Day 2 began around 11am when we left Ray's dads. Once we got to the hotel, we proceeded to embark upon an epic quest to find parking, the valet parking being full. As it turns out, the front of my car is visible from my hotel room on the 23rd floor.

Finally we entered the con proper. The Marquis is, indeed, cooler than the Hyatt. It's like being inside a dragon's ribcage, appropriately enough. I took a few pictures, and then realized that James Marsters was walking past approximately ten feet away from me (being escorted to his panel). I tried to snap a pic, but my camera is somewhat slow to react at times, so he had gotten partway around an obstacle before it worked. Once the rest of the party joined us, we went to that panel. It was entertaining, as expected.

After that, we came back to the room for food and such, then hit the dealer's room and exhibitor's hall. I'm not new to meeting celebrities, but DragonCon has a higher percentage of those that I feel an attachment to: James Marsters, Peter Woodward, Bill Mumy, Robin Atkin Downes, etc.

Merchandise purchased so far: 1 copy of Phil Brucato's new game Deleria, signed. 1 pair of Ether Goggle type goggles.

Also saw part of a demo reel of White Wolf's new Vampire game at their exhibit. (I'm more interested in the fact that it uses the Half-life 2 Source Engine than the game itself, but it did look pretty cool.)

As we came back to the room after the dealer's room, who should pop into our elevator but Peter Woodward? He is apparently staying two floors below us.

My basic assessment of Dragon Con so far: too damned many people. But otherwise pretty cool. The entirety of Midsouth Con would probably be smaller than the audience that was at James Marsters' panel.

Update (circa 11:30pm): After bumming around the room not feeling energetic enough to go to the things that I had planned to go to, Chris and Jenna finally decided around 9 to go to the Buffy Horror Picture Show (sing along with “Once more with feeling”). I decided to go with them. (We were going to hit the pool, but decided to give it a miss for now.)

Once we walked over to the Hyatt, we discovered that there was a line directly in front of the doors. So we got in line. And waited. And waited. And waited. People were squeezing in close. People were walking both ways in the rest of the somewhat narrow hall where the line was located, so security kept telling us to move closer to the “wall” (doors). 45 minutes later, they decided to make a gap in the line a few people ahead of us, to unblock the doors. Con security, hotel security, and the Atlanta Police Department all gradually came into the area.

Finally, the line started moving. Then came the word: the room was full to capacity and we had to disperse. They told us they would run it again in 45 minutes so everyone could see it. We could go out or go in, but we couldn't stay (nevermind that the line would reform for the next showing.) So we dispersed and started walking towards the back of the line.

On top of that annoyance, a few moments later we turned around to see that they were letting people that had been standing behind us go into the room, since they apparently miscounted and had space after all. Needless to say, several of us were highly annoyed at this.

Jenna and Randy went to the con suite and to catch Bill Mumy's concert (which I was gonna go to, but having just gone to the Hyatt and returned disappointed, I no longer have the energy.)