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DragonCon 2010
Sep. 8th, 2010 06:15 pmI had gone to DragonCon earlier in the decade, but after a lackluster experience had skipped a number of years. A fair bit of people had asked me to come back, and when
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playfuleye offered me half of her room, and a ride in her car with some friends, it was hard to turn down the offer -- and indeed the trip and rooming went rather well.
Unlike half a decade ago, the Hilton now has very nice rooms. What renovation they did wasn't just superficial, and I was very happy with the accommodations. Also, there are now skyways (habitrails) between the Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt, which makes getting around very nice.
The convention now encompasses five hotels: The Hyatt, Marriott, Hilton, Sheraton and Westin. All are within a reasonable range, though the walk from the Hilton to the Westin is a good four blocks or so, ditto from the Hyatt to the Sheraton. The good thing about having all the hotels is that there are more rooms, and particularly more large rooms, for events. Even so, though, several of the few panels I went by were filled to either standing room only or not even standing room.
The major problem with DragonCon is that it's too large. While the room space for large events is there, and the control of lines and such was done really well, to get into any of the popular panels required queuing up an hour or two prior, and often much of the queue ended up wrapping around buildings on the outside. Not fun. Fundamentally it boils down to trying to move thousands of people around, and there's only so fast it can be done, especially in a crowded area.
The registration line was just a total disaster. In fact, it was enough of a disaster that it probably drove away a bunch of people from future attendance. 3+ hours of waiting in line outside appears to have been quite common.
The theme of too many people continued to the rest of the convention. The main floors got way too crowded during the evening hours. Not only too crowded for photography, but too crowded for me to even be in. I just got too anxious with the crowds and hid somewhere.
Personally, I like taking photos. However, there were untold masses of people with fancy cameras (fancier than mine), flashes, and people who had set up actual studio setups. This means that it was hard to get someone's attention to look at my camera, and there were a lot of people who (at least should) get better pictures than I can. This makes the exercise a bit pointless to me. If I can't do a good job, I'd rather not bother at all. And then I'd actually have to talk to people, or be social, or such things. Yikes!
Aside from all the griping above, it was good to see a lot of the people I had hoped to see, and meet some new ones. Cassie's Squirrel Girl costume and shoot was awesome, dinner with Voltaire and company was very nice, the celebrity panels were a hoot. Big thanks to Courney for inviting me and corralling people.
Basically, no regrets for having gone, but not convinced it's worth the time or effort next year.
playfuleye offered me half of her room, and a ride in her car with some friends, it was hard to turn down the offer -- and indeed the trip and rooming went rather well.Unlike half a decade ago, the Hilton now has very nice rooms. What renovation they did wasn't just superficial, and I was very happy with the accommodations. Also, there are now skyways (habitrails) between the Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt, which makes getting around very nice.
The convention now encompasses five hotels: The Hyatt, Marriott, Hilton, Sheraton and Westin. All are within a reasonable range, though the walk from the Hilton to the Westin is a good four blocks or so, ditto from the Hyatt to the Sheraton. The good thing about having all the hotels is that there are more rooms, and particularly more large rooms, for events. Even so, though, several of the few panels I went by were filled to either standing room only or not even standing room.
The major problem with DragonCon is that it's too large. While the room space for large events is there, and the control of lines and such was done really well, to get into any of the popular panels required queuing up an hour or two prior, and often much of the queue ended up wrapping around buildings on the outside. Not fun. Fundamentally it boils down to trying to move thousands of people around, and there's only so fast it can be done, especially in a crowded area.
The registration line was just a total disaster. In fact, it was enough of a disaster that it probably drove away a bunch of people from future attendance. 3+ hours of waiting in line outside appears to have been quite common.
The theme of too many people continued to the rest of the convention. The main floors got way too crowded during the evening hours. Not only too crowded for photography, but too crowded for me to even be in. I just got too anxious with the crowds and hid somewhere.
Personally, I like taking photos. However, there were untold masses of people with fancy cameras (fancier than mine), flashes, and people who had set up actual studio setups. This means that it was hard to get someone's attention to look at my camera, and there were a lot of people who (at least should) get better pictures than I can. This makes the exercise a bit pointless to me. If I can't do a good job, I'd rather not bother at all. And then I'd actually have to talk to people, or be social, or such things. Yikes!
Aside from all the griping above, it was good to see a lot of the people I had hoped to see, and meet some new ones. Cassie's Squirrel Girl costume and shoot was awesome, dinner with Voltaire and company was very nice, the celebrity panels were a hoot. Big thanks to Courney for inviting me and corralling people.
Basically, no regrets for having gone, but not convinced it's worth the time or effort next year.
