Saturday at Witchbomb ended with the cos play and after party. Unlike the opening ceremony, there were no tables reserved for gold ticket holders. It was just a case of sit anywhere you could find a seat. And some people ended up standing through it. So, I was sat fairly near the back and couldn’t get many decent photos. This was about the best I could do, but I know many fans have shared better shots.
The cast guests presented the prizes. This was Lyne giving the prize to Beltane Alder. Lyne said that the Beltane outfit was one of the costumes that she regretted not buying.
Kandyse gave the prize out to the Biddies.
Amalia is hugging The Witchbomb. I do have to say that this was a spectacular costume, every mushroom was hand made. Sunshine, who was inside the costume, had a hilarious story that she was telling some of us in the lobby the next morning about this moment. I can’t do the story justice, as it really needs the live re-enactment. Amalia said she was going to hug her, but Sunshine couldn’t actually see Amalia because of the head of the costume and she was holding her trophy and couldn’t get her arm out through the costume liner and the mushroom ‘platform’ at the top meant she couldn’t get too close to anyone anyway. Moment of panic. But Amalia improvised brilliantly.
The Witchbomb herself gave the prize to the original Sarah Alder, who had given us a great re-enactment of the pageant Sarah from ep 1.02.
Sunday started with more photo ops. The Motherland shoots went fine, but Lorena was late arriving, which threw the Warrior Nun schedule off significantly. However the Starfury staff coped superbly.
The good thing about having a professional musical theatre producer / musical director and composer in the fandom is that she was able to negotiate the use of the piano in the lobby. This is Floz and Lauren rehearsing for the Switches singalong.
There were two Motherland panels in the afternoon. One with Kandyse and Lyne. Yet again, because of a clash, I had fan meets which meant that I missed much of the Lyne and Kandyse panel and only saw the beginning.
The other panel was Jess, Amalia and Taylor.
These three were hilarious together. There were lots of stories which I will save for part 3 of this Witchbomb retrospective, but this panel had some of the funniest and most memorable stories.
Straight after this talk we massed round the piano in the lobby for an Abba themed singalong. This was an amazing experience and we were asked not to record it for copyright reasons. Of course we had to sing Book of Love and I’ll be your mirror too. This was one of those unique and totally unforgettable experiences and I hope there will be an opportunity to do it again next year. It certainly gave us something fun to do while they rearranged the hall for the closing ceremony.
And there was the same issue at the closing ceremony with no tables reserved for gold ticket holders, so I was stuck further back than I would have liked and couldn’t get good photos.
And one of the best parts is that we get to do it again next year. Tickets for the 2025 Witchbomb went on sale on the Friday at the start of the con. As far as I can tell, unlike last year, there was no advance warning of the tickets going on sale. As I was not having the greatest experience with the wifi, I decided to wait till I got home to buy my gold ticket.
Tickets available from: https://seanharry.com/home/witchbomb/
So, see you next year at Witchbomb.
Part 3 of this blog will contain some of the stories from the panels and fan meets.
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