This was a very late start as the first panel we wanted to go to was the Felicia Day panel that was before one for “How I Met Your Mother”. By this point I’d had enough of cooking pancakes every morning – they’re not particularly healthy, so decided to have a croissant, yoghurt and banana instead. I had been tempted to get up a lot earlier and to queue for Hasbro, though from what I’d heard the previous day the Boba Fett figure I wanted to get was selling out so quickly each day it would probably still be pointless queueing that early.

Our leaving out was then delayed slightly further by one of the others in the group spilling cough medicine everywhere. By the time this was cleaned up we’d lost about 20 minutes, but headed for the Indigo Ballroom at the Hilton anyway.

We queued outside the Hilton for quite some time, with the volunteers continuously rearranging the queue system. I assume this was mostly due to them trying to keep the walkway clear. Part of me wondered if they did that to try and keep people hopeful, though I realised this was not the case when they announced it was unlikely that the queue past a certain point would get in.

By the time of the panel we were told that the panel was full due to there having been a large number of people queue overnight for it, and so we’d wasted the morning (not the organisers fault, they did warn us it was a possibility but we stayed in hope we were lucky). I think this panel would have been better placed in Ballroom 20 or Hall H due to it’s popularity, it may have then made it easier to get in on the Felicia Day panel.

Due to this we headed over to Ballroom 20 to see if we could get in on the Family Guy and American Dad panel. It was a wait of just over an hour due to it being a very short queue for that hall (shockingly!) and we managed to get in.

For the Family Guy panel they brought out the cast and played a short clip of what we could expect over the upcoming season. Between Family Guy and American Dad some of the audience left so we moved forward a little, my plan being I wanted to get reasonable pictures of the Vampire Diaries cast later if I decided to stay. I’ve never seen American Dad before and even after watching the clip during the panel it didn’t really make me want to see it either.

At the end of the American Dad panel I decided to stay which meant first watching a panel for True Blood.

At this point I’d only ever seen one episode so didn’t really know what to expect. During this panel they played a sizzle reel for the upcoming season – by the end of this panel I realised I needed to get back to watching this series.

Finally it was time for The Vampire Diaries and for this panel a number of the cast and writers took to the stage to talk about the next season and for a question and answer session. At the start of the panel they played a clip that looked back over the past 4 years for Elena, Damon and Steffan and then moved on to show clips from the upcoming season.

I quite enjoyed this panel and it was interesting to hear what they had planned and their thoughts about the characters. Once this was done I decided I may as well stick around for The Arrow panel. The trailer for the new season was brilliant and got a good reaction from the crowd – particularly when they introduced Summer Glau.

During the discussion segment John Barrowman, the actor who played “The Dark Archer” in the series (and Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who and Torchwood), turned up to crash the panel. At this point he drew all the attention towards himself away from the rest of the cast and when he got left out on a question about the season 2 opening episode (which he isn’t in) he got annoyed about it and answered the question too. I couldn’t really decide whether or not the attitude he was giving them was just an act or not though.

I’m sure he does respect and enjoy the company of the cast though as he bought “Oliver Queen” a gift on his way to the panel and was wearing an Arrow t-shirt. As the panel went on he did seem less self-centred and answered fans questions politely so I’m sure the attitude earlier was just him trying to have some fun (which after a couple of days signing stuff I can hardly blame him).

At the end of this panel I went back to the exhibitor hall for the last time. We’d gone to find the friend who’d left after the American Dad panel but we couldn’t find him. We did however get to photograph a lot of cosplayers and it gave me chance to buy a few graphic novels (Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, Death of Spider-man, and Death of Spider-man Fallout).

It felt rushed as we knew the exhibition hall would be closing soon but we wanted to make the most of what remained of our last day to try and see as much as we could.

By 19:00 we’d left the hall for the last time and started heading back through the Gaslamp Quarter. This was quite slow progress as there were a lot of people leaving the convention centre as well. Along the way we came across people cosplaying as a dragon and rider from “How to Train Your Dragon” which was drawing quite a crowd.

Not far from this though we came across a very large zombie horde, easily a couple of hundred people. It seemed to go on for ever and there wasn’t just your normal zombies either. There were people cosplaying as characters from comics who had been zombified as well, and a couple of headless ones too (which I presume to have been the headless horseman from Sleepy Hollow).

Also on the way back we came across a famous US model named Adrianne Curry who was cosplaying as Mileena, a character introduced in Mortal Kombat 2. I felt bad about interrupting her in a restaurant, but as I wasn’t the first person to have interrupted her there I thought maybe it’s not too bad.

Once back at the hostel it was time to pack ready for the flight home the next day. I couldn’t fully pack though as I was taking a friend’s bottle of Jack Daniels back with me that he’d gotten from Tennessee, but he wasn’t around at the time.

Afterwards we went out for one last American meal on Broadway, and once again it was a burger and fries. It was a good meal, though the service was understandably slow as this like every other restaurant in the Gaslamp Quarter was bursting at the seams with Comic Con attendees and presumably the locals. They did get a friend’s order wrong but he wasn’t bothered by it and ate it anyway.