This past weekend, Creation Entertainment and The Hillywood Show hosted the Vampire Diaries cast in Chicago. It is the first of many Vampire Diaries conventions Creation will be holding over the year – the full list of which you can check out here. Everyone had a great time – and between the cast panels, trivia contests, photo-ops, and private meet-and-greets, the weekend was packed with excitement. Check out the photo galleries of the cast and panels here.
Some of the highlights of the weekend:
- Steven McQueen (Jeremy) changed the traditional panel process by bringing members of the audience up to the stage and interviewing them instead.
- Nate Buzolic (Kol) crashed Candice Accola (Caroline) and Michael Trevino‘s (Tyler) duo panel to tell them that he was a huge fan of the show – and ask them their opinions on having their characters make out with Kol.
- Charlie Bewley (Vaughn) and Arielle Kebbel (Lexi) did a reenactment of the Dirty Dancing scene where Patrick Swayze lifts Jennifer Grey in the air – while the audience sang “The Time of My Life”.
- During his panel, Nate Buzolic left the stage, deciding to answer questions while walking around the theatre.
- Steven McQueen brought cardboard cutouts of Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley on stage with him during his panel.
- Ian Somerhalder (Damon) and Paul Wesley (Stefan) had the crowd practically in tears from laughter with their exchanges during their duo panel.
- Even beyond the experiences with the stars, one of the best parts of these conventions is meeting some of the Vampire Diaries fans – and there certainly were a lot of them! If you’re a fan of the show, you will feel surrounded by friends – whether or not you actually know any of them prior to the convention.
To keep things interesting between panels, the Creation staff held several Vampire Diaries themed contests. There were a couple different trivia contests. I didn’t win, but I had a great time participating! It definitely requires quick-thinking an a great deal of knowledge of the show over the seasons.
Creation Entertainment also held a video contest for fan-made videos. They played the winning videos at the convention and there were some really great ones. They even re-played a wildly funny and popular fan video that won Chicago’s contest last year. Hilly and Hannah Hindi of The Hillywood Show also judged a Vampire Diaries costume contest.
Nothing we can say to you can really convey how much fun attending these conventions are for fans of the show. If you haven’t attended one before, you should find one near you and sign up. Creation will be hosting many more conventions over the coming months, and it’s not too late to get tickets.
This year, the only complaint fans had was the disorganized photo-op schedule on Sunday. They did the right thing having the photo-ops with Ian and Paul in the morning as it gave them time to print them all while attendees attended Ian and Paul’s panel in the afternoon. However, for whatever reason, they decided not to put the photos out for attendees to pick them up until well after 6pm that evening – and the last event of the weekend ended around 4pm.
Several attendees had flights to catch or just didn’t have the time to hang around the hotel for so long and ended up having to leave without their photos. The upside is that Creation will mail them their photos, free of charge, though they could have saved a lot of hassle had they re-worked the schedule and put photos out for pick-up as they printed, like they did on Saturday.
That aside, it was a fantastic experience, and I met many, many fellow Vampire Diaries fans. [And – thanks to the delay Sunday evening – had the opportunity to chat with them long after the event ended while, those that had the time, waited on their photos to print. So, at least something positive came out of the bad scheduling.]
In all, the final statement is this: If you haven’t attended a Vampire Diaries convention, you are missing out on a great time. A huge “Thank you!” goes out to Creation Entertainment for hosting this event for the Vampire Diaries fans.