I've attended the past 2 years and I would like to get more out of the
event than to wander around aimlessly. If anyone could help me with
the following 3 questions, I would appreciate it:

1) What time should I get there to park at the actual convention
center? This will be my first trip without having a hotel room and in
previous trips I noticed that the convention center parking fills up
early.

2) Where can I get autographs? From my understanding, in the upstairs
official autograph area no one is allowed to charge for autographs or
pictures (your camera), but they can sell items to be autographed.
Downstairs people are allowed to charge whatever they want although
most of the major booths will have artists signing and drawing
sketches for free. The lesser know artists will be more likely to
charge for sketches and of course there's always Lou Ferrigno. Am I
right about this? I don't want to wait in line for 2 hours to realize
I need to pay $15.

3) I see people bring tubes to place posters in. Where can I buy these things?