Our Yearly Vacation to Atlanta

Dragon con was a blast this year! It’s always fun to go and hang out with friend’s but this year we both dressed up both Friday and Saturday and while HOT, especially Friday’s costumes, was a lot of fun.  Don and I had planned on the Wreck it Ralph and Vanellope Von Shweetz costumes for Friday. We even ran into a Fix it Felix. Lara and someone else we know were going to the Archer shoot as Kreiger and Kreiger's virtual girlfriend so Lara met us in our room for us to all go to the shoot together.

While shopping on Saturday I decided I’d go ahead and buy things for the steampunk costume for next year. Don was taking a large box back to our room so I headed off with our friend’s Corey and

Carol to look around.  Corey was looking for a few things for his costume while Carol waited with me to try on Corset’s.  The second one was perfect, so now to find the rest of the outfit, which I did at the fourth shop minus the hat.  I didn’t have time to pick up a bunch of accessories after the hat shop so I figured it was ok because I was going to wear my Nightmare Before Christmas dress that night anyway.  That idea didn’t last long as Carol and Katrina talked me into using the steampunk stuff anyway.  As we were talking Don mentioned he didn’t have a costume for the night and our friend’s said hey we have 2 cloaks you should be Red Riding Hood and he could use my black wig from the Vanellope costume, and then they dared him to do it. Corey and Don went back into the shopping area in search for a t-shirt that would work for the costume. They came back with a perfect one. We went back to our separate hotels to change and Don went into the store there looking for a basket.  He got lucky and borrowed a picnic basket which had been used in a display.

 pictured with another Red Riding Hood

It was time to get me into the corset, which sounds simple but for people who’ve never done it, it was a bit tougher.  Thankfully You Tube had videos on how to lace your corset by yourself.   Don redid the corset and then we went to our friend’s hotel to meet up and get Don and Kevin their cloaks. Four of our friend’s were at the same hotel so we took pictures in the courtyard before going out to get dinner and head off to the hotels. We had planned on getting Lara or someone else to take our picture together but by the time we met up it was all but forgotten.  We went to the Marriott Marquis and outside it was a giant dance party which was a blast. I figured out who the guys were walking around with the speakers on their shoulders and it was Future Beat.  After a while we left and 5 of us went to get food while the other 4 went back to their rooms.

  Selfie with Lara unicorn

 Waiting in line for a midnight show

Sunday was rough for all of us.  We stayed out way too late so it was rough having to get up, pack, and check out.  We still had 4 hours to kill before going to the airport so we met up for lunch with everyone to say good-bye. After Lunch we split up Corey and Carol went back to their room, Kevin and Don went shopping, Lara and Shannon went to her group photo shoot, and Chris, Katrina, and I went to the autograph room.

Say Hi to Richard Hatch

Now here’s the fun part – Landing in Seattle 6 hours later only to realize I had left stuff in the drawer of the bedside table, like the car and house keys and my headphones. OUCH! I’ve never ever done something like that but here we were and we had to figure out what to do.  Our Brother in law drove out and brought us keys. We are lucky that our friend’s stayed through Monday so they could swing by and get my stuff, which is now being overnight shipped to me.  Moral of the story, ALWAYS check the drawers before leaving (which we normally do but for some reason didn’t this time).

Outside that snafu we had a fantastic time and are planning to meet up with everyone again next year, maybe even extending the trip to a full week. Can't wait to see what costumes everyone does. 

Dragon Con is coming soon!

I can’t believe in less than two weeks we’ll once again be in Atlanta for Dragon Con.  This year everyone is able to make it and it’s going to be a blast being all together again and the bonus is we were all able to find rooms in Downtown this year instead of the airport, no more 1 hour commutes in by transit or expensive taxi rides.  Granted we aren’t staying in any of the big 5 hotels but then for the cost of one room you need 6+ people to a room in order to afford it, so no Thanks.  We don’t spend much time in the room anyway so why a big fancy over-priced room when you can use that money to buy cool things.  I’m hoping our room has a fridge and kitchenette this year so we can store some food in there and skip some of the lines for food and have more time for panels, games, shopping or photo taking. Our original room did but I goofed and booked the wrong dates so not sure what kind of room we’ll have after we realized the mistake and changed to the correct dates.

The other thing I’m excited about is our long time friend from California is flying to Seattle the day before and will be going with us this year. I’m glad he’ll get to meet our other friends from Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama. Don may actually get to play games this year (which never works out other years we’ve gone) with Kevin going.  I’m hoping the panels list comes out in the next few days so we can start planning on what we must see; we usually only make 1 or 2 panels a day because of the line up times.

Every time we’ve gone I’ve always been a shorts and T-shirt girl but I was talked into dressing up this year and I’m working on that costume now.  We had talked about doing Steam punk this year with a couple of our friends but I couldn’t come up with anything I liked so my Cosplay friend suggested a character based on something I was watching and it all clicked.  Maybe next year I can go for Steam punk if I can find things I like this year to use with it.

Someone Don works with also goes with a group of his friends and this year he and my friend Lara are doing a costume together.  I can’t wait to see how that turns out for the Friday Night Archer party. Don and I talked about dressing up on Saturday since it’s the big day for costumes but his co-worker made a good point that we’d be constantly interrupted while we tried to hang out with our friend’s costume watching so we will dress up Friday instead. 

So this is the way to end the summer for us and we do it every year.  Maybe next year we will have our family and be able to introduce our child to our friends.  

All of us last year being goofy for the picture

What exactly is Dragon Con and why do you go?

As stated by the official website Dragon Con is “We are the largest multi-media, popular culture convention focusing on science fiction & fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film in the universe.” To us it’s so much more.

