So, this was my first Dragon*Con and my first BIG Con of any sort. A group of us had been planning to attend the previous year (07) but life happened and plans fell through and it just didn’t happen. This year (08), though, I was determined! I booked the hotel at the beginning of the year (after 2 of the 3 hotels had sold out due to some football things going on the same weekend) and registered not too long after.
Now, by the time Todd had decided to come with me (which was a good thing since it turns out I wouldn’t have been able to make the trip on my own–more about that later) they had switched to doing pre-reg through Ticket Master instead of the PayPal form they had been using. Apparenty a LOT of people registered after the switch, maybe more than D*C expected, even. At least I HOPE that’s their excuse for having only 1 line open for folks who ordered memberships through Ticket Master. It took me, literally, about 15 minutes to pick up my badge and booklets; Todd finally got out of there after 2 hours!
But, hey, what can you do? Badges procured, we were finally ready to explore D*C.