Dragoncon 2009 Recap

I figured I’d better go ahead and make a decent post about the weekend before I start to forget LOL

Thursday morning we managed to get out of town on time, even after going to Starbucks! Yay.
Check-in at the hotel was crowded, it gets more crowded every year, more people tend to come in early these days, I guess. It took 2 bell carts (as usual) to get us inside, with me carrying my hoopskirt so it wouldn’t get smushed.

We were on the 8th floor this year, and I swear there was something wrong with the thermostat in our room, it was either hot or absolutely FREEZING… more often it was freezing, no in between. Kinda sucked but whatever.

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Once we got everything up to the room, we headed to pick up our badges. We followed the crowd over to the Sheraton, and that was the only time I went over there the whole weekend. Pre-reg line started out ok… we were flying at a decent pace through the regular line, up until we were about 2 or 3 rows away from entering our “name row” – the line for people with last names W-Z. It was at that time the volunteers yelled to the entire room that if your name started with W-Z, come on up to the line. It was a giant MESS. People got out of line from all over the room, converging on the W-Z line from different points making multiple lines and gumming up the entire process. We stood in line for an hour after that. WTF? What a mess. Please don’t do that anymore, Dcon! Reading other stuff now I see that our wait was not as bad as others that night – we waited about an hour and a half in all, others have said on average 3 hours.

We ate dinner at Hard Rock after that, then went back to the room, napped, and I put on Sally Jupiter instead of Marvel Girl like I’d planned. I wanted to get the evil boots out of the way LOL I knew – especially after the parade on saturday – I wouldn’t want to put them on if my feet were hurting in anyway.

To go back a little ways, I got a bad migraine on tuesday, one of those that pretty much knocks me off my feet and makes me completely useless. By thursday I was better, though it was still lingering, and it lingered until about mid-day friday.

We went over and got Ash checked into her room in the hyatt – Cath was stuck on the interstate for a couple of hours because of a wreck, so we didn’t see her that night.

I wore SJ until my feet hurt too bad to deal with the boots anymore… we went upstairs and I took my boots off as soon as we were off the elevator LOL That happened several times over the weekend!

Friday I overslept, but I think I needed it. I didn’t get up til nearly 10. We got up and got dressed, and I finally got to wear Anne. I hadn’t even tried it all on completed yet so I was really excited. Kinda last minute, Chase bought a doublet from Museum Replicas to wear with me as Henry, so I was doubly excited about that, I love when we get to match 🙂

I am so pleased with how it turned out… I do still need to fix my hoopskirt issue… I’ve had problems with the ruffle on it being too long with Belle since I got it. I thought I’d adjusted it enough before Dcon but apparently not, as it’s still too long in places. It’s time to take all the ruffles off, I think, and completely re-do them.

photo from Derek, he took some really great shots of it!!

photo from lianat… chase’s expression cracks me up. Second pic is from EBK!

I would have stayed in it but I had to change for the Disney photoshoot… plus I wanted to eat lunch and I didn’t want to eat in Anne! LOL So I put on Sleeping Beauty. I ended up skipping my heels I usually wear with it, and I wore my belle flats. That made me about 3 inches too short for the dress and I got stepped on a lot, oops LOL
The Disney photoshoot got kicked out of the area it was supposed to be in so we had to run up to the 10th floor.

I changed immediately afterwards because I was tired of wearing long skirts by that point. I decided to put on Marvel Girl – something easy, so we could go in the dealer’s rooms.

Pic is from Glenn. I got NO pics of it on our own camera. I thought I’d wear it again that weekend, but my schedule got so messed up by sat, I ended up not having time for it again.

Finally it was time to go change into Poison Ivy, which was an adventure. I had dyed tights to wear with it, so I wouldn’t have to paint my legs. Well I got in the bathroom and started painting… and it didn’t match. Dunno what the difference was, because I dyed it to match what I’d tested on my arm with the makeup, and it had matched pretty good then, I guess something was different. Well it took forever to get the makeup on, doubly so since I now had to paint my legs. Ash was my saviour and did all the work on my back and legs where I couldn’t reach. But because of all that I ended up running really late to the Poison Ivy/Harley shoot. I didn’t have time to fix my wig and I didn’t have time to go back and get my lower knees after I put the boots on and saw they didn’t quite go as high as I expected.

The Harley/Ivy shoot was fun, though. I hung out in the lobby for a little while after the shoot just to make painting myself green worth it LOL I should have done a couple of other costumes to take advantage of the fact I’d spent 2 hours painting myself green, oh well!

After that we ordered chinese, which was yummy and lazed around in the room. Chase came up and put on his new Clone pilot (which we also didn’t get any pics of) and I put on Huntress and we went back downstairs… sans camera 🙁 I’m asking for a new little point-and-shoot for christmas, since Chase has taken over my poor little rebel and has it loaded down with various camera gear. It makes it hard to carry when we’re both in costume.

Friday night wasn’t terribly fun, my Huntress shoes started to kill after about a half hour (they’re too big to start with!) and I was still tired from my migraine… so we didn’t stay out late, we went upstairs (and I pulled my boots off as soon as I was off the elevator!) and crashed early.

Sat morning I got up and got into Scarlet Witch. Chase was meeting up with a photographer friend of his who lives in Atlanta, so Ash and I walked down to the staging area. It sprinkled a little that morning, so I was glad for having the cape to wrap up in.

found on flickr. I look so lost LOL Also me and George Perez!!

