Dragon Con 2024 Review

 

Dragon Con 2024  Aug 29- Sep 2

So this was my first Dragon Con and my first Atlanta con. Dragon Con is the third largest con in the world and you can definitely tell. Dragon Con uses five hotels and two other buildings so that's seven buildings in total. Now not all seven of these buildings are for like panels and main event stuff. The Courtyard Marriot hotel is just for picking up your badge. The Westin has panels and a couple parties in there. From what I remember this is where most of the gaming and horror related panels were held, but whenever I went in this building it was never crowded. It's very easy to forget it's there. The Hilton, the Marriot Marquis, and the Hyatt Regency are where majority of the crowds are.

The Hilton has panels like all of the buildings, but they're most known for hosting most of the fan photoshoots. On the bottom level of the Hilton there are two outdoor patio levels. They have these huge staircases and that's where the cosplay meetups are. I've seen this so many times in cosplay music videos over the years and it was really great to see them in person. This area also has a DJ booth set and you can people here partying during the day and night.

The Marriot Marquis is where almost everyone is. If you've seen any videos of Dragon Con then I know you have seen that cool atrium shot of the hotel. This main floor area is where everyone likes to show off their cosplays and the crowd is huge, there's a little balcony area on this floor. I forgot where it's called but there's a dj up there and people party up there. This hotel is also where a lot of the main events are held as well.

The Hyatt Regency is really just another place where people hang out. There are panels in there too. I think this is where the diversity and art tracks were. 

As for the actual convention itself. First I'll start with the staff and organization. This is a very well organized con. Might be the best one I've ever been to. Despite how insane the attendance was, it was reported to be over 70,000, lines moved quickly. When I went to pick up my badge I was expecting the worst. The line wrapped around two buildings and went across the street, but despite how crazy long that long was in line for twenty to thirty minutes. The line was moving and the same for when I went to the wrestling show on Thursday night. I didn't talk to much of the staff there and security was alright, just a little annoying one night, but that's all so I'm giving this category a 10/10.

Environment. So for the overall feel of the con when you're not going to any panels or anything like that it can be overwhelming but I also like it. I like being around so many other nerdy people and just seeing all of the crazy cosplays everywhere and also just seeing people chilling outside of each of the hotel, but at times it did feel like it was just too much for me at times. The three big hotels I mentioned earlier are connected by skywalks and these got congested on Saturday and Sunday. I remember at one point traffic from the Hyatt to the Marquis just stopped and we were slowly shuffling through. That was annoying. Also for black cosplayers to let you know despite it being the third biggest con in the world and the US and being in Atlanta there's not a lot of us at this convention. You will see us sprinkled throughout the con, but this was by far the whitest con I've ever been to, but there are some places where you're guaranteed to find other black people. In the Marriot Marquis on the second floor with the balcony the DJ space there you can find some black people and in the Hilton photoshoot areas that I mentioned earlier you also find a lot of us there and that's one hundred percent because these are the only two spaces at the con where you'll hear some hip-hop and Caribbean music. 

I give it a 9/10.

Events and Panels

Now Dragon Con has a lot to do. A lot! As I mentioned briefly earlier I went to a wrestling match on Thursday night. WWE wrestler Rikishi hosted this. It was in one of the big ballrooms and it had TVs for people in the back to still be able to see the action though those displays were constantly going in and out. The show itself was a lot of fun. The first match was nothing special, but the two after were really fun. They had female wrestlers and a battle royale. The battle royale was so much fun. The show was three hours long, but there was no way I was going to stay for that long so I left for another event they had that night which was the bunny hutch. I heard the Bunny Hutch had a lot of hype over the years but once I got there it was kind of wack. The bunny hutch is Dragon Con's PlayBoy bunny  party/costume contest. Most of the women there are wearing bunny variant cosplays and some of the men wear Hugh Hefner cosplays. I didn't like it because of the music. It was mostly just EDM music which I never liked and when a DJ I liked came on, Dimeeach I was expecting the hip-hop, afrobeats, and R&B to come up and a little bit did, but it was mixed with EDM and dubstep so I left.

