If I could propose to my fiancee at last year's Dragon Con, how could I possible top that? The answer is that with our preparations to finally tie the knot next month, we had this amazing opportunity to work together as a team, and although this year's trip had many ups and downs, we came through for one another in the end. For those that aren't familiar with the event, this being my third year in attendance, Dragon Con is a 60-70k attended convention in Atlanta, Georgia. Being hosted by 5 hotels, the convention is a 4 day event of non-stop cosplaying, drinking, and visiting with some amazing celebrities. As crazy as it sounds, I usually just go for the cosplaying. As it is with most conventions that host a big line up of celebrities like Stephen Amell and John Barrowman, they always seem hard to reach and the cost to meet them doesn't justify what you get out of the experience. But more on that later.
Although it tends to be an 8 hour trip from Ohio to Atlanta, I have never seen it as a burden. On the contrary, the build up of anticipation and the scenery are a wonderful experience before 4 days of music blasting in your ears day and night (and even the altitude changing and ear popping can't save you from that.) It truly is an experience that can open your eyes to a world of inspiration, and I cannot express enough how any convention, big or small, can make an everlasting impact on a person. As I had mentioned before about last year's convention, I had a life changing experience that will forever be ingrained into my being. I spent a lot of time putting together what I thought would be the perfect proposal and I made it a reality. My fiancee, Mandilyn, and I both now feel that Dragon Con is our get away and escape from reality for a few days. We even discussed how we both are not the vacationing type and how our honeymoon, wherever we go, will pale in comparison to our time with friends and like minded people that we encounter at the con. Much like how there are people who go to bars and people who like to fish, we enjoy dressing up and making costumes, it's our thing. And this is something we have come to learn in our year of engagement. Mandi also said something that stuck with me near the end of this years con and that was that each year we attend the con it's like putting our relationship through the crucible and learning to take out the impurities and strengthening our love for one another like a finely crafted armor. So, even if you don't believe me, maybe you will take her word for it.
Let's talk about the real reason you are reading this, you want to know how our trip went, of course. Mandi and I left for Atlanta a day before our other friends because we were given a free nights stay after the fiasco we had last year at the con. The whole overbooking incident and free vacation thing. If you never read about it, you might want to look up the article on my blog. Anyway, things went much smoother and we were actually able to stay in a host hotel for once. We landed on the 5th floor although we were supposed to be on the 4th, but the room wasn't quite ready upon our checking in. It's really important consider how far you are up in a hotel when you know the elevators are not going to be available when you really need to get somewhere fast. This was especially important this year since we planned a few larger costumes that required transporting them and then setting them up. We did have a slight setback when we checked in with the check in process. Normally, like last year, the hotels would check you in and at the end of the stay would proceed to charge your credit card for the stay. However, they never told me that this year and although I had just put the money on my credit card that day, it wouldn't be another 24 hrs before the money would be available. Needless to say we had to find an alternate means to pay for the room. I was pleased to see that the Hyatt started allowing guests who have stayed with them on the Dragon Con event weekend to per-register for next years stay which is amazing, considering the hotels sell out within 5 min. of opening up their registration for the event. I can see this as both a good thing and bad. The good is that we have a hotel for next year, the bad means less hotels for people who have never gone to the event before. I feel that eventually the hotels are going to be sold out even before they go on sale, and only return members will be able to get a room. This also means the increased chance of room scalpers.
Later on that first night we were able to relive our dinner after my proposal last year at the Marriott's Velocity restaurant. We had an amazing dinner, this year, and this year Mandi wasn't sick so she was able to enjoy her meal. It was delightful to see that people were conversing and cosplaying on Wednesday night, but it really makes us wonder when the whole event will become 5 days instead of 4. People keep saying we Thursday is the new Friday, which is a very true statement. After our quiet evening we headed off to bed. With the free night stay for Mandi and I, she really wanted to see the Newport Aquarium last year, and so I promised to take her this year. So, on Thursday we got up around 10 am and headed to the aquarium, which was less than a mile from the hotel. We both had a great time watching the animals and petting the starfish. I wasn't originally that excited to go, I have always been more enthralled by the con and was wanting to focus all of my energy to cosplaying, but I really enjoyed going to the aquarium. I was able to play with the Beluga whales and a chance to watch the Otters just being silly. Mandi had a great time wearing her Totoro shaw I bought her last year and we managed to grab some great pictures.
