MAGFest 2023 - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

MAGFest is complicated because the convention did fine this year. However it, the Gaylord and National Harbor have room for improvement.
MAGFest: www.magfest.org/

[@estefez]

The Potomac District Cafe and Market is a major game changer: eating around town is overcrowded, cold and annoying, so not having to leave the convention area was great!

[@esw01407]

Agreed, though I still like getting down to a few other places.

[@breakdown2218]

Yeah it was nice not having to leave and the prices were still less than any restaurant.

[@macaramen1344]

It's a festival... It's in the name I was having serious trouble with cell coverage, on TMobile. Otherwise great video, glad you had an overall good time. I look forward to next year. I'd like to share some information i learned as a contributor to the PC museum this year since that may interest you on the arcade side as well. Apparently they had a few key contributors that were either usually staff or vendors drop this year. The PC museum suffered the most this year because of it, but the arcade was affected too. MAGfest is actively working to own more of their own equipment now because of this and is hoping to make a bunch of acquisitions over the year between then and next Mag

[@Personarose]

Honestly I don’t see the restaurant prices around the Harbor ever going down so if you going to pay then may as well go for quality. I would recommend Succotash if you are in the area as both times I went there wasn’t a line, you have the option to make a reservation and the food and drinks although a bit pricey are certainly worth it.

[@8BitCristopolis]

Back in 2015 or 2016 they did do a food truck. It was fried chicken. It was really not good. They never brought it back. I was lucky to eat at Nandos twice this year before it got rocked in Friday with a 3 hour wait. I always hit up Potbellies which is satisfying if you know what to get and what to put on the sandwich. Never had the pleasure of going to the bars in National Harbor, but this year I was at the Westin and drank there. The Gaylord killing off the hot buffet “Pienza”. 30 bucks all you can eat… just to make the grab n go food section bigger along with a huge coffee bar. Ahh it is what it is. The Gaylord National is always changing

[@rjcmonzon82]

The cell phone coverage was not a problem for our group. Maybe a Verizon issue.

[@jabbadac]

Did you visit the arcade Museum? Had a lot of retro arcade machines there and almost all them were operational.

[@esw01407]

Yes I did, was a little disappointed this year, it was even a touch over retro for what I was looking for.

[@BigCuddleMonster]

Hello I know you don't have any clue who i am because i really do work for MAGFest in the shadows. Overall thank you for y our feedback. I would like to know what panel you attended that was not the subject listed. As in I work in the panels department and schedule the whole thing so i need to know what went wrong and who do i have to add to the "do not invite them back" list.

[@esw01407]

I made sure to report it day of, person at the desk had me write down the information about the panel. Real shame, I've attended easily hundreds of panels over the years at all types of conventions, good and bad, but one that was never just almost totally off on the description.

[@BigCuddleMonster]

@@esw01407 But what was the panel Name! PLEASE i want specifics. maybe i will hear about it when i go look at feedback and maybe i wont. at least can you tell me when was the panel. What panel room was it in. ANYTHING?

[@UnmemorableHam]

I had so many fucking issues with the hotel booking process and even with general hotel fuckery once I checked in at the Gaylord. I would be writing a novel if I put it all in this comment so I'm not gonna do it. But I have never been more angry in my life. Because I was getting ping pong'd around and gaslit at every step. And it ended up costing me an extra almost 400 CAD that I need to chargeback on my CC. It was so fucked. As far as coverage goes, I found there were only a few incredibly dead spots. I would drop connection while streaming somewhat frequently but that might be due to congestion with 19,000 people all being in the same, singular area. I'm honestly surprised I was able to do what I could with that many people there. But they need like a DAS or something in there. Or at the very least have those providers roll out COWs for big events. Especially in the lower areas where signal has more difficulty penetrating. I obviously can't know for sure what those carrier's engineer coverage maps would look like. I don't know where their towers are and I don't know what their tilts are like or even what their full list of carriers available on those sites are. Given they are city sites, I would assume they have many carriers and spectrum in all directions with good overlap. But even at the telco I work for we find the odd inefficiency once in a while that requires some tilt changes and modifications to configurations on our site equipment.

[@esw01407]

Wow that's a mess, and $400 extra...yikes. I come from an rural area, and even places where you'd think we are good signal wise...were not, so I'm not always surprised, but this is the first year I've had some real bad issues at MAGFest with it.

[@naginocturnal9143]

Brass Tap ain't that bad. They just have man power issues IMO

[@esw01407]

That's fine, but the server I had could have at least pretended to care? Oh and the food has gone downhill.

[@naginocturnal9143]

@@esw01407 idk, we just did bar food. Getting a spot somewhere on Saturday night was a blessing on its own. We were at the bar amd the bartender was good. The kitchen was fn slow tho