Day 1 - Registration and Preview
Thursday, August 28th
Hello. I am reporting to you from Dragoncon 2008, a HUGE science fiction/fantasy convention in Atlanta, Georgia. Here, I describe my experience after arriving in Atlanta at about 3:30 pm EDT.
After checking in at the Quality Inn Hotel, located about 10 miles NE of downtown Atlanta, I headed for the Chamblee Marta rail station just a few miles from my hotel. Once there, a nice person assisted me in using the ticketing machine to purchase rail passes. Here, you can use cash or a credit card to purchase a number of ticket options. I chose 10 tickets which are good for 5 convention days. I boarded the train and was off for the Peachtree Center Station.
Once I arrived at Peachtree, I found myself underground with a number of exits available. I took the one that led me to a food court. One amazing feature is a VERY long and scary escalator that rides up to a lobby. After getting turned around, I finally found my way to the Hyatt Hotel. A woman at the Dragoncon Information booth told me that the line to registration was around the hotel block. I found the end of the line and waited for oh about an hour or so. The line entered the building at the registration hall. Inside, the line snaked around and ended where I went to the booth with my name range and picked up my badge. I also picked up a convention guide (mostly guest photos). I missed the program book. I felt I did not need it because I had already prepared a schedule from online panel information sources.
Once I had my badge, I went to a flyer table in the registration hall to unload the MTL flyers and cards. I thinking, I’m probably going to need more later, from what I have heard about the number of pre-registrants. There’s a Fed-Ex Kinkos there in case I need to make more flyers.
I then went on a self-guided tour of the four hotels, starting with the Hyatt Hotel. I then visited the Marriott, just across the street from the Hyatt to the east. To the east of the Marriot is the Hilton. There I had a number of panels scheduled from the space, science and skeptic tracks. I would be spending most of my time there.
Last, I visted the Sheraton, located a block away to the south of the Hilton. The Sheraton is the location for the BritTrack panel programming in the Valdosta room. Now, having successfully marked off all my panel rooms, I felt confident that my weekend would go very well, but could see that I would be doing a lot of walking and hotel hopping. I headed on back by rail to Chamblee Station and drove home at a good hour at around 10:00 pm.
Here’s a picture of my hotel, just outside my room.
Quality Inn Atlanta GA
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