DragonCon 2012 - an overview

[agt_spooky]

charityflint and agt_spooky get ready to party at DragonCon!

So wow, I almost don't know where to start with my DragonCon stories. So much happened! Some of it good, some of it not so good.

I haven’t been to a non-Creation con in a long while, so it was interesting to see the differences. DC gets points for an extremely fast registration system. I think I was in line on Thursday for all of 10 minutes. It also gets points for friendly, knowledgeable volunteers. If they didn’t know something they were on their phone or walkie-talkie ASAP to help you out. The only really irritating thing was something that went on with their photo ops for Richard Dean Anderson that left a LOT of us standing in line for a long time that could have been avoided with some advanced planning on theirs, and Legends Canada’s part.

The other big difference between DC and Creation is that DC is spread out between FIVE hotels. Thankfully three of them are connected via skybridges but the other two you need to go outside and go up and down the street. You do a LOT of walking at DC. And in the heat of Atlanta in August it can tire you out.

I knew DC was big, and I’ve been to several Star Wars Celebration events, but even that didn’t prepare me for the 55,000 (that is NOT an exaggeration) people. It got to be very overwhelming, especially at the Marriott, where most people stay and that has most of the big Q&A panels, plus the photo ops and all of the dealer’s rooms.

It got so insane there on Saturday that the fire marshal came and basically shut things down because of the amount of people packed into the hotel. They didn’t let anyone in for a long time. The lines outside were crazy. Thankfully charityflint and I were already inside or I would have missed my photo op with Connor Trinneer. As it was, poor Richard Dean Anderson was trapped over at the Hilton and couldn’t get in to the Marriott for his own photo op! I heard later that the Walk of Fame at the Hilton was also closed off by the fire marshal because of the amount of people packed in there. (The Walk of Fame is where all of the attending actors have tables for autographs).

Speaking of the Hilton, I want to thank my friend rivercritter for getting us a room there. At some point or another during the weekend Charity and I were at all of the other hotels and we agreed that the Hilton was the best. The entire staff there was fantastic. From housekeeping to the front desk to the valet to the bartenders. Especially the management and security teams. Because unfortunately we had major issues with the people in the room next to ours and the police ended up being called. In the end we got half off our room rate for the five days we were there in apology. The Hilton also had a nice Starbuck’s café, a fantastic restaurant and an outdoor pool. We’ve already made our reservations there for next year. The block of 1,200 rooms sold out in less than three hours! Yikes!

A big part of DC are the costumes. You cannot believe how amazing some of them are. You name the TV show, anime or movie and there was someone dressed up as a character from one of them. Charity and I stood on the balcony at the Hilton one night and simply people-watched for a good hour. We played the “what is that supposed to be?” game, trying to figure out what some people were dressed as. :-)

There are so many panels going on at every hour of every day (both actor Q&A’s and fan tracks) that if you can’t find something to do there’s something wrong with you. And if you find yourself too tired to leave the hotel room, there’s always DragonCon TV. This came in handy a few times for us. The lines for all of the main Q&A panels were staggering and not organized at all at the Marriott. It was a crush of thousands of people. The lines went outside the hotel and down the block for crying out loud. It was completely insane. So we ended up watching the Stargate panel and the Firefly panel on TV in the comfort of our hotel room. But DC TV had it’s issues, too. They were supposed to show the John Barrowman panel and they didn’t and then only 15 minutes into the Gillian Anderson one the channel completely stopped working. Grrr….

But overall our experience was very positive. We went into this blind but quickly learned the ropes. We counted ourselves lucky that we each got to meet every single actor we wanted (and there were a lot!) so that alone made it a successful convention.

If you’ve ever thought about going to DragonCon, do it. At least once. My friend Adam has wanted me to go for years and years and I was dumb not to have done it sooner. Make no mistake, it’s completely crazy, but it can also be a lot of fun. :-)

Tomorrow – meeting Richard Dean Anderson for the first time!

Comments

[agt-spooky.livejournal.com]

It was a blast! Completely crazy at times, but still a blast.