WorldCon and LA

I seem to have neglected to mention that this year's WorldCon--which starts in a few hours--is in Anaheim, California this year.

Unfortunately, I won't have time for much socializing with SoCal folks who aren't attending the con; I'm heading down Thursday morning, coming back Sunday evening, and doing con stuff for most of the time in between.

If I'd thought about it more, and had more vacation time saved up, I could've arranged to stay a couple extra days to see people. But I would've run into the same problem I always run into when I contemplate an LA-area trip: too many people to see in too short a time.

So I think I'm going to stick with the plan I've had in mind for ages now: start doing occasional weekend trips down south, each one strictly limited in who I see. That way I can have more time with any given person on a given trip without fretting about not having time to see everyone else there I want to see.

The problem with this plan is that I have yet to actually implement it. Soon, I hope. I'll be sorry to miss people this trip.

Anyway, the main point of this entry was meant to be that anyone in the LA area who's interested in this science fictiony stuff might consider attending the con, if you weren't already considering it.

Memberships are available at the door. A full five-day membership is a tad pricy at this point: $200.

But you can also get one-day memberships (still pricy, but not quite as much so), or something I haven't seen before: a Taster membership, which gives you three hours' worth of attendance for $20. The idea is that you pay for a one-day membership, you get your badge stamped with the current time, and then you go off and attend the con for three hours. If you decide you want to stay all day, you just keep attending. If you decide you've had enough after a couple hours, then you return to Registration within 3 hours of your timestamp, and they refund all but $20 of your membership. I think that's a pretty cool way to let people sample the con.

If you've never been to a convention and you're not sure what to expect, here's a brief description of WorldCon. You could also read my WorldCon description from a few years back, if you're so inclined. And if you want more specific details about the programming, visit the schedule pages.

For those who'll be at the con, some notes about my plans:

I'll be staying at the Hilton Anaheim. I'll have my cell phone with me, so that'll be the best way to contact me, for anyone inclined to do so.

I haven't looked at the schedule in detail yet. I'm not on any panels, but I'll be attending the usual future-of-magazines panel on Friday afternoon and most likely making a nuisance of myself. I'll almost certainly be at the Hugo ceremony on Saturday night. Other than that, I'll probably be doing my usual wandering in and out of panels, hanging out with whoever I run into, and vaguely thinking that at some point I really ought to stop by the filk rooms.

I imagine I'll attend the SFWA party, though I may not. Note to those who aren't SFWA members but who would like to attend the party: members get to bring guests, so if you find someone who's a member and who's going, they may be able to get you in.

I'll also probably attend my usual complement of readings. Sadly, looks like I'll be missing a whole passel of readings Wednesday afternoon (Sarah Monette) and evening (Broad Universe Rapid Fire Readings) and Thursday morning (Pat Cadigan, Connie Willis, Scott Edelman, Nancy Kress, John Kessel).

Okay, enough. I'd better go sleep.

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3 Responses to “WorldCon and LA”

  1. Michael

    Enjoy Worldcon. And please review the hotel — I’m supposed to be at the LSA conference there in January. Same idea as Worldcon, except more costumes and fewer job interviews.

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  2. Jed

    There were two hotels. I stayed in the Hilton, which was overall fairly nice, but the corridors on each floor were mazes of twisty little passages all alike; it was very easy to get lost looking for a given room. (Although the signs weren’t bad.)

    I talked with several people who didn’t like the food in the Hilton restaurants; the one time I ate there, I thought it was fine. (I also ate a couple times at the Starbucks in the Hilton lobby, where the food was just like the food at all Starbucks.) The Marriott featured a restaurant called “Del Sol” or something like that, where I ate about three times; not bad. Consensus was that there were no other restaurants worth going to that were within walking distance; I might have disagreed if I’d been on my own, but I was happy to go along with where other people wanted to eat.

    Service at the Hilton was fine, except for the part where they took two hours after official checkin began (at 4 p.m.) to actually get me a room, even though I’d done advance checkin to get a room as soon as possible. And the part where they double-billed my credit card for the three-day Internet pass, and then completely fumbled their customer-service response to the problem. But as service problems go, those were minor.

    The biggest problem for me was a very subtle one: some of the rooms made weird creaking/cracking noises every morning, starting (I think) around 8 a.m. We eventually concluded that this was due to the metal frames of the sun-facing windows heating up. It was loud and distracting; I think that was why I kept waking up at exactly 8, no matter how late I’d been up. Probably won’t be a problem for you, since I imagine you’ll be on east-coast time.

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  3. Michael

    Thank you for the review!

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