Later in the afternoon, once we got back to the hotel, our friends Katie, KP, Austin, and Joe finally arrived around 8:30pm. Sadly, the hotel parking garage had already filled up and so overflow parking was around the block. We managed to move their stuff upstairs from the front of the hotel and then sent them off to park. They managed to bring an entire sweat shop with them in all of their belongings. We had decided to group cosplay this year as characters from the anime Fairy Tail and KP had been working tirelessly on his wife's Erza armor for the past few weeks. He decided to make it out of worbla, which was his first attempt with the material. The armor came out looking great, but he wasn't able to complete the smaller pieces in time. KP went as Laxus but he still had to attach the fur to his coat lining. Needless to say we were all excited about getting out on the floor in our costumes to have a "Dry Run" with what we had. So, a couple of us had to make sacrifices and KP went coat-less for the evening, and at nearly 1 am we had our first cosplay for the weekend.
The next day we got up early, threw our costumes back on and hit the floors. There wasn't a particular event we were wanting to go to, we just wanted to spend time looking at the other costumes people managed to create. There was a huge amount of Deadpools, Harleys and for some reason an over saturation of bunny ears this year. Of course we had to run down and check in and get our badges at the Sheraton hotel first, so we did that, but Mandi ended up disappearing and none of us had a way to get a hold of her. So, after aimlessly searching for her, we headed back to the hotel, eventually losing more of the group in the process, although they knew where we were going. And to our surprise we found Mandi in the room waiting for us. After a sigh of relief to finding my fiancee, we headed off for food and cosplayed off and on for the remainder of the day.
On Saturday I had asked Mandi to get up early to meet George Perez and get him to sign our Infinity Gauntlet bank. George was at the con last year and was present when I did my proposal, but we never got to thank him for being part of our big day. I had remembered last year I was in line to meet him by myself, but the line was taking forever to move, but it really wasn't that long of a line to begin with. He had been doing sketched for $40 each for people, and I found out this year this was the same case. Mandi and I stood in his line for at least an hour with only 15 people in front of us in line. Everyone was getting a sketch today. Mandi and I just wanted a few signatures and a photo and when we finally got to meet the man himself, we shook hands and I explained who we were, and that we wanted to have a centerpiece for our new place together and thought our Infinity Gauntlet would be prefect if he signed it. He was so happy for us and was very encouraging and he even drew a small sketch of Thanos on the gauntlet for us. I asked him for any advice for marriage and he said to "listen" and remember everything. He blew me away when he told us the exact day he was married and proceeded to tell us how many months and days with was since then. I think the man is a genius, unless he had it all scripted.
Next up, Mandi and I both are huge Harley Quinn fans, and so we had to meet Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmioti, the current creators of the solo Harley Quinn series. I got a few autographs from them and was able to share my likes and concerns with Amanda about how the story was currently going. She had some great feedback on how she saw the character and the way she portrayed Harley and was confident that the book was an ever evolving entity that made Harley into what she needed to be for each issue. Once we left their table, I had to meet Jim Steranko. Jim was chatting with someone cosplaying as the Phantom, and while we waited, Mandi took a secret photo of the legend. It wasn't until after we saw his "No Photos" sign that she told me about it. I had mentioned to her briefly that he didn't do photos, but she had high hopes. Once we got to meet him, I'll admit I stroked his ego, we really had a great conversation about where his creativity came from. He mentioned that he was more into psychology in school and instead of art school, he used the way people react to different colors and design for his books. Overall it was a great experience and he truly made it feel like a unique encounter and was happy to have us there.
Later in the day we had an X-Men photo shoot to go to. Something I didn't mention earlier was that on our first night stay in the hotel I got a surprise from Mandi. This year I decided to make a Phoenix Force costume for the Marvel photo shoot specifically. I had designed the costume to have a 7 ft. wingspan and I was going to dangle a Dark Phoenix action figure around my neck so people would recognize what I was outside of the Marvel shoot. Anyway, Mandi was in the bathroom our first night in the hotel for a long time and I called out to check on her. She said she was okay and I should stay where I am. I joked around that I was going to come around the corner and see what she was doing, but she assured me everything was okay and then told me to close my eyes. I obeyed and I heard her rustle into the room when she told me I could open my eyes again. To my shock, she was standing there in this amazing Dark Phoenix cat suit and red wig. I was speechless. She had ordered it and paid for quick shipping just because she knew that this would make my costume so much better. I knew then and there that I had chosen wisely on a soulmate.
(Phoenix Hilton is such a Diva)
Mandi and I had our first run that day at the X-Men shoot and had a blast. I was actually in every group photo because the Phoenix worked for the good characters, the bad, the female and the male. The director even said the costume made a nice centerpiece, but I think he realized the hassle it would be to get down from the staircase. Eventually the director said they brought in a special guest when they were about to do the all Phoenix photos, and sure enough, it was George Perez. Mandi greeted him when he came up the stairs and she mentioned I was in the costume up top and we exchanged a few words saying how funny it was to see him again. Later over the next couple of days we ran into George about 5 more times in costume, and almost made it to a first name basis with the man. Putting the costume together for the shoot went well, but we did have a few hassles with pinning the cloth in certain areas, a task that only Mandi could do. When we left the hotel with all of the pieces in hand, I remember someone asking to take a picture of my rig that I built as a shoulder base for the bird to rest even before they knew what it was. I plan on making a tutorial for my costumes later on, so consider this a teaser.
