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You’ve made it! Thank ye gods! It’s time to boogie down with your geeky self! Well, not really. Don’t break out your 10-sided dice just yet. As I’ve mentioned a couple of times before, I’ll be covering all the business you’ll need to do with the hotel in a later article. But as this is a “basics” article, I will hit some high points. You can get all the details later.

First, you have to check in to the hotel. If you’re there before check-in time, you might have to wait before you can do that, even if you made a request for an early check-in. See, most of these hotels run conferences and such on a continuous basis. One leaves, another comes in. With that being the case, the rooms may not be ready for new guests just yet. That’s okay. You can usually store your bags with the hotel while you go run around. When you do get a chance to check-in, make sure everything is on the level. Double check everything and ask questions. It kinda blows to get your key and haul everything (and everyone) up to the room to find out they gave you the wrong kind of room. If you get to the room and everything looks good then you should be a-okay, but it’s always been my advice (and practice) to immediately check every thing in the room to make sure it works. Flush the toilet, play with the sink, make sure there’s hot water in the shower, flip the channels around on the TV, check the phone, and anything else you can think of. If anything is wrong, call the front desk immediately. It’s always a lot easier to change rooms before you’ve unpacked all 3 pack-mules worth of your luggage. (Article Continues After Cut)

Hint: Be sure to tip the bell staff. They make crap for wages. Furthermore, they’re more likely to look the other way in the event they see some sort of contraband if you take care of them. You can find more on this in the upcoming articles on hotels.

Alright, so we’ll just say that everything went smoothly with your check-in. Now let’s talk about getting through registration. Barring any insane-o drama that might occur (and for some reason, usually does) or some really rough hangovers, the registration process is the worst thing you’ll have to endure. I’ve never seen a con that can get this right. It’s just the nature of the beast. If you don’t need your pass the first day of the show, it might be worth it to wait the next day. But since that’s rarely the case, just prepare for the worst. Bring a book. You’ll probably be in line for a long time.

If you can afford to pay the maximum price for a convention ticket, it might be worth it for you to simply wait until you arrive at the convention to purchase your tickets on site as sometimes those lines are dramatically shorter. At larger conventions, this is usually only the case if they open registration the day before the convention actually opens. Either way, it’s sketchy. All I can tell you is to get there as early as possible and get ready to wait.

But please, please be reasonable and don’t act like an ass while you’re in line. Griping, bitching, pissing, moaning; doing these things will not get you through the line any faster. Instead, you’ll just make an ass of yourself, make things even worse on everyone else, and if you’re around the wrong people, you might just get your ass handed to you.

You can read Part 2 of this article by clicking here.

-Scott “Scooter” McGowan