Wednesday, July 27, 2011
D*C 2011 – 36 Days away and counting!
As always there is lots going on this year. There will be the traditional Thursday Night Dinner, the Friday Night Poor Man’s Pub Crawl, the Black Bunny Crew will march in the parade on Saturday morning and the Masquerade viewing on Sunday night - plus the thousands of other convention events going on during the weekend.
I have heard from some people about Thursday night dinner. Right now there is a three-way tie between Meehan’s, Max Lager’s and Benihana all close to the three main host hotels. I will need to know a pseudo-concrete number by August 22 to make sure the restaurant has room for us. If you haven’t let know you are going, please do as soon as possible.
The Poor Man’s Pub Crawl is currently FULL. We have seven rooms participating and expect approximately 35 people to walk the crawl. Due to the large numbers this year, ONLY people associated with a Pub Crawl room and judges will be walking the Crawl. I will be tapping a few people (very few) as impartial judges. If you are interested, let me know.
The Black Bunny will be walking in the D*C parade on Saturday morning. I am hoping for a big turnout. If you plan on walking with us, let me know and I will add you to the list. I just want to make sure I have enough parade ribbons for everyone.
The Masquerade viewing on Sunday night will probably be planned…… sometime that Sunday morning. It will be word of mouth, or email, or text, or Facebook, or Twitter, or Google+ but it will not be on MySpace. I really don’t know yet.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Dragon*Con 2009 – Day 1
All I can say is thank goodness Darrell, Jesse and I took two vehicles to Dragon this year and that I took a load over to Jesse’s the night before. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have all fit.
It was a frantic Thursday morning packing all the ‘little things’, taking care of the babies (the 4-legged, fury kind) and packing up the vehicle. We finally made it to Jesse’s around 8:45am. Our next stop was the Chick-fil-a at Eagle’s Landing. After a good breakfast, we stopped by the QT to top off the gas tanks and then we were on our way to the Marriott.
It was an easy drive into the city and we reached the Marriott without incident. We unloaded both vehicles in the Marriott pull through. Darrell stayed with the luggage while Jesse and I went to park the cars at our favorite AmeriPark Parking Deck. At this time, I must point out that the Marriott Bell Staff really needs to practice loading luggage onto the carts. If they would just unload the vehicle and then load the cart, it would cut down on the number of times they had to unload-reload-readjust-add luggage-move this piece-unload–add luggage, etc. It also would have saved my Diet Cokes from taking a dive across the Marriott drive. Then again, maybe there is a soda vortex located the luggage drop-off of the Marriott. I personally witnessed 2 separate incidents of drinks rolling across the drive and neither of those was mine.
Anywho, we parked the cars and headed to the lobby for check-in. There were already several bell carts full of luggage waiting in the lobby but the lines for check-in were short and moving well. It was only 10 minutes before I was at the counter. Luckily, the rooms were ready and they were on the 9th floor. The 9th floor is the key here. When we made the reservations, we specifically requested the 9th or the 11th floor. The 10th floor of the Marriott is an open meeting/event space.
Let me explain. The elevators in the Marriott are divided to go to different floors. There is one bank of elevators for the 1-17 floors, one for the 18 – 41 floors and one for the 42-47 floors. The 10th floor is special. It is the only floor that ALL elevators stop on – no matter which one you are on. From the 10th floor, there is a centrally located, spiral staircase that goes up to the 11th floor and down to the 9th floor. Therefore, we could take any elevator to the 10th floor and simply walk down to the 9th floor. It doesn’t sound like that big of a deal and probably isn’t until you have been waiting for a elevator for 30 minutes and are ready to commit a felony just to get someone off the elevator so you can on. But I digress….
We were swiftly checked-in and the luggage was taken to the rooms. Did I mention that we had so much luggage that it looked like we were moving into the Marriott for a 3 month stay? You laugh, but I am not exaggerating. Once in the room, Kindra and Callie walked over from the Hyatt and joined us. They had left SC at 4am to get into Atlanta before the rush hour traffic and they nearly made it. Regardless, they arrived before we did.
We talked and caught up on everything. I organized the room. Organizing the room is a very important chore if (1) you have as much ‘stuff’ as we do in a room and (2) you expect great numbers to be gathering in your room from time-to-time.
It wasn’t long until Paul, Bob, Steve, Hal and Anita joined us in the room.
Since there were several folks who had not been to the top of the Marriott, we decided to take a ride up and check it all out. The skyline of Atlanta is awesome as always but in the Marriott, it is the interior view that is a sight to behold.
Once we were back to the room, Bob wanted to don the new Emperor mask. This is a project of Jesse and Darrell’s that I have blogged about previously. Everyone wanted to see it, so the boys went down to Jesse’s room to ready Bob for the unveiling and the girls stayed in my room. It wasn’t very long until everyone came parading back in. I will admit. The mask looked good. Real good. Many pictures were taken.
Bob wasn’t the only one to take his turn in the Emperor’s mask. Hal had his turn to play as well…
Finally, we decided to start walking over to Benihana’s for the traditional Thursday night dinner. On the way, we passed the Alabama Garrison’s trailer transport they brought to Dragon. We all agreed. We want one of these!!
We arrived a little early at the restaurant and slowly everyone came trickling in. The Thursday night dinner is the first time you get to see a lot of people – sometimes since last year. It’s a great time. Once everyone arrived, we occupied 2 over-full tables. There were 17 of us, counting me. A great turn out!
After dinner, several of us headed to Pre-Reg for badge pickup. It was a long 2 ½ hour wait but the sun was down and it was not so hot. The hardest part about it was staying awake. Darrell and I arrived back at our room around 11:30pm. I took my over-the-balcony picture for the evening and headed to bed. I was exhausted!
Monday, August 31, 2009
D*C 2009
Dragon-Con is upon us and I am still trying like crazy to finalize things! I just wanted to post a few main bits of information before the insanity commences.
1) If you purchased a D*C membership through me and have any issues picking up your badge, call me on my cell phone. Send me an email if you need the number.
2) Thursday Night Dinner - Benihana's @ 7:30pm. Currently attending are: Me, Darrell, Jesse, Bob, Kris, Jane, Jay, Shane, Steve, Liz, Kindra, Hal, Anita, Mike (?). I think that is everyone. If you plan on attending and your name is not on the above list, let me know asap so I can change the reservation number.
3) Pirate Tea will be at 6:30pm on Friday night. If you are walking with the Bunny in the parade on Saturday morning you need to be there. If you cannot be there, let me know so I can get you your information and parade ribbon. This will also be the beginning of the Poor Man's Pub Crawl. If you would like to participate (and have a room at con) and have not signed up, please do so as soon as possible.
I think those are the biggies.
OK, my plan is too blog at con. I honestly do not know if that will happen or not.
We'll see :)
Monday, August 3, 2009
D*C 2009 Dinner
Since, D*C is less than a month away, and it is time to make reservations for the Thursday night dinner.
I have already written about this earlier in the year. Here is a link to the previous post.
It lists possible restaurants and links to the menu's. Please respond as soon as possible!
