DRAGON CON RECAP

Technically Dragon Con is still underway but as in years past we packed up all the things, got a trolley, got the car out of the lot and headed back home today in anticipation of rejoining the real world tomorrow. Once returning to Golden’s we unpacked the car, said hello to Mighty, changed into comfortable clothes then slept for the next 4 or 5 hours. I personally slept through most of the Blair Witch the sequel, waking up in time for the ending only to find out Golden’s DVR cut off the end of it, and Keanu, which is some movie about a kidnapped cat. Golden slept through them all as well as Lego Batman. I guess eventually we’ll get up and get food but for now I’m letting Golden sleep off the Con and thinking about taking another mini nap before food as well.

Sunday was a blast. We got up late, said good bye to M, and had some lunch at Johnny Rocket’s before heading down to the madness that was the Con. We finally caught that damn elusive Shuttle Bus, the Purple Line that is … the Green Line can kiss my ass, and made our way to the gaming rooms at the America’s Mart.

At that point Golden decided to paint and take a zombie, and she did a damn good job. (see below). While she did that I watched the Alton Brown panel on Dragon Con TV since the line was 2 hours long 3 hours before it started. I mean damn! Also he's bringing back Good Eats and not just as a web series !!! :D The Dragon Con TV streaming was amazing and I'll definitely be getting it again even if I don't come to the Con.

From there we made our way over to the Arcade, I’m not sure if this is the first year that they have had it but it’s the first time we have participated and it was great, will definitely make our way back to it next year. They had all these vintage games and pinball, and new games not released yet and some games that were in another language so we all just guessed and pushed buttons until it did things. It was awesome. 

  

Afterwards we made our way over to the Hilton for the Wynonna Earp meet up. Which was a ton of fun. I mean really no other fandom in the world is as passionate and awesome as the Earpers. While it wasn’t an “official” Dragon Con event the people who set this thing up did a great job. There was drinking, chatting and fun had by all. Emily Andras, writer, and actors Tim Rozon and Michael Eklund joined the meet up for a drink and chat and they made sure to talk with everyone. They love this fandom as much as the fandom loves them. It was cool to see and be a part of. Also Golden ran into several of her Twitter peeps at the event including M H which was a lot of fun too.

   

After that we just walked around and out got our last taste of the awesomeness that is Dragon Con. Saw some cosplay, another really epic dance party and had to catch Uber to get back to the hotel when that damn shuttle bus wouldn’t show up. Really this was one of my favorite Dragon Cons. We actually ended up doing some of the fun stuff available for the Con and didn’t just pay a lot of money to people watch. Don’t get me wrong people watching is fun and all but after a while you think oh look another Captain America and it kind of gets old. Once I recover from this trip we’ll start planning next year’s trip and I look forward to it every year cause if nothing else I get 5 days to hang out with my favorite person on this planet and that after all is the best part of all. Well that and this year it didn’t end with me giving blood and face planting so... WIN!

    

I’ll drive home in the morning getting mentally ready to re-enter the real world on Thursday and while I’m ready to get home I’m sad to leave Golden behind. I miss her like crazy when we are apart and wish science would get off their asses and make me a freaking portal to make hanging out with her more often a possibility. 

Peace –

Marcy

DRAGON CON DAY 2

Today has been all about missed connections. From not being able to connect to the interwebs to not being able to connect with a stupid bus, it’s been one giant day of not being able to connect, even within our own group. Let’s start at the beginning. The alarms went off around 6 ish …. Far earlier than any one human who is on vacation should be getting up. One of our crew arrived last night and had to pick up her badge and we wanted to be there right at 8 so we could get good spots for the parade at 10.  Last year we watched it on TV at the hotel mostly cause Saturday’s at Dragon Con are just …. Well ….. stupid. All the locals turn up on Saturday for the parade and have day passes which creates this gridlock of people throughout the area. With SEC football playing this weekend, the Falcons playing this weekend (well yesterday) and many other things happening in the Atlanta this holiday weekend Saturday becomes a cluster of people and not all are nice. We were talking earlier today about how the last 3 years everyone has been really nice and really inclusive and this year there is this underlying layer of …. I don’t know how to describe it …. Like you know one wrong move and it  could all just pop off with very little warning. We have since decided that this is due to the number of people here for the first time with a feel of entitlement that they have not earned yet. This is the biggest crowd ever for Dragon Con and it’s been very clear that Dragon Con, and the host hotels in general, haven’t been prepared for it. I mean some of these hotels have been beyond trashed and I've felt really bad about it.

