Dragon Con 2017 – After Action Report
DragonCon 2017
So I went to my first DragonCon in 2001. I skipped ’02 and ’03. Went to ’04, ’05, ’06, ’07, ’08. Skipped ’09 and ’10. Went to ’11, ’12, ’13, and ’14. Skipped ’15, went to ’16 and now ’17. That’s 12 years of cons, which kinda blows my mind.
[image error]The Amazon Warriors – one of the phenomenally funny group cosplays I saw this year.
As an event, it’s grown exponentially in the 15ish years since I started attending. I went to that first con in 2001 with my best friend from pilot training, Tammy Archuleta. I’d wager that our experience as first-timers was pretty common: that is to say, we had no idea what we were walking into. Unbeknownst to both of us, we were about to come home.
And that’s a feeling that has never changed. Despite all its faults, despite all the hordes of people. Despite the occasional asshole or groups of assholes. Despite my original “con family” slowly having to decrease their attendance due to real life, totally valid reasons, when I walk in through the front doors of the Hyatt Regency Atlanta and see the logo projected onto a floor teeming with Stormtroopers, Hogwarts students, Na’avi, and scions of House Lannister… I’m home.
Wednesday, 30 August 17
The rumors are true. Wednesday is, indeed, the new Thursday. We hopped a flight from Baltimore at some ungodly hour of the morning and arrived in Atlanta some time around 10am. The good news was that the MARTA was totally uncrowded, even with our luggage. We had zero problems getting to Peachtree Center Station, and emerged into daylight to see something that looked eerily like Tuesdays of years past. The Atlanta streets teemed with workday traffic, mixed heavily with people already rocking the cosplays. The party had already begun.
Once again, we stayed at the Westin Peachtree Plaza. Due in part to Hurricane Harvey, we had some cancellation questions with our reservation. After we checked in, I asked to speak with a manager to ask these questions. Shoutout to the manager, Casey Ladner, who not only answered my questions, but saw me reimbursed on the spot. He also FULLY refunded my friend Marisa’s reservation(including the non-refundable deposit!), since she couldn’t get out of Houston in time to come to DragonCon. Thanks for being a standup guy, sir. And thanks to the Westin for enabling him to make that call.
Even though we were a solid 5 hours earlier than standard check in time, our room was ready. Once again, the Westin went above and beyond and let us check in. So up to the room we went, and proceeded to kick off our “grown up vacation” in the best of styles.
By taking a nap. It was glorious. Those of you with kids and/or variable work schedules will understand.
After our nap, I got notification of some of our friends filtering in. We met up with Mike Massa and his lovely wife, who were staying in the room next door. He, along with Chris Smith, joined us for lunch/dinner (meals at DragonCon are often eaten at off times, it seems) at the incomparable Meehan’s. While there, our friend Seth (best man at my wedding six years ago!) joined us, and the party began to grow.
We wandered over to the Hyatt bar and met up with a few other friends, including my mentor and senior author, John Ringo. For those of you waiting with bated breath, yes, John, Chris, and I did discuss our upcoming work Gunpowder and Embers. I think you’re going to be happy with the result. More to come on that soon.
We had started talking on the Hyatt smoking deck, but an enthusiastic partier with a drum showed up and started to drown out our conversation, so we took the party upstairs to Chris’s room. There we hung out, talked books and plots and various other things until about 2, when we decided we should probably start pacing ourselves and go to bed. There were, after all, 5 days of con left to go. 
