D23 Expo 2011 - Pavilions and Exhibitors

*note: click on any of the smaller pictures for a LARGER version*
When we were beginning to go through all of our pictures and starting to think about what we were going to write, well, the word "overwhelming" comes to mind.  We hardly knew where to start!  We mentioned it on Twitter yesterday to which one of our followers quickly responded: "Start at the beginning, and when you come to the end, stop!  See?"  Not only was it great advice, but it's a quote from "Alice in Wonderland", too, so that's exactly what we're going to do; start at the beginning.

We woke up bright and early on Saturday to get ready to head out.  Actually, it was before even "bright and early" now that we think about it.  We had heard that lines on Friday morning were really long, and Saturday was supposed to be sold out, so we rounded up our gear and headed out to park at the Toy Story Lot around 7am.  Luckily, the Anaheim Convention Center isn't too far from the Lot, so we were able to walk there in around 10 minutes, and after running into a few friends and gabbing a bit, we hopped into the D23 Member's line, which already looked something like this:

All we can say is "Thank God" for our membership.  It helped us get in fairly quickly all things told, and we even got to go in a little bit earlier than the 9am opening time for members that we thought we were going to get (General Admission were let in at 10am every day).  We were already all keyed up and excited, but when we got inside this greeted us, which of course did absolutely nothing to calm us down in the slightest.

Welcome to the Expo!!!

Once inside and through all of our checkpoints and receiving our ticket lanyards (a nice touch!) and guidebooks, we were ready to start exploring.  And that's where we'll start our first look at the Expo, inside the Exhibitors and Pavilions Hall.

This was "the hub", if you will, through which everything else kind of branched off and was basically a common room of sorts for all of the D23 Expo guests.  We spent a lot of our time over the course of our two days wandering all over the hall, and got to see quite a few pretty cool things (and meet some pretty cool people in the process).

The exhibitors portion of the room was of course where all of the, well, exhibitors were.  Art galleries were selling their painting and lithographs, Disney oriented websites such as MousePlanet and MiceChat were on hand to talk to guests, Vinylmation and Pin selling was taking place; there was just loads to see.  While it was kind of neat to look around at all of the booths and see all of the Disney wares, we honestly enjoyed the front of the hall the most, though, for several reasons.  A lot of movie-oriented booths were set up near the front of the room that really got us interested.  We couldn't be more excited about "The Muppets" which opens in November, and although we didn't meet them ourselves, we were able to see (and picture!) Cindy Morgan and Bruce Boxleitner from "TRON" signing for other guests.  It was awesome just to be able to say that we had seen them!  We also got to check out a booth and hear more about a movie we're very excited to see when it comes out next year, "Wreck-It Ralph".  It was the first we had heard about this movie this weekend about an 8-bit video game villain from the 80's who is tired with his status of a villain and longs for something more and sets out to prove that he is "hero" material.

Cindy Morgan and Bruce Boxleitner (TRON) signing autographs for the guests

There was also a lot going on on the floor on display, both for the kids and the adults.  We got a chance to see Lightning McQueen, Tow Mater, the Black Pearl (from "Pirates of the Caribbean"), and even Walt's limo was on display!

Lightning McQueen made completely out of LEGO

There was also tons of excitement in the pavilions area, because that's where the Disney Channel/Radio Disney stage where. The area was always packed to the gills with parents in line with their children to see their favorite Disney Channel stars, such as the casts of "Lemonade Mouth", "Pair of Kings", "Kickin' It", and "Shake It Up".  Chad's own boys watch "Shake It Up" religiously, and we were even able to catch a pretty darn good picture of some of the stars signing autographs for many of their fans.  We're obviously way beyond the target audience of those shows, and we were still pretty excited ourselves!

Bella Thorne, Zendaya, Kenton Duty and Caroline Sunshine sign for "Shake It Up" fans

Wanting to shop? Well, the pavilions portion of the hall had you covered there as well!  There were all kinds of stores all around selling all kinds of Disney paraphernalia and goods.  Some of our personal favorites were the Disney Store booth and the D23 Expo Dream Store where they sold all of the official D23 Expo merchandise (we bought shirts which you'll see in a later picture).  They even had an area set aside for auction items from Disney to be on display!  They were hosting a large auction upstairs for some fantastic items such as a huge snow-globe of Sleeping Beauty Castle from Disneyland Park inside the Main Street, USA Emporium, but our favorite had to be the car, or pirate-ship rather, from Peter Pan's Flight.

The on-site Disney Store

One of the vehicles from Peter Pan's Flight up for grabs (and money!) at the D23 Expo

There was just so much to see, and so much to do, it would just be impossible to cover it all (as you can probably tell if you're still reading this). But we've got a couple more of our highlights from the floor still to go! We also, as avid gamers,got a huge kick out of the Disney Gaming Pavilion and seeing the new XBOX 360 Kinect's game, "Disneyland Adventures", in action.  The lines were always so long we didn't participate ourselves, but stood on the outside just like every other fan and "oohed" and "aahed" at how cool some of the gaming stuff Disney is putting out actually is.  Chad's already decided he's going to have to run out and buy an XBOX as a result of it.  No word yet on his wife's reaction to the news.

The Disney Gaming Pavilion

All that said, and out of all the excitement though, we think that one of our favorite things we did during our weekend on the floor was to participate in the Disney Voluntears program where we got to stuff bags with necessities for people who have been the victims of natural disasters around the world for the Red Cross. It was just a small way to give back to others who are less fortunate than ourselves, but it made us smile to be able to do so. So we waited in line, we grabbed our bags, and we stuffed and smiled the entire time. And at the end, we even got to take a picture with some of our favorite people on the planet, FindingMickey.com , who were able to do it with us.  It may not seem like much, but in the midst of everything else going on, we were glad that Disney was able and willing to let us participate like that in some way.  Pretty cool beans, as far as we're concerned.

Working as a Disney Voluntear for the American Red Cross

And that just about wraps up our highlights from the Exhibitors and Pavilions Hall's booths, shops, and interactivity-type things.  We feel like we only barely scratched the surface, but there was just so much we could write a novel on it and still find more to write about, so we figure as long as hit our high points, we've done our job.  There were still a few other things going on in this area of the Expo that we'll hit on later in the week, though, but we've said a mouthful so we'll break off for now.

We hope that everyone has enjoyed the pictures!  We'll be putting them into one big photo gallery (which we hope to have done later today) that we can add to as we go along, and we'll post a link for that as soon as we have it.  In the meantime, we'll be back tomorrow with a write-up of the different panels we were fortunate enough to attend during the D23 2011 Expo.  We hope you'll be back to read all about it!

We'll end with probably the coolest thing of all that was out on the floor, the "Perry the Platy-bus".  Enjoy!

*singing* Agent P...