The parade was fun except for the rogue van who disrupted the superhero section and chased people off the street. wtf!

After the parade we did the SOSI group photoshoot and some of the shots turned out super cool:

By then my feet were KILLING me, like I think the worst they’ve ever hurt at dcon! LOL amazing I know. So Ash and I went and grabbed lunch, went back to the room (I pulled my boots off after we got off the elevator… again LOL) and I took a nap until Chase came back up.

I put on Rogue because it had the most comfortable shoes I brought. Ash and I shopped for a long time, just wandering around the dealer’s rooms and taking it easy. We each bought an Edward action figure. We ended up storming through the wrong dealer’s room looking for a place that had 2… and finally realised we were in the wrong room and ran across to the other one with 5 minutes left before it closed and found our 2 Edwards LOL

I ended up staying in Rogue too long, and throwing my schedule out of whack! Our friend Melissa drove down from baltimore for the weekend and she got into town around 5 that afternoon, so I threw on normal clothes and we went and ate at one of the restaurants, which took a reaaaally long time (but it was really fun).

I put on the new Wonder Woman and the girls and I went out and looked for things to do.

I love how it fits! the only issue we had was that the gold chrome paint didn’t work right (it looked brown!) so we had to just paint over it with regular gold spray paint since we didn’t have time for anything else. The same kind of paint, in silver, worked amazing on the gauntlets. Chase is going to tackle it all again after we get moved.

I don’t even remember what we did Saturday night, really. I know myself, cath and mel ended up sitting around a table in the bowels of the hyatt for about an hour just talking and whatnot.
We went to a concert after that – I think it was Cruxshadows? I went to sit down after a little while because my feet were hurting, then went outside to get a drink of water… only to find out I couldn’t go back in! So without my phone to tell the girls I was outside, I just headed back to the room and texted them from there.

Sunday morning we had our Patrick Stewart pic. I got up and put on my basic Zatanna stuff on underneath my regular clothes, and had the rest of it in a bag. I thought our pic was at 11, and I’d heard they were moving folks through really fast – I figured I could change in the restroom and run over to the DC shoot, just a little bit late. Well we got down there and Ash picked up our ticket… and the time had been changed to 11:45. So we ended up standing in line and I missed the DC shoot. I was so bummed, I was REALLY looking forward to.
BUT! Patrick Stewart!

PStew pic DID go fast. We paid a bit extra to have all 3 of us in the photo, so when we all walked up he said, “ooh, a trio!” LOL 🙂

We got lunch and I went upstairs and put on Ame-Comi Wonder Woman. I went downstairs – I was meeting up with Ame Comi Donna Troy, but couldn’t find her. I was having a bit of a wardrobe malfunction so after taking some pics I ran and changed. I discovered that the problem was a piece of boning had popped out of its casing and it was JABBING me in the boob LOL It sounds funny but it SERIOUSLY hurt!
(and I also took my shoes (and shin guards!) off after I got off the elevator!)

So I was also bummed about missing her, because those would have been some cool shots 🙁

After another nap, I put on the new Black Canary… I was pretty pleased with how BC turned out! Some of my fav pics!

The gang went to watch the masquerade, and Chase and I went and grabbed a quick dinner. I was going to put Anne on again, so Chase and I could go get some nice shots (and my plan was to take advantage of a good number of people to be watching the masquerade, so light crowds). By the time we got back over the marriott it was packed! I really wanted to put Anne again but Chase talked me out of it, and I was worried about getting stepped on again. So I decided to put on last year’s Black Canary (which I’d only brought as backup) instead of rewearing WW or something, since it’s so comfy. Chase put on Green Arrow (sans mask, he didn’t feel like dealing with it.) It took us FOREVER to get into a pair of costumes we wore last year! My zipper pull broke off and we went through 4 types of glue before one finaly stuck. Chase also had to repair straps. We missed most of the masq, but we had a good time hanging out downstairs and just people-watching and talking to folks 🙂

Pic by uubergeek!

The girls called and said they were at the pirate party. I went and found them, and Cat and I left to wander a bit and along the way found the Mad Scientists’ ball… arc attack was amazing! We texted ash and melissa to come upstairs and see it.
After a while we went wandering around again, ended up in a concert, then some random hanging out.
eventually the girls started to get threatening texts from chase telling them to bring me back over the marriott because it was nearly 3AM LOL
So we headed back over and said good night… that was the best night of the con, it was fun 😀

Monday we slept in… I was going to put on Marvel Girl again but as usual on Monday I wasn’t feeling it. We went to Benihana for lunch, then saw Melissa off, since she had a long drive. Cath was busy making sure all the guests got out all right, so chase, ash and I did our last minute shoppiing. I did wear my dad’s Spock shirt he made for his costume back in the 80s, though!

That afternoon we went to Ikea and shopped. Came back to the hotel and napped, and then got up to go to dinner. Cath was going to go with us but needed to catch a shuttle to make her flight, so we said bye to her. We ate dinner at Five Guys, then had ice cream and went to Barnes and Noble, where I bought a book 🙂

We got back to the hotel and packed. Tuesday morning we were up early… the bellhop that morning was not quite as good at packing as the guy we had thursday – it took him 3 carts to get all of our crap downstairs LOL

So that was it. Sorry for any typos, I typed that up kinda fast. Hopefully will start having some photos up tomorrow…