 Merchandise Showroom, Left Side |
 Merchandise Showroom, Right Side |
When I first found out that Ted Raimi (Joxer) was going to be at the 2000 Cherry Hill Xena/Herc convention, I was thrilled! No. Actually, that's putting it lightly. Some of you may not like to hear this, but Joxer is my favorite character on Xena: Warrior Princess. So when I first found out that Ted Raimi was going to be at the 2000 Cherry Hill Xena/Herc convention, I jumped up and down, I ran around the house, I danced with the dog, I whooped and hollered and cheered!
I knew then that I definately wanted to get some good photos at this convention. That being the case, it was time to get a new camera. I hadn't been too pleased with how my photos turned out last year using that disposable camera, so this year I bought a brand new Olympus (hee hee) zoom camera. The zoom range goes from 38mm - 115mm. You'll see how much better the pictures turned out thanks to it! Whenever you see a picture, click on it for a larger image!
My mom, my dad, myself, and my brother, William, all went on Saturday, August 26, 2000. The tickets we got were five rows closer than last year, N9 - N12! Of course, the Preferred Seating still ended only one row behind us on "O". In any case, these were much better seats than last year. My seat was right on the center isle!
In addition to Ted Raimi being there, Ebonie Smith was also a guest on Saturday. Ebonie played M'lila in the episode, Destiny. M'lila was the gaelic slave girl who originally taught Xena pressure points!
I didn't buy as many things this year as last year. The things that I saw last year that I wanted weren't there! I'm missing issue #5 of the Xena Magazine, but they didn't have it and they still only had the "Gabrielle: Bard of Potedia" shirt in XX-Large. I guess that one will be discontinued soon or something. I would have probably gotten some other shirt, but my brother pointed out something interesting about the ones they had this year. It appears they're now printing the Xena shirts on cheaper material. They were still 100% cotton, but the ones they used to have were really soft cotton and the black shirts looked blacker. The black shirts this year looked kinda faded and the material wasn't very soft.
So I mostly got some 8X10 photos. A picture of Joxer, and a picture of M'lila to get signed and two pictures of Gabrielle. I also got a Xena comic that I was missing and another Xena comic that I thought I was missing, but really already had.
I think our second Xena convention was actually better than the first, even though we had a bit of a hard time getting there! This was the first year that my brother went away to college. He had left for Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland a week before the convention. So we had to travel from Ocean Pines, Maryland to Chestertown, Maryland to Cherry Hill, New Jersey, all before 1pm when the convention started.
We left the house at 7:30am and got to William's school at about 9:30am. From there we left on our way to Cherry Hill. Now, it should have only taken us about 2 1/2 hours to go from Chestertown to Cherry Hill, putting us in Cherry Hill at about 12pm.
Unfortunately, as soon as we got as we got on the New Jersey Turnpike we got into one of those phantom traffic jams (the ones where when you get to the location of the holdup, there's no indication of what the holdup was!). Then we got lost in Camden! We didn't get to Cherry Hill until about 1:30pm. Now, the show actually was supposed to start at 1:20 and the first guest, Ebonie Smith, was scheduled to go on at 1:40, but we were starving and had to eat before we went to the Cherry Hill Hilton, where the convention was taking place.
For ease of browsing as well as updating, I have listed each signifigant portion of the convention on its own page. Since my family and I were only there one day, here are some of the highlights from Saturday, August 26, 2000:
Merchandise Showroom, Left Side |
Merchandise Showroom, Right Side |
 Buy Your Xena or Hercules Fanclub Kit Here |
 8X10 Photos, Great for Autographs |
 Expensive Framed Autographed Photos |
 Gabrielle Staff Authentic Prop - $269.00 |
 The Auditorium: Center of the Action |
 Closer View of Stage |
 Mom, Dad, and Brother William |
 William and me (Suzanne) |
SCHEDULE - Here is a scan of the actual convention event schedule.
EBONIE SMITH (M'lila) - It's the actress who played the Gaelic slave who taught Xena how to use pressure points. (work in progress)
TED RAIMI (Joxer) - Meet the actor who plays everyone's favorite (and sometimes not-so-favorite) bumbling warrior! (more updates coming)
AUTOGRAPHS - Learn of all the trouble I went through trying to get a picture taken with Ted Raimi! (pretty much complete)
Xena: Warrior Princess and all things Xena herein are (c) 1995-2000 Renaissance Pictures and MCA/Universal. No challenge of ownership to trademarked property is intended or implied.