I did attend a few traditional panels. I went to a writing panel with some best-selling authors. That was nice. I peeked into one of the diversity track panels and on Saturday I went to a black geeks panel. I got  there a bit late so I don't remember much of it other than during the Q&A someone asking about how to get the next generation into nerd culture and one of the responses was bringing to events like this. I remember feeling welcomed and warmth afterwards. I also attended two photoshoots. On Saturday I went to the horror photoshoot and that was a lot of fun. I saw some amazing cosplays and even two other cosplayers who were from the same show as me. I went as Kitty from Courage the Cowardly Dog and I ran into a Eustace and a Muriel. On Sunday I attended the Black Geeks meetup and that was by far the climax of the con for me. You know how I mentioned earlier how this what the whitest con that I ever been to, in that moment it didn't feel like it. We had hundreds of black people filling two staircases for the photoshoot. It was amazing just being around all these nerdy black folk. It was just hot though. The horror one too.

Dragon Con also had a night at the aquarium on Saturday night. This event you had to pay for, but I think it was worth it. The Georgia Aquarium was decorated with an Animal Crossing theme. There were plushies from the series, cardboard print outs and more. This might have been my first time at an aquarium too. The environment was great and it was very neat to see all the sea creatures though I missed the jellyfish and a lot of people were in cosplay too. This was a great area to take pictures. Afterwards I went to an offsite afterparty, but like the Bunny Hutch it just played EDM so I wasn't feeling it. I also went to the hall where the celebrities were and got to meet Mike Coulter which was cool. He was in a bit of a rush though because he had a panel coming up. Overall Dragon Con event experience is great. They have a ton of panels, workshops, photoshoots, and parties, though for me the parties were the weakest part. Really only the DJ area in the Hilton was fun to me, but they stopped having music after a while during the night.  Events get an 8.5/10

Gaming

For a con so damn big I was surprised by how much the gaming room sucked at this con. All the games are located in the America's Mart second building. They have arcade games, console games, tables for trading card games, and the second level is for tabletop. The video game selection was so small. I've seen smaller cons like Otakon with more video games. It was very disappointing. This is really a 4/10.

Merch

So the Vendor's Hall and Artist Alley at Dragon Con is located in a separate building called America's Mart. This is by far the biggest merch hall I've ever been in. It's four stories high. The first three floors are the vendors and the fourth floor is the Artist Alley. To me though there was so many floors I think the selection wasn't all that interesting and I know it varies by people's personal interests. I remember seeing some furry equipment like tails, ears, and paws, and there were t-shirts, some retro video games, a few plushies, keychains, and trading cards. I know there were more, but that's all I can remember at the moment. The Artist Alley on the other hand was more disappointing. It looked like it was all comic book artists and they didn't have any that I liked. It felt too corporate and underwhelming and I know I wasn't the only one because both times that I went up there there were hardly any other people there. I did find out after the con that my favorite artist GDBee was there, but I was swear I didn't see her both times I went and when I asked another artist there at their booth they told me it was pretty much only comic book artists there.  This section only gets a 5/10 for me.

Food

Dragon Con is located in the downtown area of Atlanta. The main place where congoers get food is in the underground food court area that connects the three main hotels. This food court has stuff you'd see in any mall food court and that doesn't appeal to me. I only ate there once because I didn't feel like going anywhere else. There's also another food court that the community calls the secret food court even though it's not that hard to find. The secret food court is in Truist Plaza branched off from one of the skywalks. Each time I went in there they only had three restaurants open, one was a pastry place, a Dunkin Donuts, and the other was a deli so it really only had one real restaurant. The deli was fine and had the cheapest food out of any of the nearby places. Outside in the immediate downtown area there was a Hooters a fried chicken place called Gus's. That's really good. I had it before when I was in Austin, Texas, a Waffle House, and I spotted a couple of other diners around the area and there were a few food trucks too. I ate at a couple places outside the con as I don't like to be in the con area for everything the whole weekend and I can't judge those spots in relation to the con as that's a whole city's worth of food. Food I just give a 5/10.

Overall Dragon Con is a great con. It is confusing to navigate. I constantly had my GPS on to find each building and the crowd can be overwhelming sometimes but there's a huge amount to do and see at this con so that I recommend everyone go at least once.