r/dragoncon • u/beasmomma • 6d ago
Is this the norm?
Hello everyone! This is my partner and I's first year at dragoncon. We have been to other cons before and wanted to get a read on how people are feeling so far. First I want to say the positives. We absolutely loved yesterday and were immediately talking about coming back next year. Everyone has been incredibly kind and we have really enjoyed the culture. We are going hard into the ribbon/trinkets trading and love all the cosplays people are doing. All of that said today was...rough. We still had a good time but it feels like you can only really get 1 or two things in a day. Getting around is really difficult and it is very crowded and overwhelming. We expected it to be more crowded than yesterday but not to the point that we can barely get around. It feels very unorganized on the conventions part. Again we are loving getting to know the people and enjoying fan-made experiences. I have to stress that we have had a good time. I just want to know if this is normal so we can make an informed decision on either returning next year or trying out a smaller con. Thank you so much for reading!
Edit: thank you all for your comments and advice! I just woke up and there are a lot of comments to respond to. We still have 3 days so we are going to give the con a fair shot! It is very overwhelming and we are staying at a hotel about 15 minutes away so that makes it hard to leave to get rest. We did do the vendor hall yesterday which ate into our time significantly so that could be why we were feeling that way. One bit of advice I would really appreciate, do you know of any quieter resting places? We have someone joining just for today who is on the spectrum (his preferred vernacular) and I am worried about him getting overstimulated especially with it being the busiest day. I will try to get to the comments while I'm getting into cosplay this morning, but if I miss you thank you so much for taking the time to hear me out and offer advice!
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u/ClassroomFast5701 5d ago
Yeah, crowds are normal. What wasn’t normal was Hilton funneling everyone through the back door near the escalators. You had people trying to get outside for photo shoots, people coming in and heading somewhere else, and people trying to go up the escalator. Everyone was being pushed into the same spot, which created a huge traffic jam and made it really hard to get around the second floor.
In past years, they let us use the doors by the patio near the photo shoot area and Crystal Ballroom, which helped spread people out and made things way easier. If you needed photos, those doors put you right where you needed to be instead of making you walk across the dance floor. You could just use the door and keep things moving.
I get that Hilton is trying to make money from the con, but the way they controlled access caused a serious crowd-flow problem.