Well that was fun – Wrapup

For Day 1, click here. For Day 2, click here. For Day 3, click here.

Monday morning, Jared and I woke up and went out to breakfast with Mike and Heather. All four of us were moving slower than normal. It was a long haul weekend for us all, and Jared and I still had the drive home to deal with. Yep, we’d checked the list of panels and there wasn’t anything that begged us to drive back into Atlanta and go to it. We’d already gotten our shopping done, so it was just home time.

After we packed up the car and hugged Mike and Heather goodbye, I started driving for home, with Jared finally passing out in the passenger seat. I ended up resorting to my usual tactic of singing along with various selected road tunes on the iPhone, just not quite at the volume I normally do when I’m alone in the car. I didn’t want to wake Jared (or scare the hell out of him). Somewhere between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, I made Jared take over driving before I fell asleep. By the time we got home, I was good and loopy. The cats were thrilled to see us… for about 5 seconds. Then it was all “Where have you been, dammit!”, “You smell like other cats!”, and “WE”RE STARVING!”. Little liars. I know Dana fed you good while we were gone. (Kika, yer tubby anyway, so shush.)

So, now that I’ve gotten sleep and I’m back at work in the “normal” mode of things again, how was Dragoncon? As usual for my trips to the con, when it was good, it was very very good. When it was bad, it was %^!@$. Okay maybe not that bad, but certainly an exercise in frustration. They’ve done a great thing in setting up certain panels to either be shown live or played later in the hotels TVs. But you can only see those if you have a hotel room in one of the big 4 hotels. If you had the time, and wanted to see a panel you couldn’t get into/had to miss, but knew the time it would be rebroadcast, there was nowhere to see it. We asked and were told one place, but it was very much NOT someplace to watch the feeds. So we were SOL. Annoying.

Normally, Dragon*Con’s security staff is very much visible and around. This time? Not so much. I’m thinking they either didn’t think they were going to have this many people show up for this year’s con and were stretched insanely thin, or the security people were seriously understaffed this year. I did have a run-in with one con security person that when I asked if the line she was keeping under control was the Hobbit line, and she snapped at me that it wasn’t. I blinked, responded politely with I was just asking, and she visibly took a breath, smiled and apologized, whereupon I smiled back and said it was okay, and all was right in the universe afterwards. So my vote’s for understaffed/overwhelmed staffers.

The panels (at least the ones we got to see) were great. That’s never been a problem (much) at this con. A lot of people were having a great time, and for the most part I did too. I wish I’d been able to see more than I did, but time constraints and lines hampered that. Next year, I’m hoping we can get hotel rooms and go from Thursday to Tuesday and really do the whole thing. That would help a lot on the stress involved.

I will say that I’ve heard mutterings about them moving it to the Georgia Convention Center when the current contracts are done with the hotels. Personally, I hope they don’t. Yeah the hotels can be a PITA at times, and the crush can get to be too much. But that’s part of what keeps Dragon*Con’s personality as the laid-back fun con. This is where the PR people don’t dare go. This is where we get to hear people say things that weren’t expected and not sent through lawyers to make sure it’s okay to say that. I’d like to keep it that way, and moving it to somewhere more “professional” like a convention center, seems to kill that flavor. They tried that in 1997. It just wasn’t the same con.

So overall, I had a blast. I’m tired, my back hurts, my eyes hurt, my feet sure as hell hurt, and my knee is probably plotting it’s suicide when I least expect it. But damn I had fun and look forward to doing it again next year. As one last parting item, enjoy an AMV that was shown while we were waiting for the FUNamation panel to start. It made me laugh hard.