"I say Dragon, you say Con"
Much like dreago, I expect this to be a multi-part epic. The timeline is somewhat confused in my head and many of the jokes will only be funny to the two of us (and only when we're very very tired) but I shall try my best.
After my many errands on Thursday, I kept having to remove one item after another out of my suitcase so it would actually close. So I got to bed much later than I'd planned. Up by 3:30am to start getting ready. Made the phone call at 5am to try and get on the flight we wanted (having been booked on the wrong one) which did finally happen after 20min on hold. Met dreago at 5:30 to catch the subway to the airport. Got the plane to Atlanta. On the train from the airport to downtown, I overheard a teen girl say something to her parents about The Tribe and in my head I was like "I wonder if she's one of the WAM contest winners." Oddly, she was! She started talking to us after she heard us mentioning the show too. She was the first prize not the grand prize winner but her parents had promised to bring her anyway. After some confusion, we found our hotel. We were staying at the Marriott Marquis but unfortunately our rooms were not ready so we had to leave our bags with the bellhop.
Our first job was to pick up our badges. While there seemed to be plenty of booths at which you could purchase a ticket for that day, the line for people who had pre-registered was extremely long. I think we waited almost 2 hours. And it wasn't over yet! Then we had to find our way through the maze of conference rooms to pick up our press passes. The people there were really nice and they had snacks. Actually, throughout both hotels there were tables everywhere with pitchers of water - which I greatly appreciated. By this point we'd already missed the "Welcome to the Tribal Gathering" panel so we checked to see if our room was ready (it was) and headed up to change.
We made it to the "Tribe Fashion Show and Costume Contest" about 40min late. dreago looked fantastic but I felt a little silly in my ballet slippers and wished I'd been able to pack boots. We met up with some of the people we knew from the various Tribe discussion forums/groups in the backstage area (thank you, press pass!) including the girl who'd be doing the interview with us. We ended up having some time to kill so we wandered around a bit, I changed into something I felt more comfortable in, and we met up with some of the fic writers dreago knows and ate some food. We kept seeing the Tribe cast wandering around but even in their costumes from the show they didn't stand out in the sea of orcs, Storm Troopers, and fairies to name but a few. Anyway, I think the original arrangement was that we would do our interview that night but due to communication difficulties it didn't happen. The ever professional dreago took charge and made sure we got rescheduled. In the meantime, we got to attend the "Mature Themes in The Tribe" panel (they were actually carding people at the door). It was very interesting and due to the small size of the audience we both got to ask multiple questions. Apparently the cast themselves would like to see more violence on the show - not gratuitous, just to make it a bit more realistic - but there are constraints due to it being a "kid's" show. There are some things that the people who broadcast the show just won't accept. The cast just seems like the nicest, most down to earth group of people. They seemed a little overwhelmed by DragonCon (as was I) but I think they were really impressed by the reception of their fans here and the discussion at the panel. After a bit of exploring the madness of the Hyatt and meeting up with dreago's friends again, they headed off to the Buffy NC-17 fic panel and I headed off to an early night in bed.
To be continued...
After my many errands on Thursday, I kept having to remove one item after another out of my suitcase so it would actually close. So I got to bed much later than I'd planned. Up by 3:30am to start getting ready. Made the phone call at 5am to try and get on the flight we wanted (having been booked on the wrong one) which did finally happen after 20min on hold. Met dreago at 5:30 to catch the subway to the airport. Got the plane to Atlanta. On the train from the airport to downtown, I overheard a teen girl say something to her parents about The Tribe and in my head I was like "I wonder if she's one of the WAM contest winners." Oddly, she was! She started talking to us after she heard us mentioning the show too. She was the first prize not the grand prize winner but her parents had promised to bring her anyway. After some confusion, we found our hotel. We were staying at the Marriott Marquis but unfortunately our rooms were not ready so we had to leave our bags with the bellhop.
Our first job was to pick up our badges. While there seemed to be plenty of booths at which you could purchase a ticket for that day, the line for people who had pre-registered was extremely long. I think we waited almost 2 hours. And it wasn't over yet! Then we had to find our way through the maze of conference rooms to pick up our press passes. The people there were really nice and they had snacks. Actually, throughout both hotels there were tables everywhere with pitchers of water - which I greatly appreciated. By this point we'd already missed the "Welcome to the Tribal Gathering" panel so we checked to see if our room was ready (it was) and headed up to change.
We made it to the "Tribe Fashion Show and Costume Contest" about 40min late. dreago looked fantastic but I felt a little silly in my ballet slippers and wished I'd been able to pack boots. We met up with some of the people we knew from the various Tribe discussion forums/groups in the backstage area (thank you, press pass!) including the girl who'd be doing the interview with us. We ended up having some time to kill so we wandered around a bit, I changed into something I felt more comfortable in, and we met up with some of the fic writers dreago knows and ate some food. We kept seeing the Tribe cast wandering around but even in their costumes from the show they didn't stand out in the sea of orcs, Storm Troopers, and fairies to name but a few. Anyway, I think the original arrangement was that we would do our interview that night but due to communication difficulties it didn't happen. The ever professional dreago took charge and made sure we got rescheduled. In the meantime, we got to attend the "Mature Themes in The Tribe" panel (they were actually carding people at the door). It was very interesting and due to the small size of the audience we both got to ask multiple questions. Apparently the cast themselves would like to see more violence on the show - not gratuitous, just to make it a bit more realistic - but there are constraints due to it being a "kid's" show. There are some things that the people who broadcast the show just won't accept. The cast just seems like the nicest, most down to earth group of people. They seemed a little overwhelmed by DragonCon (as was I) but I think they were really impressed by the reception of their fans here and the discussion at the panel. After a bit of exploring the madness of the Hyatt and meeting up with dreago's friends again, they headed off to the Buffy NC-17 fic panel and I headed off to an early night in bed.
To be continued...