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It always seems like every convention I go to, something goes wrong.
With Chiago this year, I got delayed to kingdom come, but fortunately, I was the only one in my party, so that wasn't a huge glitch. This time around, there were more delays that were fortunately minor. I was scheduled to meet my two roomies, and other stuff like get registered for the convention, and none of us had cell phones, so once I was in the air, and they were on the road...it was completely up to chance as to what happened, and hope for the best.
It's always an adventure finding one's way from the airport to the hotels the first time I hit a city, and on this trip, I encountered my very own crazy train person on the trip, which started getting me quite nervous with her rantings. So, I'm in Atlanta, at the hotel, and late, and I have no clue where my roommates are, if they've arrived and can't find me, or if they're lost somewhere, or if things just went horribly wrong. I spent quite awhile circling the various lobbies of the hotel, keeping an eye out for my comrades, and familiarizing myself with the area for later adventures.
Eventually, I decided I had to try and get something accomplished, and decided I would try to find the registration area, and get my press pass, so I could continue my familiarization of the hotels, especially the Hyatt with it's famously confusing floor plan, and I'd also be able to help my friends out when they eventually arrived. It took me a good while of standing around, and traveling up and down in elevators trying to navigate the Hyatt, eventually succeeding in my goal. All the while, I've constantly got the thought in the back of my mind of what could happen if my friends arrive while I'm out wandering aimlessly.
Fortunately, after some more wandering back in my own hotel, I eventually wandered in and found my friends, whom had just arrived only a few minutes earlier, after getting lost in Atlanta, so everything worked out pretty well in the end, with some needless worrying.
With all that out of the way, some food in our bellies, and everyone pretty much exhausted from traveling, and in my case wandering around the convention areas, we passed out to be nice and refreshed for the start of the convention on Friday.
Since I had my familiarity with the area down, I was able to guide my friends to the registration area very quickly, and get them acquainted and oriented with the provided maps quite easily, and even helped out some other people get through the various registration lines, so they could figure out which one to go through.
Once you're registered, you can pick up two pretty thick volumes, one of them being a big, comprehensive guide to every single guest that was at the convention, and the other being a newsprint schedule for all the events, details for them, times, a schedule chart, and the aforementioned maps to the entire area. While the newsprint makes sense, to keep costs down, my poor pocket guide to the con was absolutely mangled by the end of the weekend, and my hands were quickly blackened.
With everyone in my group set, we made our way to the first panel, a Mythbusters panel, with the build team in attendance, but we quickly found out that the panel was cancelled, due to flight delays. Nice to know I'm not the only one they happen to!
Now that we had open space, we each had some things we wanted to check out, and I poked my way down to the bottom floor of the Hyatt, and made my way to the introductory panel for the track of events for Buffy fandom, which included a "Buffywood Squares" game, with the chosen audience members picking from people dressed up as characters from the show to answer the questions. They also showed a few fan made videos highlighting the shows. This was a fun way to dive into the convention, and get a feel for things, showing how fun they all try to be.
After that, I went to the Kevin Sorbo panel, where he showed off a DVD he had made with clips from his time on Hercules, and just chatted up the crowd, and answered questions. He comes across as nice, and funny, as he seemed on Hercules, and he loves the fans. Probably my favourite moment with him was when a fan asked him for advice for someone looking to get into the Hollywood rat race, and he flat out said, "Don't!," with a grin, and elaborated on it, and the pitfalls of the business.
I then met up with my friends, we grabbed some food, and made our way to the opening ceremonies, hosted by the magician Misty Lee, and she introduced all the guests of honour, including her husband, comic fan/pro Paul Dini, probably best known for helping create the Batman and Superman Adventures, and the more recent Justice League cartoon. Misty performed a few tricks as well, and was a great host, keeping things light and fun.
Once that was over, we stayed where we were, and enjoyed several performances by the Atlanta Radio Theater Company, including an original scifi radio drama with a hefty dose of comedy, and an adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft story, "The Colour from Outer Space". I was very amused when I noticed there were people there with their very young children during that, and eventually left. ARTC also has a website at http://www.artc.org/ where they've started broadcasting a weekly podcast with their various shows, for anyone who wants to check them out.
After that, we attended the costuming contest, which I discovered featured a few of my friends from the area, and was hosted by Peter Jurasik from Babylon 5. The costumes were great, and the hosts kept things fun, especially when things got slow as the judges were making their decisions.
This is also a great time to mention DragonCon TV, which was airing in between panels, and when things got slow during the costuming contest. This was a load of very clever, quite funny skits, lampooning every kind of genre from Star Trek, to Buffy, to the Crocodile Hunter, mixed in with humourous bumpers that poked fun at anything and everything, including themselves. These bits were also aired on a dedicated convention channel in all the convention affiliated hotels, as well as other projects such as full fledged fan films, and other projects. This really helped kill time, and continued to maintain that fun atmosphere that DragonCon embodies.
Thus our Friday came to a close, and everyone crashed to try and be up for the parade in the morning.
