The StarKid panel (#1) was directly followed by the opening ceremony on the main stage, where all the authors, lecturers and actors got introduced. The StarKids were the first ones to get called out onto the stage, followed by all of the Game Of Thrones, Legend of the Seeker etc. actors and finally the LotR actors, concluding with Sean Astin. Normally whenever a new person got onto the stage, the first thing they’d do was take center stage and introduce themselves — but when Sean got on, the first thing he did was grab Billy Boyd’s butt and then the second thing was to walk right past all the other actors and MCs and go high five TSK first. I think all of the Starkids in the audience had a collective fangirl freakout right then and there. At the end of the ceremony, everyone walked offstage and the StarKids briefly danced behind Billy Boyd and Sean Astin as they were getting off, so that technically completed their fan challenge. :P

After the opening ceremony, Jason Momoa had his Q&A in the same main hall and he was hilariously funny. Unfortunately I can’t remember any actual quotes at this point though. I also missed part of this panel because the StarKid panel, opening ceremony, Jason Momoa and Sean Astin panel were all back to back, so at this point it was like 9pm and I still hadn’t had dinner and didn’t want to miss Sean’s panel for that; so I left partway through Jason’s panel to go get some food. Apparently while I was gone there was this really funny story involving a nude scene and a sock, but you’d have to ask someone who was actually there about that. :P

So then I returned for the Sean Astin panel, and he was just really sweet and also gave very elaborate answers to all the questions. There were multiple StarKid questions throughout his panel as well, and he had already spontaneously started talking about them even before that. “So Meredith is hot, right?!” — actual Sean Astin quote right there. 

Marije asked him about C2E2, which I’m sure most of you know about, but it was nice to hear the story from his point of view. Basically, he was doing a signing session at C2E2 (the Chicago comicon), and each actor had a queue of like 20 or 30 people, and then there was this huge queue that curved all the way throughout the building for some empty spot that didn’t even have people signing yet. And then this group of kids came out (aka, the StarKids) and everyone started screaming like crazy and he was like “what’s this all about?” And then someone answered “Team Starkid!” and he was still like “…what’s Team Starkid?” So someone explained how it was this theatre troupe who did parody musicals and they’d also done LotR, etc., and he was like “hmm” and later went over to introduce himself and TSK just started kinda freaking out because Sean Astin. But then they were (kind of jokingly) like “well, we’re doing a panel later and we have this spare costume cause we’re missing someone, you should join us” and he said that he’d normally never do something like that but it seemed like fun and well I’m sure you have all seen the C2E2 panel videos so I don’t need to explain any further. :P

Then someone asked him about Dylan specifically, since once again, this was a convention where Sean was present when Dylan wasn’t, so “are you actually the same person?” And he was like, “well, we’ve never been seen in the same room together so I guess it could be, but really I’m just convinced that this Dylan Saunders doesn’t exist, or that he’s like a ghostly apparition or something.” 

He also mentioned having seen StarKid show(s) since then (I don’t remember whether it was singular or plural :P) so there’s that. He did obviously also get asked a bunch of non-StarKid related questions, but I don’t really remember those… I told you this was going to be written from a very StarKid point of view. :P

Sean’s panel was the last one for the day, so after that was done we headed out to the dance floor in the hotel lobby. Some of the StarKids were there briefly, but they left fairly shortly afterwards. We continued dancing for a little while but I noticed more and more DutchStarkids were trickling out, and it was getting close to midnight so I was like ‘umm I guess we’re leaving?’ and went outside as well where it was suddenly all ‘oh hai there StarKids’. Apparently they were just basically chilling outside on the porch of the Maritim and unsurprisingly, that was where all the DutchStarkids who had been leaving over the past 10 minutes were hanging out as well. :P So then we ended up just chatting there with them for like an hour and a half. 

I don’t really remember many specific details/quotes from those conversations, but I did quickly scribble down a list of general topics when we got home that night and it goes “Holland, Germany, food, boobs, booze, drugs,” which I realise in retrospect possibly doesn’t give off the best impression. :P Things I do remember: 

• teaching JoMo basic European geography
• having Meredith test Marije’s perfect pitch and Mere fangirling over Marije instead of the other way around upon discovering that she really does have it
• telling Mere about Sean Astin’s “Meredith is hot” comment and the fact that she has actually seen a ghost because Dylan
• JoMo saying that there’s like a 99% chance of him coming to Leaky London next year
• fangirling with Joey over Jason Momoa and Joe Dempsie
• Walker saying that AVPSY might not make it onto Youtube because the audio and video quality is that bad — before the fandom has a collective freakout, keep in mind that this was said by a pretty wasted Joe Walker, and there will be more AVPSY info in my 2nd StarKid panel recap
• drunk Walker being pretty hilarious in general, by the way
• Meredith telling us the rest of their European itinerary which is Paris, Switzerland, Italy, London and then back to the US
• Joey saying he wanted to come to Amsterdam but that he wasn’t sure any of the other StarKids wanted to go so it might not happen (though as you’ve been able to see in their tweets from the last few days, it clearly did happen :P)
• Walker talking about when he actually did go to Amsterdam about 4 years ago
• hugging Meredith and Joey, high-fiving Meredith, group-hugging JoMo

So yeah, just casually talking to all the StarKids minus Jaime (who was already sleeping because of jetlag) for about 1.5 hours like it was no big deal was a thing that happened on Friday. Honestly, it was weird because it wasn’t weird, if you get what I’m saying. If you recall my first recap when they all unexpectedly came down to the lobby, I was so starstruck that I didn’t say a word the entire time they were there —  but having already had that first “shock” and then briefly speaking to them at the signing earlier that day and watching their amazing panel from the front row, etc. I actively participated in over half those convos mentioned above, and it just felt completely normal to be hanging out with them practically as if we were all just friends. Which, when you think about it, is actually pretty insane. 

We went home after that, so that concludes our first full day of RingCon!