Photos from today’s parade can be found on Golden’s twitter account, some of my favorite pictures from today can be found below.

  

 

  

This is the BEST parade hype man in the world. He'd find random kids in similar costumes, and bring them together, below is his "Footlong hotdog" :D he really made the waiting on the parade to get to us time go by fast. He was having as much fun as we were. At one point he pulled a tiny Storm Trooper out into the street to help him hype up the crowd. The kid had so much fun it was awesome to watch. Volunteers for Dragon Con are just the best. 

   

 After the parade, we went through the vendor hall which is several floors of all the things to buy, look at, and see. Stan Lee was signing merchandise today at the Vendor Hall which made the people like 15 deep instead of the usual 10 deep. Dragon Con PSA #1 --- I get that we all cosplay and love dressing up in awesome things we have created but can we all agree that there is no place for that shit in the Vendor Hall. I mean if you have on fairy wings that took you 6 months to create and go into the Vendor hall and they get messed up that’s on you. Don’t bitch people out cause they brushed up against your stuff in the 2-way-2foot hallways of the Vendor hall.

Anyway … using the technique taught to me recently by the boss man has made my panic attacks this year very minimal. I’ve nearly had a few but was able to beat them back down and focus on my breathing and made the panic attack not seem so bad. I already texted him thanks for that. While in the Vendor hall our crew of three often became a crew of two as one of us would wander off while someone stopped to look around. At one point I just left the vendor hall and texted my crew saying I was at the elevators, take your time, as I sat in my awesome chair.

After the vendor hall is when the missed connections came full circle. We waited on a Shuttle Bus for nearly an hour before saying screw it and called Uber. Uber has been our savior this trip which has been great but also sad. The last few years the Dragon Con Shuttle was one of the best parts of the Con, those drivers were awesome. This year we can't even get the drivers to stop let alone have a conversation. It's been real disappointing. We know the Green Line exists cause we caught it on Friday but haven't seen it since. Like it's some Yetti in Sasquatch territory. Like we know it exists but no one believes us because we have no documentation of it. We stood there with two ginger haired young ladies and got really angry when the Purple Line bus, which we had decided we were getting on cause Green Line had said screw it and gone to get a samache, drove by waving at us like we were just saying hi, when in all actuality we were saying, “Hey jerkoff stop your bus so we can get on it!” It's not like we were trying to flag them down in the middle of the street we were at the Dragon Con Shuttle Bucket but he didn't give a damn. We finally called Uber and I felt bad cause we had to leave our Ginger friends behind. I accidently clicked the small car (as I always do having a small crew) and we wouldn’t all fit. I really felt like an asshat. I can see their hotel from my hotel so we could have made it work …. But yeah they have their own cell phones and life and can make shit happen if they need too right!? I do hope they made it home and are not still down there waiting on that bus.

The temperature this year hasn’t been too bad there’s even been a few instances of “I’m cold” uttered from someone’s mouth, and it might have been me. Usually the weather is so hot here it’s suffocating. I reserve the right to bitch about the weather later if I want to but for now know it’s starting to feel like Fall.

Saturday ended with us having dinner at Hard Rock and by dinner I mean we ate food sometime after 10pm, then walking to the Marriot to watch all the pretty and hang out. We saw DJ MC Chris do his thing, an impromptu dance party, lots of naked, and even a couple who I’m pretty sure said screw it getting back to the room is too far let’s do what we have to do in the middle of a room like no one could see them. Bless them I hope they had protection. If one has a Baby at Dragon Con do they have to name it after the hotel?! We rolled back into the hotel around 3 am as Day 2 flowed into Day 3.

