NDK 24 - Another Year Down

NDK 24 has come and gone for the year. And it was great to get together with my fellow geeks again. But this year had brought forth lots of new challenges. With both a new hotel and a still active pandemic there were lots of challenges. So what was the overall experience?

The New Hotel

This was the first year that the convention was in the Gaylord of the Rockies hotel located east of Denver near the airport. This came with some pros and cons. Cons of the new location were the pricey restaurants that were on site. While NDK did provide their own cafeteria it was a bit off the beaten path and may not have been noticed by some (including me until Sunday afternoon) . While there was signage directing people to it, I confused it with the outside area that had food trucks and didn’t know to go back inside for the actual cafeteria. If others had my same issue then people may have thought their only options when the food trucks were gone was to eat at one of the one site restaurants or the The Rockies Marketplace, which did have a good selection of food including individual pizzas. The other issue was parking. The con did negotiate a max payment of $18.95 per day down from $30 per day, and if you only stayed a few hours it would be pro-rated down, but it still could add up. The lot also could fill up fast and if you left the con to eat off site it could take a while to get back into the parking lot. When I left on Sunday people were parking in dirt lots next to the hotel as the regular lots had filled up.

Artist Alley and Dealers Room - One BIG room

Pros of the location were the pure size of the place. The Gaylord of the Rockies hotel has a total of 517,987 sq ft of space in total (compared to Denver Convention Center’s 584,000 sq ft) split between 3 floors. NDK took up just 1 floor of this space. This provided enough space for the the video rooms, panel rooms, board game room, video game room, Main Events, Artist Alley and Dealer’s room. They were able to combine Artist Alley and Dealer’s room, which was great for everyone. Attendees only had to go to one place for all their nerd shopping needs. They could split the room in 1/2 to close the “dealers” side leaving the artist open longer. Then at the end of the night the artist’s could just cover their tables knowing their merchandise was in a secure room. There was also A LOT more space between tables this year. And there is a ton of room left for growth to allow more artists and dealers.

The hallways were wider as well allowing more foot traffic and less blocking when taking photos in the whole space. The location of the panel rooms kept the lines for each panel from intruding on common areas. Outside of the convention space was the Grand Lodge where there were several water features, a cave, a bridge, and a train caboose that made for great photos. Add two Starbucks locations in to it and people were able to get their caffeine fixes in without much of an issue, or an excessive wait.

The mask was strong with this one.

Mask Management

Being that we are still in pretty nebulous times, masks were required during the convention. And I can only think of one person that was there for the con that didn’t wear a mask while walking around, so 99% of attendees did the responsible thing while indoors. There were a few instances where people asked for permission to remove their mask for a quick photo, but many others worked their mask into their cosplay. One such example was this Obi Wan cosplayer. It was pretty impressive how come cosplayers took the effort to match their masks to their outfits. Also amazingly was there were not a ton of generic ninjas, or at least not more then normal since that would have been an easy to add a mask to ninja cosplay.

Everything Else

OK, I will admit that I may have spent too much time taking photos. I say this as I didn’t actually attend any panels this year except for Opening Ceremonies and the Costume Contest. What was nice in the two events I attended was that the chairs for the event were not directly next to each other. They were not socially distanced 6’ apart, but maybe about a foot each. Given normal convention spacing for chairs this was actually welcome. The energy of the convention was there as well. You know, that feeling you get from being around others that you know share the same passion you do. The one thing that no matter what cannot be replicated outside of a convention. The addition of a car show was pretty cool. Seeing what others have done to customize their cars was neat and I look forward to them adding more in the coming years.

All in all, it was an enjoyable con. Probably a little smaller then it would have been in past years due to recent events, but enjoyable. I expect next year thing will probably be busier again as live (hopefully) returns to normal, and we will really see what the new hotel can do.