Article:
A Report on Wizard World Philly's 2010 Official After Parties

Despite having attended fandom conventions for over a decade now, I've never actually been to an "official" after party. Sure, I've been to the unofficial ones, but never something like what I experienced this weekend. On Friday and Saturday nights, I headed over to The Trocadero, which is a really fun theater venue just a two minute walk from the Pennsylvania Convention Center. That's where the two official after parties for Wizard World Philly 2010 were held. Friday night was the zombie beach party, and Saturday was Kaiju Big Battel.

Friday night's festivities started around 8 p.m., when the doors to The Troc opened. There were several stations set up in the lobby of the theater, where talented make-up artists from Terror Behind the Walls (a local Halloween attraction) were doing zombie make overs (make unders?). I saw some absolutely amazing make-up work by these folks. My pictures really don't do it justice.

As we waited for more people to finish getting their make-up done, we headed into the main theater to partake in the zombie punch (liquid brains?) drink special. There were two bars going downstairs, and another one going upstairs. All the while we were treated to some great music from the DJs. After trekking around the convention hall, it was nice to just take a seat, have a drink, and listen to some music.

After a while there was a pretty good crowd going inside, and people started dancing and tossing beach balls around (it was a beach party after all). We saw some killer costumes, including a zombie Mario Bros. troupe, a zombie flight attendant, a zombie Gilligan (pictured), and several other creative outfits that often went with the "beach party theme." Eventually the crowd was introduced to a group from New York, who did some demonstrations with flesh hooks. It was at this point that we politely bowed out, as it wasn't really our thing.