Tag: DragonCon

Dragon Con – Day 4 Final Thoughts

Post author By Daryl Martin
Post date September 6, 2014
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By Day 4, we were Dragon Con’d out and ready to head home for some rest before starting the work week. We had no idea what kind of traffic to expect in Atlanta on a Memorial Day weekend as a lot of the other 60k Dragon Conners were also heading home. We skipped breakfast at the hotel and headed North on I-75. We stopped at Cracker Barrel for breakfast, then topped off the tank and resumed our northward journey. I was using Waze to navigate home and throughout Atlanta all we heard was “Watch out… police reported ahead” about every 45 seconds. They were out in force trying to catch people heading home a little faster than they ought to be.

With our first Dragon Con behind us, We thought we’d share a few of our thoughts and observations.

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Boardgames Travel

Dragon Con – Day 3

By Sunday, Joy and I had settled into a morning routine. Waking up around 6:30 and get showered and dress so we could run down to the lobby for a donut or bagel with some hot tea for me and a latte for Joy. Then it’s onto the shuttle to the Con. Our first stop for the day was to check out the artists’ gallery and comic illustrators at 10am. We had the good fortune of getting there early enough to get 3rd and 4th place in line. There was a group of Avengers roller-derby girls near the doors but we couldn’t tell if they were trying to get in or were just there to pose for photos.

Avenger Derby girls — Derby Girls Assemble!

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Boardgames Photography Travel Uncategorized

Dragon Con – Day 2

Today we tried to get up early enough to have breakfast down in the hotel restaurant but after walking around the buffet and seeing what kind of food they were offering for $20 person, we decided to just have bagels and fruit from the Starbucks counter again. We then took the shuttle from the hotel and went to the Con arriving a little after 8:30 a.m. The Dragon Con parade was today and it started at 10 AM. and the sides of the streets were already filling up. It was a beautiful morning so we hiked up to where the staging area was. The closer we got, the thinner the crowd became. We found a good spot on a hill where the parade would be marching up. The sun was going to be at our back and we had a nice soft pile of mulch to sit in. Win!

It was going to be about an hour before the parade started, so we sat down and I got my camera ready. I bought a new digital camera several months ago, a Panasonic Lumix LX7. It’s a great camera, almost a cross between a DSLR and a micro 4:3. It only has the one lens, but it has a large image sensor and full control over the aperture and shutter. The only problem is there’s no viewfinder, which makes taking pictures in bright daylight a little hard. Fortunately for my birthday, Joy’s parents bought me an electronic viewfinder for it!

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Travel Uncategorized

Dragon Con – Day 1

Joy and I decided that this year for our birthday gift to each other and for our 10th anniversary, we would go to Dragon Con in Atlanta. If you’ve never heard of Dragon Con, it’s like Comic Con, just a little smaller and a lot closer. It’s a 4 day convention that spans 5 hotels in downtown Atlanta. There’s a parade, costume contests, parties, vendors, and panels on all manner of video/board games, movies, literature, fan films, comics, cartoons, and pop culture. It’s basically Nerdigras!

This year’s Dragon Con took place over the Memorial Day weekend and started on the Thursday before. So we hired a house/dog sitter, made reservations, chose the panels and events we wanted to see and hit the road Thursday after work. We had a big weekend ahead of us, and since we didn’t arrive in Atlanta until around 11pm, we tried to get a good night’s rest.

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