TL;DR – We dive into PAX properly and discover the power of a queue.

Disclosure – I paid for all products featured or mentioned here.

PAX Australia & Melbourne Day 2 –

After staying dry as the storms of Day 1 bucketed down, drenching the city, I took the first tentative steps down the shores of the Yarra River. I had explored Brisbane and Sydney before, but this was the first real-time getting to the heart of Melbourne.

I planned to walk down the river towards the Convention Centre and find somewhere to have some breakfast along the way. The only problem was that everywhere along the river was closed, and before I knew it, I was at PAX.

At this point, my PAX inexperience came to the fore because I thought, “well, I am here. I might as well queue up”, not knowing that there was an outside and an inside queue. Also that I had arrived hours before the show floor opened. Well, if you are going to be stuck in line with a thousand people listing to the DnD Movie trailer on repeat, the first day is the day to do it. That is because they also had a DJ that rocked it, and the vibe in the room was ecstatic.

Once you get onto the show floor, there is almost an overwhelming bunch of choices as to what to see first before the lines become whelming. But for me, the first choice I knew I was going to make was to the Amazon booth because they had costumes from The Rings of Power. I have seen a lot of costumes and props that look good on TV but do not hold up to a close inspection. However, these costumes were exquisite in their detailing. You almost believe that it was real armour … almost.

You can do a lot on the show floor as esports contests and competition vendors yell over the top of each other. One of the first places I found was a Q&A with the local internet talk show BackPocket. It was a chaos of questions and mobile phone battery packs being thrown into the audience.

There were food trucks a plenty throughout the convention centre, and I am only human, and when I see crêpes, I eat crêpes.

The other key thing you can do at PAX is watching panels, and as I am a massive nerd and spent 10 or so years in this space, I had to take a look at the Gamifying Government panel.

And then, before you knew it, the day was ending, and it was time to take the relaxing walk along the river back to my hotel as the lights slowly reflected on the rippling waters.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images are by the author