If you are a fan of table top role playing games, then you are aware that this is a kind of crazy week. Gen Con, The best four days of gaming, opened for badge registration on Sunday and then the room grab happened on Tuesday.
This is a very tense time for those of us that enjoy this convention. The badge registration isn’t normally an issue. It went live on Sunday at noon. The two important aspects of that process is that you can apply for your press badge at this time and you receive your housing system key upon completion of your badge purchase.
The process was a little tense for me this year as I decided to apply for a press badge as I do post from Gen Con here at Ideology of Madness. I geek about Gen Con so I speak about it too. This is my first time applying so I did not know if I would meet whatever qualifications Gen Con maintained. Twenty-four hours passed and I watched my twitter feed fill up with people I knew getting approved for their press pass. I kept checking my email and was disappointed each time. It wasn’t until the morning of room grab that I found out that I had been approved.
I won’t deny that I Squee’d and did the happy dance. It felt like vindication of what I do here at Ideology of Madness and provided me with a good idea for what I wanted to do this year at the convention. The elation was tempered though. Tuesday was the dreaded day. Would the room system work and give me a room nearby or would I relegated to the outskirts of Indy. I, like tens of thousands of other geeks, was glued to my computer ten minutes til noon on that Tuesday. The butterflies in my stomach felt more lick condors actually. When the clock turned to noon I began furiously clicking to access the system. I, like many others was placed into a waiting room for some time. It took fifteen minutes to finally get into the system. It wasn’t bad though as there were still rooms downtown available. I got all the way to the point of putting in my billing information then was booted to a waiting room again. The waiting room the unceremoniously crashed, along with my hopes.
It took another twenty five minutes to get the system to allow me to get to the point where I could put in information. By that point, almost everything within five miles of downtown had sold out of Friday night making it impossible to get a five day stretch of time. The system would tease by showing a hotel having some availability only to have nothing available on the hotels site. I was crestfallen.
I saw all the anger floating about the internet over the issues with the room grab and understood them. I knew where they were coming from. The problem for me was that anger was not the appropriate response as I was going to go to Gen Con regardless. It just would make my enjoyment of the convention all the more difficult. I wouldn’t be able to do all that I wanted as I had to take into account shuttle schedules and taxi cab fees now.
I put myself on the waiting list and now am hoping for the best. I’m still looking forward to the convention, I just have to figure out a different way to both get posts up here as well as keep myself from stressing out more while I am there.
Let me know if there is anything in particular that you would like to hear about from Gen con this year.