It came, it saw, it kicked our ass.
Ahhh, Dragon Con. What a ride.
John and I got home around 2:30 this morning, just in time to prepare for Hurricane Irma. Of course, being veteran Floridians, that entails a lot of derisive snorts followed by grudgingly buying some bottled water, because hysterical weathermen have no power here.
(Before you chastise me, yes, yes, we'll be prepared. Promise.)
Now to the important stuff: DRAGON CON.
They predicted a record-breaking 82,000 attendees this year, and the final tally put it just over 80,000. From a literal "boots on the ground" perspective, I can tell you the crowd level felt the same as last year's 77,000, no worse, but I will say the "drunken carousing" level was turned up to eleven.
In my 7 years of reporting on Dragon Con I've seen a lot of drunk nerds, but this year was different. This year, every single night - including Thursday - I witnessed folks actively being sick right on the con floors and hallways. It was puke city, y'all. And maybe it was my own bad luck of always being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I definitely got the impression folks were drinking more this round. If so, then I'd chalk it up to current events and/or DCon newbies who just haven't learned to pace themselves.
That said, drunk nerds tend to be happy drunks, so other than crowds occasionally having to shuffle through vomit (
gaaaaaak) and some of my photos being spoiled by cosplayers so sloshed they tipped sideways from the flash, it was mostly all good. I say "mostly" because Saturday night there were two cosplayers
hospitalized after being hit by chairs thrown from the Marriott 10th floor balcony. They still haven't caught the jerks who threw the chairs, but I have to assume alcohol was involved - and can only hope they were NOT with the con. (Happily the cosplayers will make a full recovery - and one even credits her Loki headdress with saving her life!)
The chair-throwing incident is especially chilling considering John and I were there, on the Marriott floor with those cosplayers, just 30 minutes beforehand. We left early that night around 1AM, though usually we'd have stayed a couple hours longer. If you've been there you know it's hard to move in those crowds, much less dodge falling objects, so that's scary stuff.
And now that I've brought you down with all the BAD news, rest assured it's going to be all good from here on out: nothing but great geekery, silliness, and happy times with 80,000 of our closest friends.
"DAAAA Bearz."
(You know how many other cons have fans set up a camp table in the lobby and sit around drinking beer? NONE OF THEM. Just Dragon Con, baby.)
As always, John and I spent most of our time taking photos, but this year we also went to a few costuming panels (including one on how to incorporate puppetry into your cosplay), took our Jawa and BB-8 out for a spin, attended an Overwatch meetup, covered a fashion show, chatted with lots and LOTS of you readers - both at the official meet and throughout the weekend - and even stayed out 'til 4:30 in the morning to see the Steam Powered Giraffe concert. (AW YEEEEAH.) We also did some shopping, browsed the art, and gawked at all the celebs in the Walk of Fame.
[CUTE STORY: Sean Gunn caught me staring - because I *may* have made our group stand within spying distance of him for a little too long, because I love Sean and he's my favorite in Guardians 2 - and then when I grinned at him, all embarrassed, he gave me the biggest, sweetest smile ever in return and made my whole dang con. WHAT.]
