Dragon*Con recovery

Been spending the last few days recovering from DragonCon and working up to re-inserting myself into normal (non-cosplaying) society.
The 2012 DragonCon was a pretty awesome event as usual. The crowds and lines were definitely a lot bigger and longer this year, and I heard a lot of people comment about that. In the past, people get in on Thursday, and Friday the DC action starts happening. This year it was like DC was in full swing by the time we rolled in Thursday evening, and I heard a lot of people had arrived Wednesday and were already partying. Thursday is the new Friday it seems.
Almost all of the sessions I went to were standing room only. Only made it to two celebrity panels this year, one with John Barrowman (Torchwood) and one of the Gillian Anderson (X-Files) panels. The lines for all the other ones were just too insanely long for me to want to stand in. Even most of the EFF, Science and Space track sessions I went to were jammed.
This year’s DragonCon was a little different in a couple of areas. First, I got to walk in the parade this year (thanks to Erika for organizing things!). Rick, Mark and I marched in our robes and carried pipes, while Erika and her daughters were Star Trek “Bunnies”. It was a pretty awesome time seeing the parade from the inside.


I also got to help out with a few ham radio related sessions in the Science track (thanks to Jim for letting me play). Helped out with the scanner radio scavenger hunt Saturday night. Although we didn’t get too many people coming out to play, it was still a fun time listening on the radio and tuning around to find things on the list. Then Sunday I helped with setting up and showing some ham radio stuff at the Evil Geniuses panel where we got to demonstrate a few radio things.
I didn’t get nearly as many pictures this year as I have in previous years. I opted to carry around the little Sony camera I have rather than my DSLR. Takes fairly decent pictures, but I found the battery would run down fairly quickly, especially if I was using the flash a lot. Still managed to get some decent shots of some of the more interesting costumes I saw.
One of the first things I saw as we walked over to registration was this van sitting in one of the parking lots



Check out the rest of my pictures.
Already have my membership for next year’s DragonCon and made the hotel reservation. Start the countdown.