QuakeCon 2024 Part 1: Touring Dallas

My post last year about QuakeCon 2023 gives an account of my history with QuakeCon as well as some history of the event itself before my time. If there’s some missing context or background information from my posts about this year’s event, chances are you’ll find it there. Already familiar with QuakeCon? Then read on!

Last year’s return to QuakeCon in person was a great success with a fantastic turnout and, near as we could tell, nobody caught COVID. So naturally I was more than a little eager to return to it this year. As always between the friends old and new, the camaraderie, the plethora of activities, Master Pancake, QuakeCon checks all of the boxes on our list for an epic family vacation. I made it a point this year to take a lot more photos than before, so I’m breaking the coverage up into a few parts for ease of reading. Channeling Keifer Sutherland as 24’s Jack Bauer: the following takes place between August 3rd and August 5th.

Our journey started by getting high. Wait, you actually thought I meant…? LOL, no. I’m a dad, I literally have a license to make dad jokes. Shut up. There were actually two bad jokes about flying to Dallas, my dad joke being one of them. The second is CrowdStrike, which brought down airline IT globally just two weeks before our flight. Despite the company rolling back their failed update, the effects were still a problem the day of our flight.

As I’m writing this back home, it’s still a problem. For a company that develops cybersecurity software that operates at the kernel level, you’d think testing in production would be a bigger taboo than talking about Fight Club. But then again you’d also think that two weeks would be enough time to sort out a bad software patch. Our flight was delayed three hours in the end, which could have been worse, I suppose. But like I said, it’s been two weeks since this happened. Just shows you how easy it is to cripple most of the world’s air travel. Forget malicious intent, just come up with a bright idea and push it directly to production.

After binging about half a season of Final Space, we finally boarded and took to the skies.

When we landed it was north of 90F but at least it wasn’t 107F like last year. That was brutal. Our hotel this year had a free airport shuttle so we called and ordered a ride. We had a small hike to get to the pickup point at the airport, which was just a little bit of a chore with five pieces of luggage plus backpacks, but it wasn’t that bad. And we certainly couldn’t complain when we got a free ride to the hotel in a van with about four times the cargo room of any UberXL ride. Fifteen or so minutes later and we arrived at the Hampton Inn and Suites Grapevine where our 2-room air-conditioned haven awaited us. We checked in and collected our LAN rig monitors from the front desk that they were holding for us. I’m pleased to report that all three survived being shipped. The only downside to this evening was that because of the flight delay, it was too late for us to go out to dinner and get groceries for the next few days. Opting to cook dinner at the hotel because our suite had a kitchenette, we got groceries, said nuts to cooking, ordered Denny’s delivered, and called it a night.

We slept in like bosses the next day. Our agenda was short and simple: stay in, chill, and watch Deadpool 1 and 2 in preparation for 3. Prior to our double feature I’d only seen the first one and it had been forever, so I was due for a refresher if nothing else. Thankfully our hotel TV was not one of those locked down models, so it was easy to hook up my laptop for movie watching. We literally did nothing else this day. Life Pro-tip: if you’re flying somewhere for a major event and you have the opportunity to be lazy for a day beforehand, do it. Your body will thank you.

Monday’s heat was ugly. Just under 100F and we had plans to go out mid-afternoon when the sun wanted to murder us. This is where things got a little interesting. We had tickets to a 3:45 showing of Deadpool and Wolverine but quite literally as we walked in the door to the theater their power went out. It wasn’t just the theater as it turned out, a large area of Grapevine was out as well. But the theater we went to was right next to a mall and curiously about half of that had power. Rather than wait at the theater, where the almost non-existent lobby seating really wasn’t very good, we did a lap around the interior of the mall and did some window shopping before sitting down at the food court to come up with a game plan.

Hey Noxis, what would you like to say to the TX government about their power management skills?

Aside from the multitude of stores we came across Rainforest Cafe and the immersive art museum (is museum the right word?) The Real Unreal by Meow Wolf. The museum was admission by reservation and they had filled up for the day, so we made reservations for the following day and then went to Rainforest Cafe for food and to pass the time until power was restored at the theater.

If you’ve never been to a Rainforest Cafe (this was our first time) it’s just as they advertise online: a dining adventure. The restaurant is built with kids in mind but it’s not cheesy, cutesy, or cartoony. The animal displays, trees and foliage, and jungle canopy are quite realistic and the speakers play a random selection of jungle noises, animal calls, and the odd thunderstorm complete with lightning flashes and mist for rainfall. The aquariums and vibrant blue night sky were also quite mesmerizing. It was also during this time that my wife decided to rip off the chipped tempered glass over my phone’s camera lens. Hey, I can finally take clear photos again!

Before

After

With our stomachs full and power restored it was time for Deadpool. I’ll skip the lengthy movie review but in short this is the best Marvel movie probably since Avengers Endgame, and without question the funniest ever done for both Deadpool and all of the MCU movies.

A lazy swim at the hotel and watching random stuff on TV closed out the night for us. Tomorrow we venture into The Real Unreal from Meow Wolf. Should be interesting!