On Wednesday, I went to the California Adventure Park, which is the park opposite of Disneyland. It was my second time going there and I don't think much has changed since the last time I visited there. I think I managed to go on all the rides there. My favorite rides were the Soarin' Around the World, the Incredicoaster (which is the largest roller coaster there), and Radiator Springs Racers. I also went on the Guardians of the Galaxy - Mission Breakout, which is by far the most scariest ride there. This ride is real scary because it just goes up and straight down several times. I think this one was called something different the last time I went. After going on all the rides, I went to the Downtown Disney area. Much had changed since last year, the ESPN zone and the Rainforest Café wasn't there anymore. I wanted to eat my dinner there but then I went down Harbour Blvd over to Oggi's restaurant to eat my dinner (even Clancy's restaurant is closed too). On Thursday, I went to get my BlizzCon badge. I went there pretty early because there were going to be bag checks and security that made things go slower this year. After picking up my badge, I went to the BlizzCon store. I picked up 4 items: the Key Art magnet (which I always buy every year), the Key Art t-shirt, the Book of Adria (which I had to have this year) and a mini Gold Pachimari plushie. I had already bought some items from the Blizzard gear store so I didn't need to buy a lot of stuff. After the BlizzCon store, I went over to the Outlets at Orange. They have a lot of shop there selling lots of cheap things. I managed to pick up 2 t-shirts there (one was at the Adidas store and it only cost me $6, which is incredible). I so badly wanted to buy some shoes there but I didn't think I would have enough room in luggage to carry it back so I didn't buy any. There were some nice shoes at the Nike store selling for $50. I could have spent all day here shopping for stuff but eventually I went to dinner.
On Friday, BlizzCon was starting. I was real excited this year because I knew something about Diablo was going to happen. I went to the convention center pretty early again because of the extra security. The lines were already backed up when I arrived at about 8:00 am. I felt really bad for the people who came in later because a lot of them were behind the security area and they probably had to wait even longer than I did. I really think all the extra security was a bit too much but I guess it is better safe than sorry. Even though I was further back in line (I think there were groups of people, I was in group 3 or so), I managed to get pretty good seats for the opening ceremony. On my way to the Mythic Stage, I noticed that the demo station at the Diablo area was covered up so I knew that they were going to announce something new. The opening ceremony was pretty cool, They announce a new hero for Heroes of the Storm, the new expansion for Hearthstone, a new hero for Overwatch, Warcraft 3 remaster and some news about WoW classic. Last but not least Diablo announced their new game Diablo Immortal, which is a mobile game. I want to go over this game in more detail so I will probably make another blog post about it later. After the opening ceremony, I stuck around to listen to the Diablo Immortal panel. Even though this is a mobile game, it looks very cool to me. Although there were many people in crowd (and probably many people on the internet) that really, really didn't like this game (again more on this later). After the Diablo Immortal panel, I went over to the Overwatch Arena to see the Overwatch World Cup. The first game had already started and the USA were taking on the UK. The score was tied 1-1 when I got there and the match was finished the UK won 3-1, which was the biggest upset in Overwatch World Cup history. Next up, Team Canada was taking on France and they did a good job. Even though the match was close, Team Canada came out on top 3-0. One neat thing that the Overwatch Arena did was that there were cheering sections for each country. So if you were cheering for Canada, there were certain sections of the arena that you could sit with your other country mates. After the Team Canada game, I went over to the Heartstone area. I played the demo for Hearthstone and got to play with some of the new cards there (although I wasn't too impressed by them). After the demo, I watched the Hearthstone Streamer showdown, which featured people like Kripp, Trump and Kibbler. After that, I went over to the Overwatch demo area and played a round of that, then I did the Warcraft Classic demo with a Paladin and finally I did the Diablo Immortal demo (again I will write more on this later). The next to last thing that I did was that I went over to the Darkmoon Faire area and they had Overwatch Nerf weapons that shot some rubber balls. After all that, I went over to try Diablo on the Nintendo Switch and got my Diablo poster signed by the devs. I was really hungry now and I ate some quesadilla and some spicy fries over by the food trucks for dinner and that was the end of Day 1.
On Saturday, the main thing that I wanted to do was watch Overwatch World Cup again. I arrived pretty early again and I managed to sit with the Team Canada section area, so I was surrounded by all the Team Canada supporters. The first match was between South Korea and UK. This was a very intense match, UK had forced South Korea to 2 ties but they ended up losing 2-0. UK's main tank Fusions and their off-tank Kyb were playing really well. Next up was Team Canada and they were facing off against China. Team Canada didn't do so well this match and lost 3-0. I guess they weren't very prepared to face China and China kind of rolled Team Canada up. China's Leave was playing really well for them. Even though Canada lost, they next played UK for the Bronze medal. This match was pretty close as well but Canada came out on top 3-2. I saw a lot people wearing Team Canada jerseys (although the 2018 version wasn't as good as the 2017 version that I have). I was going to stick around for the gold medal game between South Korea and China but I knew that South Korea was probably going to win (they had won the previous 2 World Cups). "Aside" After watching some of the clips of the Overwatch World Cup, I did see myself cheering on Team Canada (I think just right after Sideshow "drank" a whole bottle of maple syrup - I'll try to find that clip on the YouTube or something, haha found it is at the 2:30:00 mark).
When I left the Overewatch Arena, I literally ran into Dreadscythe, Nite and SVR. They said that Neinball and Leviathan were at the StarCraft arena so I followed them. We watched the semi-finals between Serral and Rogue (Serral won 3-1). After that we hung around the Horadric Diablo area and then went over to the Mythic stage to watch the Diablo Q&A panel. After the panel, I ate dinner by the food trucks (I got some loaded fries and they were very yummy). Then me, Dreadscythe, and Nite played the Warcraft demo again. Wyatt Cheng was having his "bedtime story" talk at 9:00pm at the Horadric retreat area and so I stayed for that. It was really hard to listen to Wyatt because it was very noisy in that area so I only got to hear a little bit of what he said. After the talk, we all went over to the Mariott and hung around for bit before I went back to my hotel at about 11:00pm. And that was all for BlizzCon. I had an amazing time there again and I can't wait to go back next year.
