Conventional Wisdom

Personally, this is why I prefer to spring for a Thursday night hotel room. It cost more, but a relaxed afternoon drive instead of a rushed early morning one is worth it. Alas, there’s also the matter of organizing your RIDE out to the convention, and if the people you’re going with can’t go until Friday morning… well, you get the scene above.

(Historical Note: The commentary on this one is pretty dated, despite all of it continuing to be true.  Getting a room an extra day and taking your sweet time to get there early IS a lot less stressful than waking up in the middle of the night and scrambling to arrive on time the day of, but I wrote all that at a time when actually GETTING a room was a lot easier and cheaper than it is now.  These days, casually adding an extra day isn’t something most of us can just do at a whim, and that’s not even getting into how much pickier about what people I want to be trapped in a van/room with for several days straight.  At this point, I’ll honestly take the added stress of an early-morning drive if it saves me the MUCH GREATER STRESS of added debt and an unpleasant, drawn-out room experience.)