Once we were out of costume and regrouped with the rest of our squad, we decided to go to dinner at the Polaris lounge at the top of the Hyatt. It was about a 30 min. wait to get in, but we had no idea what we were in for. The whole restaurant rotated 360 degrees so we could see the entire Atlanta skyline. We took a bunch of pictures of us in "Bond Villain" like poses, and the girls took pictures of the bathrooms and even looked in the men's bathroom to see how cool it was. The food was amazing and we had an awesome waiter. This was one of those restaurants that had the fancy presentations, but the food was filling and amazing. Joe bought a 25 year old whiskey that was about $68 a glass, and Mandi and I's total came to about $80 for the evening, but it was so worth it.
Sunday rolled around and Mandi and I headed out to see if we could meet Stephen Amell. I really wanted to meet him just to share my appreciation for the Arrow TV show and his charity work he had done for cancer. When we finally found a line, they told us we couldn't just meet him for free, we would have to pay $50 to get an already prepared photo, have him sign it, and no photos were allowed to be taken. Later on I found out from someone who did go through the process, that they were rushing people through the line and you could only shake his hand and talk to him for about 30 seconds. I was really disappointed with the way Dragon Con handled this, as opposed to how they let put the other celebrities in a large room together and you can at least walk around and see them from afar. Mandi and I gave up on this quest and headed to the Walk of Fame where we knew we might get our celebrity kick somewhere else.
When we made our way to the Walk of Fame, we made one trip around to see who all was there, and then made a plan as to who to see. One of our first stops was to see John Wesley Shipp, who you may all know as the guy who played the Flash in the 90s or more recently Barry Allen's father in the current Flash tv show. He was really nice and great to talk to about the old Flash costume and how things are going now on the new Flash show. Mandi wanted to meet Peter Kelamis who did the voice of Goku for a short time on Dragon Ball Z, and later I realized he did the voice of Rolf on Ed, Edd and Eddy. We saw Felicia day from afar, but she was about to do a panel so we weren't able to get into her line. Once we had our celebrity fill, we headed back to the hotel room and geared up for Phoenix round 2 for the Giant SCF Marvel photo shoot.
Sadly, the giant steps we proposed last year at the Hilton were under construction, even worse than last year. Mandi and I assumed the steps would still be used this year and so we set up our costumes and for once I was having fun moving in my costume since we were outside and no one was around to run into. We got to see Allen, the previous director for the SCF, who helped me set up my proposal last year, and we caught up on what the other had been doing lately. Once the time got closer to the shoot, we discovered they moved the photo shoot to the other side of the Hilton Patio which was almost impossible for me to get to in my costume, but I think Allen got some of his guys to help me, because all of a sudden I was being escorted through a huge crowd of people onto the other patio. So, if this was your doing Allen, I thank you sir. Again, Mandi and I were atop the steps of this shoot for the X-Men. Mandi got some cool pictures from what it looks like a top of the stairs. Once we finished with that portion of the shoot, we made our way down to the ground where they decided instead of having people on the stairs they would take pictures from the stairs looking down on everyone. It was just something that needed to be done to compensate for the construction.
When we finished with our photos, Mandi and I went to the food court, grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed back to the Marriott for one last Howrah as the Phoenix. After about an hour my chest was hurting from the weight of the massive bird on my shoulders. We closed up shop and headed back to the hotel room. We later encountered our friends who were downstairs in costume, but KP has a costume mash up tradition where he takes something from each of our costumes and puts it on with a horse head. Last year it was a Zelda mashup, but this was the result for this years Fairy Tail mashup...
Mandi and I got cleaned up and went out for a nice dinner together where we could recap the weekend. It being our last night I wanted it to be a winding down in preparation for our drive home in the morning. We had a great evening and went to bed and I finally slept past my 9:30 wake up time for the first time since we arrived. After a long wait to get a cart to take our luggage to the car, we finally headed off on the long trip home. Mandi freaked out after the first hour on the road because she couldn't find her purse or her Nintendo DS. We found her purse in the trunk and later her DS in a lunch pale she had on her because it had drinks in it as well. Once home we collapsed and the pre-con depression hit me for the next few days. KP and I are currently working on ideas for next year's costumes, but I will save that for another time. I hope you enjoyed reading about our exploits in Atlanta and hope you are as fortunate as we have been to attend Dragon Con once again. It truly is a life changing experience and we have fun doing it every year. Until next time.
If any of the photos I have posted here belong to you, please comment below and I will give you credit for them. And, if you would like to see the full gallery of photos we took from this year's Dragon Con, I will post a link on the Angelicomics Facebook page, which you can find by clicking the image below.
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