The deets
Where: Atlanta, GA
When: November 6-8
Table Cost: $150
Attendance: around 1000
The space
We were provided a 6-foot tablem two chairs, and two badges for this event. Tables came with a black sheet which we replaced with our own fitted table cloth.
We were in a ballroom-like space on the third floor of the Courtland hotel, which is definitely the least nice hotel out of the bunch in the downtown area where DragonCon is regularly held and it had so many problems detailed further down in this review.
There was no separation of artists, authors, and vendors, with some authors and vendors in completely different spaces, including outside the main vendor hall ballroom and down on the first floor of the hotel. Only the ballroom was fully secured outside of event hours.
The market
There was a fairly even mix of artists and vendors with all different kinds of things like apparel, candles, snacks, fine art, fanart, statuettes, books, and even a photo booth in the back with a huge dragon to pose with.
There wasn’t a whole lot of the typical con slop thankfully, however there were vendors/authors selling images and books that were made using generative AI. The event currently has no AI policy.
While many of the vendors have been doing this event for years, they are pretty friendly to newer folks. We noticed a lot of first timers this year, which makes us wonder if the new location ended up turning some of the old vendors away or if they may have chosen not to return because of other factors.
The audience
Being a con with a lot of history behind it, there definitely is a culture to this event. Many attendees have been coming to it for years. The audience this year was significantly younger than last year with a lot more under 30s, young adults, and teens. We did hear that some attendees lamented the change of venue as it meant their expenses to attend the event were higher both in parking, hotel stay, and food costs, thus their budgets for spending in the market was tighter.
The sales
We made 3.5x table cost, which surprised us as we were expecting this show to be a bust thanks to the location change. We know not everyone did well at this event. Vendors who have done this event every year have said sales were down and the authors next to us didn’t make a single sale. This makes it two years in a row that sales have not been very good for a lot of vendors at this event. We honestly think we just got lucky.
We only had 2 sales on Friday, and 4 sales on Sunday with no sales for the last few hours of the event. Saturday is when we made the bulk of our sales with at least one sale every hour the hall was open.
For this 3-day con our time invested amounted to 18 hours of active vending and 1.5 hours of combined set-up and break-down time (total of 19.5 hours).
Most people paid with card rather than cash. The breakdown of items sold at this event is as follows:
16 prints (9 large, 7 small)
1 pre-paid digital commission
2 blankets
2 on-site sketch cards
4 lanyards
10 stickers
1 sticker book
The rest
This con started as a Harry Potter convention, and was moving slowly to generic fantasy over the years. However, they have recently backtracked, blatantly stating they are an event specifically for Harry Potter fans in their marketing. This is a big issue, as many of their vendors do not support J.K. Rowling and have stated so repeatedly to the organizers.
Load in was a mess for vendors who arrived sooner than us. We heard that elevators were not working and that the access to the load in deck we were supposed to have wasn’t actually usable. Some vendors were forced to park illegally on the street to unload, and then were rushed by volunteers and security.
Parking is not free and many of the nearby garages were way over charging. We ended up paying for $65 worth of parking while others faced upwards of $100 in parking fees.
The venue also massively overbooked for this weekend. We were unable to use the unreliable elevators closest to the loading dock during load out because of a wedding blocking it.
The closest bathrooms from the ballroom we were in was also not close at all, requiring walking through the starbucks and past the elevators into a far back hallway leading to hotel rooms. At one point during the event, only one stall was even operational in the women’s bathroom.
The AC in this venue was STILL broken (it wasn’t working during DragonCon in AUGUST) but luckily the event had some massive industrial fans that kept the room from getting too hot. For some reason it was really cold in there on Saturday.
Pros
Lots of activities for attendees to keep them around longer and what few attendees did show up are pretty loyal to the event itself
Cons
The convention organizers are backpedaling on distancing the event from Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling despite complaints
No AI policy, and active use of AI in their own marketing
Vendor treatment by staff/volunteers is not consistent. While we were treated well, we heard and observed that not being the case for others
Expensive food and parking
Low foot traffic
Limited/far/inconsistent access to bathrooms and elevators
Terrible venue plagued by overbooking events, facility problems, and high costs, though the event will be returning to last year’s venue for the next year