Summary of posts and activities for November 2008

• My Artoo in a Clone Wars Promo
• Disney Trip (now with more droids)
• Halloween 2008

A friend just sent me this video from Sky TV in the UK, it’s from the international press day that I was involved in at the ranch for the new Clone Wars TV series

Watch for my droid at the beginning and at the 2:49min mark, blink and you’ll definitely miss him.

Related:

• Clone Wars Press Event at the Ranch
• More Clone Wars Press Event Photos

A few weeks ago we went down to Disneyland for a mini vacation. You wouldn’t think this would have anything to do with droid building, but you’d be surprised.

The night before we were to leave I’d spotted that the Lego guys would be at Downtown Disney building another giant R2-D2, so I fired off an email to Victor to see if he’d like to meet up.

As luck would have it he and Mike were free and we arrange something for both Saturday and Sunday evening.

Here we are with Stephen Gerling, Master Lego Builder, and the mini Artoo they use as reference when building the 8 foot model. I’d met him once before when he was in the Bay Area doing a similar event at the Hillsdale mall in San Mateo.

Sadly, the mall security wouldn’t allow them to bring in their real Artoo’s, but we did get to hang out for a while.

Of course no trip to Disney is complete without a few goes around on the Star Tours ride, which is full of droids

And here’s a few more Star Wars builds at the Lego Store in Downtown Disney

We also watched the “Jedi Academy” attraction in the park – no droids, but lots of action 🙂

Competition was fierce among the kids waiting to get picked to participate, I thought this little girl was very clever with her sign – and she was one of the first selected

Finally here’s a video I shot of Honda’s Asimo in Tomorrowland, almost a Star Wars droid right?

Related:

• Giant Lego R2-D2 Event
• 8-Foot Lego R2 (Victor’s Blog)
  
• Meet up with Chris and Revisited the Lego R2 (Victor’s Blog)
  

We didn’t go far for Halloween this year. The forecast was for rain, but I decided to camp out on the driveway with Artoo and big bucket of candy and waited for the throngs of kids to show up.

There were a couple of parties going on around me so I knew I’d get a good turn out, keeping my fingers crossed the rain would hold off.

Word quickly got out that there was an “Real” R2-D2 in town and people were coming from all over to see him. Someone proclaimed that I was giving the “Witches House” around the corner a run for their money 🙂

I was surprised by how many Star Wars character that showed up. I counted at least a half dozen Jedi and maybe as many clonetroopers. There was a sprinkling of Vaders and a couple of Princess Leia’s and one Queen Amidala and Clone Wars Anakin.

By 10pm I was out of candy and the wife called down and threatened to call the cops if Artoo wouldn’t shut up, so I called it a night.

Here’s a few photos from the evening, and as always there are more in the gallery.

“Vader, I am your father!”

C3PO stand in

Clone family

For most of the night Artoo was surrounded by kids, and it was even more difficult than usual to make sure everything was in check – but I got through the evening without incident.

Quite a number of the dad’s kept on coming back, and I could tell from the questions that the wheels were turning on how they’d get started.

This group of witches were probably the rowdiest bunch having trekked half way around town in heels to meet Artoo.

Related:

• Halloween at Hiller Aviation Museum 2008
• Halloween 2007 at Hiller Aviation