Yes, it is those things but also history, technology, science, engineering and the most important factor is Friends! We have friends all over the country and a good portion of them live in the south.  So every year we get together in Atlanta for Dragon Con if they can make it, even for a day (Don and I are there at least 4 days, having flown cross-country). Our friends drive in from Atlanta, Tennessee, and Alabama. We have a friend in Florida but they've never been able to make it. Dragon Con spans 6 hotels over downtown Atlanta and so the events are usually grouped into one hotel for the duration such as Doctor Who panels in the Hyatt or Star Trek related panels, contests, etc in the Weston. They also feature shopping for everything imagined and then some in the Americas Mart.  I really can’t wait to share Dragon con with our child and have them know all our friends. 

 

So cute posing with Captain America while her dad took pictures - Hoping that is us soon!

We absolutely love Dragon Con.  In fact our friends from Alabama were the first to tell us about it and upon finding out we had to plan to go the following year. WOW so much to do, we didn't make many panels that first year but we had fun shopping and watching the Cos-players and meeting up with our friends on Saturday. That first year was simply amazing for us as the one panel we did make (Farscape) led us to the autograph room where we had a great conversation with Gigi Edgley (wish we'd gotten pictures that first year instead of just autographs) and some of the cast who were on the panel.  What I like is the stars aren't usually pretentious and will have normal conversations about their work; granted the super-stars are pretty hard to get to due to the one hour of signatures and done so good luck!, better wake up at 6 and get in line by 7 for a 2 o’clock autograph session. I wanted Patrick Stewart last year and the line was around 3 blocks long (think New York city blocks) for a one hour session, um ya OK, off to do something else and I will have to live without meeting him. Last year we were thrilled to meet and talk with a few actors we really wanted to chat with and they were amazing and so are their upcoming projects (or past ones in some cases).   It sounds like we spend a lot of time fanning over the actors but actually we hit the autograph room once, usually Saturday unless someone we want to see is only available on Friday. We try to figure out the best time to go and hit the room and hope everyone we want to talk with is there, sometimes we aren't that lucky. The other must Hall to visit is the Art Hall where we usually meet up and chat with a friend of Don’s who sells her work during Dragon Con. So many different artists and kinds of art work from paintings to sculptures to metal work. The art hall is also where you’ll find the comics.

What else is great about Dragon con is the cos-play. One of my best friends (Lara Cupcake) is a cos-player and although considered amateur we think she does a fantastic job on her costumes from the design to re-imagining some of the characters. She been actively doing cos-play for cons’ for about a year and a half. Last year when we all went together and shared a room she had 4 costumes and the amount of work she puts into not just making those costumes but actually dressing in them for the day is phenomenal! Really cos-players do so much for fan support as they enjoy bringing a favorite character to life for everyone to enjoy seeing as they go from panels to contests and photo shoots or just walk about the streets in downtown. I don’t usually dress in anything except shorts and some tee from a show (Like Doctor Who, Firefly or Nightmare before Christmas). Next year that changes as I found a really fun steam punk inspired dress that I’ll be wearing on Saturday, as for the rest of the time I’m unsure if what I’d like to do with our friends as a group will work out. One thing to consider is just what you are cos-playing, Don did a Murloc one day last year and was super hoarse after making the sound all day/night.  That was one thing we all talked about as for our costumes this year was what we needed to be comfortable because it is Atlanta at the end of summer.

 Lara, me in the back, and Don on the way to the Convention

Saturday night is the night we all gather together and people watch.  We have a blast as the cos-players come and go.  It’s the night we take the most pictures of us with cos-players or each other being silly. A lot of times we all want to do different panels, signings, etc during the day so it’s our chance to just set aside time to all compare notes on the con events or things we've bought or saw.

Friends!

yep, Don photo bombed us - LOL.

Unikitty is AWESOME!

 Last year we were all staying out at an airport hotel but this year we actually managed to get hotel rooms downtown so that’s going to be a huge bonus over taking MARTA back to the airport, then a shuttle to the hotel, and having to carry all our stuff around all day. That makes us actually more into dressing up this year since we can always go change if we want to.   Also this year our friend Kevin from California is flying up here then the following day we will all fly to Atlanta.  I think he’s going to have a great time.  He’s never gone and he finally said yes, he’d love to go this year. I imagine we’ll actually play games in the game area this year; we talked about it last year but never actually went, and the year before we just walked around watching others play games. Don might even go do the midnight drumming as well since we don’t have to worry about catching the last train of the night back to the hotel. 

I sincerely hope this is our year our child finds us and would be thrilled! if we got to attend Dragon Con as a family.

Dragon Con 2014

Dragon Con in Atlanta was a blast the last 5 days. So many costumes, people, vendors, and panels.  We didn't make as many panels as we wanted to but we wouldn't change the time with friends for panels for anything.  We did make at least 1 panel a day though, along with shopping, hanging out with friends, and finally on Saturday we all gathered at one of the bars to people watch and take pictures of the costumes. 

We love going to Dragon Con but it's the people we see each year that makes it awesome and worth going to Atlanta in August and Labor Day weekend, no less.
This year I actually bought a piece of art work, although not what I thought I was going in to buy.  It's a Dragon print on metal and framed.  I also bought a couple books from relatively new authors, hoping I enjoy their work so I can continue to support their efforts.
Loved seeing the kids costumes that the parents matched and the ones who didn't.  The kids seemed to have  ton of fun getting all the attention for their choice of costume.
I didn't dress up but Don made an effort and then our hotel mate and friend had 4 different cosplay costumes. All were great but I still think my favorite was warrior snow white.
Until next year....