Which didn't quite work as planned. I rolled off my chair about ten minutes before the parade was scheduled to start, quickly made myself presentable, looked over the route and saw I could easily get to a later part of the track and get in place. I left everyone else to sleep, since it was a very rush job to get down there in time, and I made it to a point just in time to have the parade start passing me by, and I got a lot of excellent photos of many people in costume.
Once that was over, I quickly returned to the room and woke everyone up, then made my way back over to the Hyatt for a performance by one of my favourite filk artists - for those not aware, filk music is parody/fun/folk type music in the style of Weird Al type stuff, but incredibly more geeky in usual practice - Tom Smith, whom I'd been chatting with online, and wanted to finally introduce myself to him face to face, and pick up a few cds to replace some mp3s I had.
I had a blast listening to him perform, and joining in with the other fans sitting around him and joining in with the singing.
With the rest of my crew in tow, we attempted another Mythbusters panel, and one of the build team, Tory Belleci had finally arrived, and the others were on their way, after a problem with their plane's tail being on fire. Only the Mythbusters crew! Tory told a bunch of stories about how he got where he was, and his time with the crew, which were insightful to a career in the enterainment biz, and entertaining in their own right.
We again split up, and I went to a Babylon 5 cast Q&A session, since B5 has long been my passion, being a huge fan of the show, the cast, and the creator ever since, and missing out on a chance to listen to their stories and get some pictures would've been quite a shame. They were as entertaining as I suspected, and you could tell the people they had there were still good friends, and they just had a great time up there, amusing the fans, and having a blast, and even took some time to remember the cast members who've passed away in recent years.
I spent the rest of the day wandering around, meeting other friends who were down there, one of whom was selling his jewelry type wares to the folks at the convention, and he was situated in the conventions pretty large art show, which had a wide variety of art, literally something for everyone, if you've got the coin. Seeing all the different styles on display was quite cool, and introduced me to some new styles that I was most intrigued by.
After that, we wandered over to the gaming area in the Hilton, the third hotel hosting the convention. I spent the rest of the evening watching my friends play card games as I recharged, and generally just chatted, and met a person or two from White Wolf, before they went off to find food late in the evening, and I headed off to the Dementia 2006 filk concert, with Tom Smith, the Great Luke Ski, and many others, giving an amazing performance one and all, and playing some great songs, and really getting the crowd going.
Once back in our room, the whole group spent far too many hours staring at DragonCon TV, enjoying the various things they were showing all night long, and none of us crashed until it was nearly sunrise. Fortunately, nothing on Sunday started until later in the day, so we still managed to get a few hours of sleep before venturing back into the madness.
My only complaint, and it's barely that, is the crowds. There were simply tons of people there, and at times, you just simply ceased moving if a large enough group trapped you. Especially around the elevators of the Hyatt. Fortunately, there was plenty of people dressed up in costumes of all sorts to take pictures of and chat with, so it wasn't horrible by any means, and the hotels were all kept very cool, so you never noticed the heat that was outside.
My only thing planned for Sunday was yet another Mythbusters panel, and everyone from the build team had finally arrived, and they covered some of the same territory as Tory, but had their one stories as well, and even a new blooper reel, which was hilarious, and somewhat disturbing, including an experiment to find out if farts could actually be lit with a lighter.
Most of the rest of the day was spent meeting folks, snapping pictures, and finally finding my way over to some of the merchants, buying some comics and some toys, and then made my way to the Walk of Fame, where all the celebrities were meeting and greeting folks, including the Mythbusters crew, the guys from B5, Stargate, and tons of other shows, where I snapped a few more pictures, including one with Kari Byron from Mythbusters, which was one of many highlights for me that day.
I tracked down my gang, including a few extras, back in our room, and I watched them play more cards, and we watched the Masquerade competition on DCTV, rather than go and watch it from way far away in the actual auditorium. Some of the performances were a little lacking, as were some of the costumes, but the hosts of the event - comic and novel writer Peter David, and comic artist George Perez - made the event, with funny, snide comments, poking good natured fun at the people, as well as the 501st Stormtrooper brigade, who were used to clear out any acts going too long. In the privacy of our own room, we were also able to poke our own fun as much as we wanted, and had a great time watching it from there.
Everyone else left afterwards to go find some more games to play, while I gathered my stuff and got what I could ready to hit the airplane in the morning, so I wouldn't be any more rushed than I was, then spent several more hours wandering around and grabbing more photos and meeting people, before finally bringing my convention experience to a close.
I absolutely loved DragonCon, and fully intend to go back at some future date. I had an absolute blast meeting some longtime internet friends face to face, or passing them by to realise who they were once I was home, and just had the time of my life, having a weekend of fun and frivolity. If you're a fan of anything science fiction, fantasy, horror, comics, or whatever, it would be worth your time to visit Atlanta for the convention, as they have so many tracks that there is literally something for everyone, and my only regret is that I couldn't see everything I wanted, and the comicbooks track was a little weak, but with everything else there, I barely had enough time to even realise I hadn't gotten down to that. With Chicago under my belt though, I also wasn't worried that I'd not seen anything comic related.
As much as I loved Wizard World, this thing was just so much more, with so much more to do, and quite the experience, which I look forward to repeating sometime.
Jason M. Bourgeois
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