Star Wars Celebration Orlando
April 13-16, 2017
Orange County Convention Center - Orlando, Florida
April 22, 2017
by Marvee J. Ona, Jean Vallesteros
Star Wars Celebration was held in the Orange County Convention Center in the heart of Orlando, Florida. It was a huge event for the Disney franchise, that brought together fans from all over the world to take part in events all centered around Star Wars. Plenty of news and announcements were made during the convention leaving much excitement for the future of the franchise to linger long after the convention floor is cleaned up and emptied.
SWCO offered some very big panels that had many of the attendees and fans all over talking since it was being streamed live worldwide courtesy of their sponsorship with Verizon. To kick off the festivities was the 40th Anniversary Star Wars panel which had plenty of surprise guests.
Amongst those were George Lucas, Warwick Davis, and even some first-time appearances from Harrison Ford and Hayden Christiansen. All with other cast members from the films, they relived some of their experiences and thanked the fans for their love and support of the past four decades. The panel ended with a tribute to Carrie Fisher and special orchestra lead by John Williams at the helm. The hype of the Star Wars franchise continues as ‘The Last Jedi’ reunited some of the cast for the eighth chapter of the storyline. Fans were treated to a new teaser trailer and new teaser poster for the movie set to be released in December.
To round off the weekend festivities, "Star Wars: Rebels" announced the next season will be its final season and the trailer teases that it has to come to end. Along with that, ‘Battlefront 2’ was officially announced with some fantastic game footage and the news that a campaign mode will be made available, which many fans have been longing for. These were some of the biggest things to come out of the Convention, but there was still product announcements of upcoming toys and collectibles including exclusives for San Diego Comic Con.
The Exhibit hall was filled with everything a Star Wars fan could want. The center piece of the showroom floor was the Starwars.com stage which was live broadcasting on the internet all four days of the convention. Hosted by Lucasfilm hosts from their web series, they had interviews from many of the celebrities that appeared for panels and plenty of giveaways to keep the attendees entertained all weekend long. A wide variety of exhibitors were on hand like Funko, Hasbro, Gentle Giant, Nissan, and even Disney was present with their own exclusives available. Along with that, fans got their chances for autographs and pictures with some of the biggest Star Wars Celebrities from all eras of the films.
Overall, the four day Celebration was fantastic. There were a couple hiccups when it came to crowd control, but Reed Pop acknowledged their mistake and apologized to the fans. More Entrances were mad available enabling more attendees to freely flow in and line up where they wanted to be. No official announcement was made as to where and when the next celebration will be, but that hasn’t stopped the fans wanting and yearning for more.
Visit www.starwarscelebration.com for the latest news and announcements regarding Star Wars Celebration.
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