The Summer I Succumbed to FOMO: You Had to Be There

Last summer, we took the family to Disney and spent thousands of dollars on fast passes. Didn't even think twice about it.

That's how much I hate waiting in line.

A few weeks ago, I took my teenager to the DMV and asked the lady behind the counter if they had considered implementing a similar program. She was not amused.

I was serious. Charge me twenty bucks to skip the line and use that money to fix a pothole somewhere. Everybody wins.

I've always had a deep distaste for crowds, lines, and standing in one place for more than 4 minutes. By the time I could afford concert tickets that didn't involve camping on the sidewalk the night before, I had no interest in going.

Which makes what I'm about to do wildly out of character: in a few days, I'm flying alone to San Diego Comic-Con, where I intend to voluntarily participate in perhaps the most elaborate and notorious queueing operation in modern times: Hall H on Marvel Day.

And more than just getting in, I want a great seat, too.

In normal person terms, that's like saying, "I want to go to the Super Bowl, but only pay twenty bucks and ride there with the team."

Hall H is where the major studios reveal new movies, shows, footage, and trailers no one has ever seen, and cast members parade out like the starting lineup for Game 7.

It seats 6,500 people. San Diego Comic-Con brings in well over 100,000 people.

The math is not encouraging. Especially since this involves more than 'come early, and bring your coffee'.

I’ve spent months researching hotels, clothes, line groups, weather, and a whole bunch of ‘didn’t know I needed this’ things.

On sheer impulse, and not really expecting a reply, I messaged a stranger on Reddit about a line group he had mentioned. He added me to their Discord (much to my daughter’s amusement).

Very quickly, I learned that this was not simply thousands of people jockeying for position in the Nerd Hunger Games. People form groups. They assign shifts and share supplies and updates.

We have a spreadsheet. I hear color-coded wristbands are involved in this process.

Yes, it is that deep.

All of this just to sit in a room to see something that will probably be on TikTok 10 minutes later.

So this raises a perfectly understandable question: why the hell would anyone want to do this?

Maybe because I already know what it's like to watch it from home.

. When Robert Downey Jr. was revealed as Doctor Doom in 2024, I saw the video about ten minutes after it happened and almost fell out of my chair. But I wasn't there, and it hit me how irrationally badly I wanted to be part of that.

(No skipping ahead. Yes, I recognize the irony.)

TikTok only satisfies so much.

My daughter saw her first superhero movie, Iron Man, when she was eight.

At nineteen, she was watching with me when Tony Stark died in Endgame.

Twelve years of movies, inside jokes, favorite lines, and debates about characters' intentions and feelings...it was our thing. But after Endgame, the MCU just lost something for us for a time.

When the Doom reveal happened at Comic-Con, my daughter and I were texting each other in all caps; suddenly, everything old was new again.

That's part of why I'm jumping through all these ridiculous hoops. It gives us something new to argue about. (I kid, but not by much.)

Like most of us, I do my best to avoid inconvenience. I skipped the concert lines of my generation. I make reservations, I buy fast passes, I plan ahead, and automatically nope out of something if it looks to be too crowded.

Convenience is a beautiful thing, but sometimes...the long way there is part of the experience.

Think about it: that anticipation you get, joking and chatting with perfect strangers around you, all there for the same reasons: the experience, and the stories after.

Neither of which you get from watching it on your phone in your office.

My husband, The Balkan Storm, understands it. He grew up watching Star Trek, and saw Captain Kirk lead the Enterprise with confidence, logic, and a willingness to make the hard decisions.

Minus the womanizing, thank God, he developed a very successful leadership style around much of that same philosophy.

Nobody sees that as 'Star Trek fan stuff'; they call him a good boss.

Stories give us examples of courage, loyalty, sacrifice, and a lot of times, the deep satisfaction of watching a bad guy get his ass kicked.

And sometimes a superhero movie is just a superhero movie.

But sometimes it's twelve years of experiences with your only daughter and a reason to sit for hours and hours in San Diego.

There are no fast passes for Hall H (damn it).

So here I am, the woman who spent thousands to avoid Disney lines, preparing to spend days of her vacation among thousands of strangers in a camp chair.

It will be equal parts fun and a colossal pain in the ass, literally and figuratively.

But I get it now, and for whatever reason, this feels like something, even if I only try this once, worth waiting for.

I'm flying 2,000 miles from home, by myself, just to see if I'm right about that.

I am stupidly excited, but I still hate waiting, not gonna lie.

If SDCC ever starts selling Lightning Lanes, all bets are off.

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