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Five Things They Never Tell You About Attending Conventions

The article specifically says "try not to share a room with more than one person" which is a bit much for the average attendee, given how often they stuff rooms to 8+ people. I would say that going beyond 6 in a supposedly 4-person room is excessive, and the hotels don't exactly like that behavior, but the main necessity is to make sure you're staying with people you can get along with, who won't party all night every night or fill the room with cigarette smoke or come back in the middle of the night literally piss-drunk (speaking from experience on that last one...).

The hotels generally aren't going to be sending people to double check exactly how many people are staying in the room, but if for whatever reason they do, and they find that you're stuffing 8 people into a room that is supposed to have 3, then they are well within their rights to kick you out and refund you exactly $0. Whoever signed up for the room agreed to that after all. So, it's not just that the hotels "don't like that behavior", it's that due to various fire codes, they can legally say get the F out and thanks for the money.

Yes, technically, they can. But they aren't idiots, they know tons of people do this for big events, yet to my knowledge they rarely if ever kick people out unless they're causing disturbances. Because, y'know, they don't want to go that far unless they never want any of those people as a customer ever again.

You were bragging about how you spend $2000 on every con, so presumably you never have to deal with this sort of thing, but I've never seen anyone get in that level of trouble just for having a few too many people in a room. For 8 people in a 3-person room, perhaps, but not many groups are that crazy.

Did they have room for that line to begin with?

I've lost almost all interest in cons once they became more like generic "nerd"-culture events (and I put it that in quotes because a lot of it actually seems to revolve around remarkably mainstream, super-popular properties).

You don't know very many people then, do you? I budget around $2000 for a convention, my friend does the same. For Sakura-Con this year, flying out from Massachusetts the ticket would have cost about $350 round trip, but I paid for it with airline miles. Splitting the hotel with him was somewhere in the neighborhood of $450 each for the 4 nights. Food budget of around $100 a day, because who wants to eat granola bars when they're on vacation? And of course the badge, which is only a $40-$50 hit, but that leaves plenty of money for various things like transportation to and from airport, and spending money for whatever catches my eye in the dealer's room. It's pretty ridiculous to act like that's some sort of insane rich person's folly. Your attitude is what's offensive here, not the article which seems to be very reasonable, especially in regards to budget.

Also, regarding cabs, almost every major city regulates their cab industry, so if you're going to a con in a major city, you have almost nothing to worry about taking cabs. Mass transit should also be a thing you look into if you're a city worth it's name.

And if you go to AX, don't even try to get autographs from anyone remotely popular unless you have a premier badge, get lucky with a raffle at the guest's panel, or have some other special advantage... otherwise you have almost no chance, there's too many fans and too little organization.

Have you ever come across people playing games in hallways? I heard stories about that happening at conventions like DragonCon. I love board gaming but anyone who decides to start a game of Arhamn horror in a crowed hallway has no one to blame but them selves if others stomp over the board like the great cthulhu himself.

The article specifically says "try not to share a room with more than one person" which is a bit much for the average attendee, given how often they stuff rooms to 8+ people. I would say that going beyond 6 in a supposedly 4-person room is excessive, and the hotels don't exactly like that behavior, but the main necessity is to make sure you're staying with people you can get along with, who won't party all night every night or fill the room with cigarette smoke or come back in the middle of the night literally piss-drunk (speaking from experience on that last one...).

Another tip: It's also a good idea to store up on snacks lunches to take to the convention so that you're not waiting hours at a nearby Taco Bell since that's where everyone else at the con will go to too.

Don't steal the light bulbs in the elevators.

Does any other con mail badges in advance, and if not, why not? Is widespread counterfeiting seriously that legitimate a concern?

If you have to, you can sleep in your car.

Regarding conventions not sending out badges via mail, their reason is valid:
I've seen certain young people at Wondercon pestering their friends to make photocopy of the original badge just because they don't want to pay the money. That being said, not everyone is honorable and some of them will go lengths to make perfect forgery.

AX last mailed out badges in 2006. Since then, as others have mentioned, they no longer do it due to counterfeiting (which I personally don't think is a big issue) and to verify identification. AX will be mailing Premier Badges this year.

1. It requires the deeply cynical assumption that a large number of attendees are going to try to cheat the very con they're interested in, for the sake of a badge that only costs $40 or so. And yet…
   
2. It assumes that these same cheaters are also so industrious and talented that they will succeed in creating forgeries that pass a basic inspection. And then there's the empirical consideration that…
   
3. The third-largest con in North America (Anime Central) has been doing mail-out badges for years with no problems, at least nothing so bad they chose to stop offering badges in advance.
   

Keep in mind that advance ticketing is also how our society generally does admission to major sporting and music events. Are those subject to widespread counterfeiting?