Pretty Little Liars Convention 2017

This is new for me but I thought it would be fun to write and review a convention I went to as it was my first one! This is everything that happened from June 9th to the 11th.

FRIDAY The weekend started off with a long journey. I set off with a giant suitcase (mainly because I didn't know what to wear all weekend) to go and meet Shannon, which took around an hour. We decided to meet as none of us had really been here before and didn't want to get lost and it was the same price as we had travel cards throughout all the zones in London. When I met Shannon, we then set off on another hour journey to get to Heathrow Terminals. It was lovely to meet Shannon again as I haven't seen her since 2014 when we went to Demi Lovato's Koko show in London. We chatted all the way and then got totally confused when we got to Heathrow as we didn't know how to get to the hotel. Do we walk? Do we need a bus? Turns out we needed a bus as we had to go underground! We finally found the hotel around 3pm and checked in. The room was incredible, Queen size bed, lovely sized shower, desk and a lovely view of the airport and it was so fun to see them set of and land (is this just me?).

We headed downstairs to register ourselves for the convention where we got our wristbands, a leaflet and a schedule. We decided to get a duo picture for Andrea Parker and Ryan Merriman for Saturday, which proved more of a task than expected as the cash machine broke through my transaction so I only got half my money out! Then we headed upstairs to chill for a little while as I still had a few bits of work to finish and sort and the next thing was the disco at 8.30pm.

After a little while we went out to find some food and ended up across the road at McDonald's and then went on an adventure to find a Tesco to grab some things for a YouTube video we were filming but the Tesco was not where it was supposed to be but luckily it was a warm afternoon/evening and we got some good shots of the planes landing.

After getting back we quickly got changed and headed down to the disco which was well..... something. Firstly, so much rock music was being played (which is generally fine) but the demographic of this convention was young girls so no one was dancing or anything. The convention staff were an hour late to the disco and when she did turn up, she literally plugged in her laptop turned the lights off and left us to it. It felt really disorganized and no one could attempt to talk to one another to try and get to know each other because the music was so loud and we wasn't doing anything so we headed up to our room and we just chilled and headed to bed as we had an early morning.

SATURDAY We woke up and went down for breakfast around 8.15am (which we didn't even realise was included) and it was really yummy! It was a kind of buffet, all you can eat, with pastries, typical full English breakfast items, fruit, yogurt and juice. We then headed to the main hall (which was not clear as it was a giant hotel with loads of rooms and conference rooms) for the opening ceremony. We were second row, right in the middle of the stage! We were greeted on stage by all the guests and there was some question and answers and then it went onto each singular guest panels. This mainly consisted of Q&A's and it was really funny and interesting to listen to stories from each persons point of view. Andrea talked about playing the dark side of Mary Drake and who was her favourite characters and who she'd love to play. Huw talked about his death and the relationships between the cast and crew and also who'd he'd have liked more screen time with and the embarrassing moments while filming and Ryan talked about his time on PLL and the projects he's done and how the death scene was filmed.

We then went into another room to get our duo picture with Andrea and Ryan, which I felt really bad because there was only Shannon and myself that had a picture with Ryan and Andrea. Everyone else was with Andrea and Huw. So we got to go first which was awkward but wasn't too bad. We had a cute picture with them, I was next to Ryan and he was super sweet and was hugging me the whole time. I didn't really get the time to speak to Andrea that much but we decided that we wanted to get a picture with Andrea on herself!

We chilled in our hotel room and filmed some videos for our YouTube Channels (link here) and then headed downstairs around 3.45pm for the autographs! We first went to Ryan as his cue was the smallest. I'm really shy and awkward and didn't know what to say so I was just like, 'Hi' and he said hey back and then signed my convention leaflet and said thank you. We then cued for Andrea and we waited a while and she was the SWEETEST. She was like, 'CHARLOTTE! Do you go by CeCe?' and I said yeah. She was like, 'really?!' and I was like 'No but I wish.' She asked to call me CeCe and wrote on my leaflet, 'For CeCe, with love, Mom.' I almost died. I love her. She said thank you so much and I returned the thanks and we left for Huw's cue which was also super long. We got towards the front and his son was playing on his phone and the woman sat next to him and himself we saying quotes from Notting Hill and we were all giggling. He said, 'thank you for coming,' signed by leaflet and we left saying thank you.

8.30pm rolled around and we headed to the disco hoping it would be better than the previous night and it totally was. We sang and danced to your typical disco music. They blasted ‘This is me’ from Camp Rock, sang by Demi Lovato (Demi is the reason me and Shannon started talking on twitter). We ran to the dance floor and sang our little hearts out. High School Musical played and everyone got up and sang and danced. It was just a really good night. I think most people stayed longer because Ryan promised to come but also because it was the last night of the convention. I’m not a huge party person (I’ve never been out drinking round town, mainly because of my anxiety) but I felt at ease most of the night and I was having a really good time. We left around 11pm as we were exhausted!

SUNDAY

We got to have a little bit of a lie in as our picture with Andrea wasn't until 10.45am so we went for breakfast around 10am, which again was so yummy, with a lovely view of planes landing, it made me happy but also super jealous I wasn't jetting off abroad!

We didn't have to cue for long and it was our turn. Andrea had an #Emison shirt on and Shannon and myself lost our minds. The whole weekend we spoke about emison (Emily and Alison's ship name) for the win! We totally didn't know a pose to do with Andrea and she was the sweetest! She gave us so many options and then Shannon came up with an idea to point at her shirt! She loved the idea and so that's what we did!

We collected our picture but we had to wait a little while for one of the members of staff to come back to do re prints as we only got one! We got another copy and we sat on some chairs outside and began chatting with one another.

The guests were having groups photos with people and singular pictures. Andrea left and as she walked past us she just looked at Shannon and myself, just minding our own business chatting, said, ‘I’m so glad you are hear!’ We just looked at each other and smiled so much, gobsmacked she knows we exist! We obviously tweeted it right away…

We decided to leave as we had to wait three and a half hours until the panels and we didn't have anything to do as we were near an airport so there was nothing around and then we had to check out that morning so could go and chill in our room. We told the people at Rouge Events we were leaving because they had a gift for us, (due to many people complaining about lack of guests and the amount we paid for what we got)! We collected it which was a photo of all gone guests taking a selfie and then they all signed it, which was so cool too!

The trip home was eventful, there was a signal failure on our line so it was rammed and we had to change tubes early meaning it took us longer to get where we needed to be. I left Shannon at Westminster and she carried on to Tower Hill. I made my way to Waterloo and then back to Chelsea’s where I was staying for the night!

Overall, Shannon and myself had a really good weekend and made the most of it! It was so much fun and luckily the guests we had were so incredibly sweet and chill with everyone and it was such a relaxed atmosphere but for a first convention it left me with a bad impression. It was just unorganized and confusing to follow and they knew it was most people's first convention. They were late to literally every event planned, I would defiantly go to another convention but maybe not with Rouge Events. The staff were really nice, (some nicer than others) and they were helpful when you asked anything. REMEMBER: Guests are not guaranteed when booking due to schedules and sometimes it counts on sales for the guests too, (it's kind of a vicious cycle). Despite this, the weekend was really fun and I recommend anyone thinking of going to a convention to go!

If you've ever attended a convention and want to share a story with us be sure to let us know by tweeting us on @ohwriteblog