Happy Con

Marcy
Golden
M

DRAGON CON DAY 1

Ok so I know we were down there yesterday but that’s not the official start date, I mean yeah it’s flowing into Thursday and eventually gonna flow into Wednesday but for now, based on the Dragon Con website, it’s Friday through Monday so that’s what we are going to go with. Keeping in mind my badge says 31st – Sep. 4th so what do I know. The point is today is the first full day for me, and frankly on this blog that’s all that matters.

Some of my favorite CosPlay from Thursday night and today  include:

     

We got back to the hotel last night sometime around 1ish …. Maybe 1:30ish …. Fell asleep around 2:30ish maybe I don’t know time does not seem to matter anymore and frankly neither does the day of the week if that text to my nephew wishing his high school football team a good game on a Thursday…when they don’t play until Friday. I guess I was thinking I was off therefore it was Friday. Whatever it’s the Con...... dates, times, and outside things don’t matter.

Last night we were there for the countdown, saw all the pretty and saw all the naked once Dragon Con Afterdark, which is what I call the timeframe between say 9:30 – until. I don’t think it’s an official name but it totes should be. There have been a lot of kids already here and I was a little surprised how many where there when we rolled out around 1ish, I mean don’t these kids have school today? Also don’t they as Golden says, “Deserve a chance at life” without seeing things they are frankly not ready for.

We were up and running at 7:00, well I was so I could shower, Golden turned up around 7:30 while I played on my PC and watched the news. That gave us about 4 hours of sleep. We grabbed some breakfast then headed down to the Nathan Fillion panel. Found the end of the line, down the street and around the building and followed the line until some guy came by and was all “the room is full thank you for your time.” We then walked down to the room anyway just to see, not that we didn’t “trust” random guy telling us to get out of line but yeah. We found a plug, frankly the greatest thing ever … next to a chair of course….and when the panel started I cranked up DragonConTV and we were able to watch the panel anyway. Then they had a malfunction at the mothership and we lost it but yeah. He was as charming and awesome and I thought he would be. The day was not a total loss….we then made our way to the Walk of Fame and got in line to meet Mr. Fillion and he was fantastic. He signed Golden’s Malcolm  Reynolds action figure, and a picture for me. He loved Golden’s glasses and told me I was nice…then we were shoved off to the side for the next person but in that second we were the only two in the room. It was awesome.

   

Then we went to hang with the cast of Wynonna Earp in the Walk of Fame, which was a lot of fun. We met several of the cast and they were all so sweet and excited that people were there they talked with us and really connected. I admit it was fun to see them excited about being here as excited as we were about them being here. I’ll admit I’m a new Earper. Golden brought me to the Earper table but I haven’t quite caught up with the latest season.

After today however, I’m more determined than ever to catch up. I'm glad we waited around for their panel. The cast alone was fun but the writer made me happiest of all. Emily Andras had such great answers to the questions asked by the fans but more so it was clear that she not only cares about these characters but also the cast that shared the stage with her. It was really fun to watch them interact with the fans and it reminded me what Dragon Con is really all about.

Then we caught the buss to head back to the hotel for resting until Marible gets here it’s been a long day guys. This Con goer is tired and my feets are very angry but nothing compared to how my legs and butt feel. Stupid body being stupid and broke down.

Things I learned today ….

1.       Plans change just roll with it

2.       Take the chair, you might think you will come back to the hotel during the day but likely you won’t

3.       Shuttle busses now only stop at specific locations

4.       No matter how much money I brought it was not nearly enough apparently

5.       People are both awesome or annoying and sometimes both

How is everyone else’s con going ? We are posting most of our pictures on our various social media accounts, twitter, facebook, Instagram, snap chat etc., so check em out.

Golden

Marcy