One of the things we discussed throughout the Dragon Con weekend this year was how it feels (fair or unfair) that Dragon Con makes very small, incremental changes so that you don’t always notice them in the moment. Looking back, though, you can see how certain things have improved or changed. This section is less an airing of grievances and more a hope for a quicker change.
Attendance
Capping the attendance. I actually think having maybe 65,000 people might be a number closer to what would work best, but overall I think where we are is alright enough (75,000). I’m hopeful they will keep it around/near this value for the near future. And unless some other hotels are added in the area, I’m not sure they can support much more.
Loading the Panels
Load the rooms earlier. Please. There were multiple times this year and in previous years where they didn’t start loading the rooms for the next panel until there was 10 minutes left. It didn’t take 20 minutes for the previous panel to clear out. The biggest problem is that you make it so that people miss the beginning of the panel they just stood in line for an hour (or more), which honestly shouldn’t happen.
Badges
Mail us our badges. While the badge pick up process is much smoother these days than it was 10 years ago, I think we’re well past the point of having to fight those lines. When we were driving around looking for a parking spot, I saw the line for Saturday badge pick up was outside of the Sheridan and down the block. I know people have this fear some kind of mass fake badge market will crop up, but I’m not sold on that being the reason to not do it.
College Football
College Football Kickoff Game (or whatever it is called these days) – Since Dragon Con is on Labor Day weekend it is always going to share the weekend with something in downtown Atlanta. I’m not sure anything can be done about that. However, over the last 15+ years the Kickoff Game has also been on Labor Day. That made a ton of sense as you want to highlight the beginning of your season and Atlanta is a mecca for college football.
Now things have changed. We have this weird Week Zero thing where we get a handful of games but for some reason it doesn’t count as opening weekend. So here’s the solution:
Have the Kickoff Game on Weekend Zero!
It would not only help Dragon Con and downtown Atlanta by not having multiple BIG events on top of each other, it would allow the hotels in the area to have back to back BIG weekends… which feels like a win-win to me. Who wouldn’t want to be booked solid for 10+ days. The networks can still build this up as the BIG thing and with the sheer number of teams, Labor Day weekend will still have plenty of potentially good games.
And let’s face it, those fans who are coming to see their team play would come regardless of if it is a 3 day weekend or a regular one.
Note, if this did happen, I would be slightly disappointed to never have the experience of visiting fans from Missouri or Mississippi looking around with the odd look of “what in the world is going on around here” from all the cosplayers.
Also, this is something completely out of Dragon Con’s control. It is more about me putting it out into the universe and hoping!
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If you haven’t already, you can check out my two previous blogs about my experience at this year’s Dragon Con:
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I’m thankful we have Dragon Con in our backyard. And there isn’t a year that goes by I don’t wish I would have found a couple of hundred dollars in order to get an Eternal Pass all those years ago! Looking forward to next year.
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John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.
He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!
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