DragonCon 2010, Part 1

Karl and I attended all four days of DragonCon, Sept. 2nd-5th in Atlanta, GA, this year and it was fantastic. We are fairly new to the convention scene. Karl and I attended DragonCon 2009 for one day last year, and then I attended all three days of CrisisCon from August 6th-8th. I’m sure many of you haven’t heard of these awesome events before, so I’ll tell you a little about them before I describe my own experiences.

What is a con?
A convention is any formal meeting of people to discuss a particular topic. DragonCon claims to be the largest multi-media, popular culture convention focusing on science fiction and fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film in the universe, and is held in Atlanta, Georgia every year during labor day weekend with activities in 5+ hotels. Every year DragonCon invites actors, authors, musicians, artists, and many other talented guest to DragonCon to connect with their fans. During this time fans have the opportunity to attend panels where they can ask the various celebrity guest questions about their work, listen to lectures, watch demonstrations and various forms of entertainment, discuss various topics, and preview new media. There are also gaming tournaments, dance parties, costume contest, amv (animated music video) contest, and many other fun activities. There are tons of conventions held all over the country, with both similar and different themes. CrisisCon is a small convention that takes place in a single hotel and it mostly anime themed, though you’ll find plenty of topics as well and people dressed up as storm troopers, ghostbusters, and comic book characters. I’m only just now learning of other conventions and the best way to find out about conventions is to search on the internet.

The best thing about conventions is that it brings together the fans for one big fan-fest. I thoroughly enjoy the sense of camaraderie at cons. Though we’re all obviously very different, you know that all the other people at a con are there because of their love for whatever subjects the con is on, and it gives everyone some sort of mutual connection. My friends at home don’t usually get my passion for Star Trek, X-Men, and Sailor Moon, but I know my fellow con-goers understand. So a con is a place you can be a total dork with others without feeling awkward about it.

My DragonCon Experience, Day 1
Karl had to work on Friday so my friends Ricky & Lena picked me up early in the morning for the drive over to Atlanta. As soon as we pulled out of Oxford one of their tires busted and we spent 30 minutes on the side of the highway during which we tried on our various costumes. Ricky put on a Jedi costume, I dressed up with a Chinese mask and black cape, and Lena tried on her Katamari outfit. It was silly and fun, and helped distract us while we waited on help to show up so we could put on the spare. We ended up having to wait about 3 hours for a new tire to be put on the car and it was about 5/6pm Atlanta time by the time we checked into the hotel and got in line to pick up our con badges. We waited in line for about an hour and a half, finally getting our badges right before 7pm, the time at which most panels end. We walked around a bit and then headed back to our hotel 5 blocks away to get ready for ZOMBIE PROM!. I’m really not into zombies at all. I’m not a fan of horror movies, or anything with blood and gore, but Lena and Ricky were into zombies, which is why I attended and I’m actually glad I did. I attended 3 different dance parties while at the con and Zombie Prom was definitely the best. We got dressed up for prom, put on our zombie makeup which allowed me to utilize some of my stage makeup skillz, and headed out to the Westin, which was the hotel this party was located. The music was fun, the bartenders were generous, we did limbo, the thriller dance, and saw a lot of creepy costumes–including star trek zombies. Yay!

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DragonCon Day 2, Saturday
Karl arrived during the wee hours of the morning and we went out on our own to see some of our various Star Trek, BattleStar, and Guild idols. We saw the tail end of the DragonCon Parade which was super cool. There were so many great costumes at con, some of my favorite costumes were made out of cardboard! I believe our first stop was at the Walk of Fame, a giant room with a no photography policy that housed all of the celebrity guest doing autographs. Autographs were pretty pricey with an average price of $20-30 each. From what I gather, these prices are set by DragonCon and I’m assuming that since DragonCon pays most of the guest to come, or at least provides them with rooms and travel cost the con tries to make back some of its money by selling autographs. There is supposedly an area where some of the guest will sign for free from time to time, but I had no idea when or where it was. I was much more cool about getting to see my favorite celebrities this year than I was last year. Last year I told Karl and myself that I wasn’t going to go all fan-girl, but I couldn’t help bursting with excitment. This year I did a much better job of keeping it contained and felt like less of a dork. I was super exited to see so many different Star Trek acters. Our first autograph was by John DeLancie, who played ‘Q’ my all time favorite Star Trek character. We were a bit shy so we didn’t talk to him very long, but he was super nice and very cool. We next met with Brent Spiner, the actor that played ‘Data’ from Star Trek TNG and he was also super awesome. Karl got really excited and I think we both did fist bumps with Brent, or something silly like that. Fist bumps & handshakes became very common. 

We headed out and got in line for our first panel featuring the majority of the Star Trek the Next Generation cast including Armin Shimerman (Quark from DS9), and hosted by Garrett Wang (Lt. Kim from Voyager). We stood in line almost two hours, but had fun talking with the other fans. It was really awesome to see and hear the cast in person. Here’s a video I found that gives you a little peak.

I believe we tried getting in line for another Star Trek panel after this one, and after waiting 90 minutes the room ended up being 4 seats too short for us to get in. We quickly realized we would have to arrive at our favorite panels 1.5-2 hours early in order to actually get in. Our next big panel featured the cast of BattleStar Galactica and it was fantastic. The cast were funny. Richard Hatch was a very passionate and inspiring speaker, and Edward Olmos shared some really great stories that were so moving. What I enjoyed most were his comments on the relationship between Adama & Roslin, and how wonderful and powerful their relationship was.

We went to some of the different dealer rooms and I purchased a Star Trek insignia pin to wear to the Star Trek dance party that was later that night. We walked around and I photographed people in costume, and met up with some friends before heading to our room to get ready for a party. I actually managed to get Karl to loosen up and do quite a bit of dancing with me which was great. He’s always very hesitant to dance, claiming that he doesn’t know how, but I know that’s bogus because he danced wonderfully with me at his senior prom. Anyways, the dance party was fun. The music was mostly techno which was a little difficult to dance to, but lots of people had glow sticks of various varieties and were doing cool dance moves and tricks. Garrett Wang was there as the host of the party. He did a wonderful job! And he got his groove on with the glow sticks and had some sick moves. He was very friendly and I got really excited when he was doing his dance thing right beside Karl and myself. After being at the party for about 2 hours or so we headed downstairs to the MMO party and where we got to see Sandeep and Jeff Lewis from The Guild. I think they left fairly soon after we got there, but we had fun dancing to more varied music, and watching people in a variety of awesome costumes dance and act out various signature moves. We walked around after having our dancing fill and at 1:30 in the morning found a concert by Voltaire that was just about to start. We stayed for the first song which was awesome and then headed out since we needed to get sleep so we could get up early the next morning for more awesome stuff.

TBC…