends also had an interest in checking out the Magic: The Gathering booth to see if there were any exclusive items for sale. The MTG booth made queueing more fun by having a quiz that people could take on their phones while waiting in line. Those who took the quiz would be able to show their results to someone at the entrance of the booth and receive a free deck of cards. I took the quiz and got Black, though I don’t actually play MTG, so I’m not sure what that means. I gave my deck to my friend.

One of the most memorable commercial activations I’ve seen at a convention was this Heinz one. Heinz and Disney apparently entered into a multi-year strategic partnership, and in celebration, Heinz set up a place where you could try out their sauces.

One section was sort of like a Coca-Cola Freestyle machine where you could pick your base flavor and add-ons to build your own sauce. Conveniently, they had a concession stand nearby where you could buy hot dogs so you could try these sauces out on a hot dog. Another section showed their four new pre-packaged sauces: orange mojo, blackberry bourbon barbeque, maple sweet chili, and brauhaus mustard.

When it was my turn to try the Heinz Remix machine, I went with a honey mustard and mayonnaise base with an add-in of a double portion of roasted garlic. I think the machine ended up adding in too much mayo, and I wish there had been an option to go easy on the bases as well, but overall, I was satisfied with my creation.

On the opposite side of the Remix machine, there was a cart where an attendant gave out a four-pack of the new sauces. They were in small portions, the size and look of which reminded me of McDonald’s dipping sauces. This was a separate line that required an additional wait, but I somehow accidentally entered that area through the exit after being confused as to where I needed to path after I retrieved my cup of Remix sauce. I guess the attendant was just as confused as I was, because she noticed that I had randomly spawned in and just randomly handed me a sauce set. I gave it to another one of my friends (the one who you see in the photograph pondering about her Remix sauce) because she exited through the proper area and didn’t inadvertently cheat the system like I did, so she ended up not getting one.

One of the activities we did was… voluntarily watching advertisements. This sounds ridiculous, but it was actually quite enjoyable. The line was pretty long, and if you know me, you know that I’m the type of person who doesn’t like standing in lines or otherwise facing any kind of friction between myself and doing what I want to do. However, this line wasn’t too bad because I was chatting with the group of people with whom I had gone to the convention.

The premise behind this was that you would put on 3D glasses, go into a theater where there are immersive elements (like seat vibrations and mist to go along with what’s on-screen), and then watch short clips of various different Disney and Hulu shows so you could get a crash course on what’s available on their programming network. I was lucky enough to literally get the best seat in the house, i.e., in the front row and directly in the center of the screen. The immersive elements were fun, and it was overall pretty enjoyable.

They didn’t allow us to take photographs inside the theater, so instead, here is a picture of us in the waiting room while the hostess chatted with us and briefed us about what was to come.

While we were walking around the exhibition halls, a bunch of employees suddenly cleared the walkway and told everyone to retreat to the edges of the path. Then, out of nowhere, a marching band came through. It was quite jarring, but pretty funny.

Here is a picture of my friend feeling up a statue of Rotta the Hutt. She is probably thinking “why can’t my boyfriend also have a 12-pack…”

(Her face is censored because she doesn’t like having her face posted online.)

Apart from that, I spent the rest of the convention walking around, sightseeing, and taking pictures of things that I found interesting. I feel lucky that I got to go, and I think the fact that I, a non-Disney fan, attended and had such a positive experience is a great indicator on how well the convention is put together.

(As a side note, apparently D23 takes place in two venues: the Anaheim Convention Center, and the multi-purpose arena Honda Center. We only got to experience what was in the convention center and did not get a chance to see the shows at the Honda Center.)

In no particular order, here are a bunch more photographs from my visit: