FanFest Part One: FanFest Is Awesome!

We live about 3.5 hours away from Kansas City, and it’s an easy 3.5 hours, mostly on one highway.  The moment I found out KC would be hosting this year’s All Star game, I started making plans to attend.  My main desire was to watch the Futures game (the minor league All Star Game), since every year that I’ve watched this event on TV I seen tons of empty seats and assumed that getting tickets would be relatively easy and not insanely expensive like the Home Run Derby or the All Star Game itself.

I also wanted to go to FanFest- mostly for my kids.  From what I saw of past FanFests, there were tons of games and activities geared towards kids.  For myself, I was very interested in visiting the Hall of Fame exhibit, as well as the Topps booth.   I’m assuming that those of you who read this blog are more interested in what I got at the Topps booth than the other aspects, and I’ll cover that on the next post.

Today, I’ll give a general overview for anyone who is curious about the event.

FanFest took place in the Kansas City Convention Center.  I used to come to the KC Convention Center every year when Walmart would use it for their Year Beginning Meetings, so I was familiar with the building.  Still, there was such an overwhelming feeling as we stepped off the elevator and took in the magnitude of the event.  I had the same feeling walking in as I did walking into Six Flags as a kid.  I immediately wanted to sprint off in 10 different directions and see everything at once.  My mind was spinning, soaking in everything I was seeing.  I started taking in what people were carrying and talking about, trying to determine what kind of stuff the kids were going to get to do, and what kind of stuff we were going to get to take home.

I won’t carry on about every booth, rather, I thought it would be more interesting to simply show a map of the event from the handy flier we received as we walked in:

Again, I’ll cover the Topps booth tomorrow, and some of my favorite other highlights after that.  For now, I’ll leave you with the first ever publicly shown Napkin Doon Family Portrait:

Take your eyes off the lovely wife’s legs gentlemen.   The perv photographer talked her into that pose.  And yes, I really am almost as tall as Randy Johnson, and yes the two year old really was asleep during this photo, as well as half the event.  Kids.