When we found out we were moving to Utah in 2023, I instantly jumped for joy at the thought of being able to attend Brandon Sanderson's Dragonsteel Convention in Salt Lake City. When tickets went on sale in May of 2024, it was insane. 6,000 tickets sold out in less than one hour. I knew this convention would be a big one with it being the Stormlight Archive Book 5 release, but I think I underestimated how popular Sanderson has become over the years.
Luckily, I was able to score tickets for Trek & I, Cadence, Lorien, & Taya. My friend Jessica was able to snag 2 tickets as well so she & her son could come with me.
We patiently waited for December to roll around & as soon as it got here, I was beyond excited for these 3 days! It was going to be INCREDIBLE!
We couldn't make it up early on the 1st day. We had doctor appointments, dentist appointments, I needed to take care of my parents, etc. . . but as soon as we finished everything we needed to finish, we hopped in the car & drove to the Salt Palace so we could catch the last 3 hours of the first day. We made it in time for his spoiler question & answer panel as well as the "Wind & Truth" release party.
Actually seeing him in person on stage was such a thrill for me.
After listening to his 2 panels, we explored the shops, food, & things the convention had to offer.
We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, but boy, this was the time of my life. It was so much fun. Once we hit the shops, we started realizing how BIG this was going to be. When we arrived we got lanyards with our tickets, 2 packages of some "story cards" that I had no idea what to do with, & a worldhopper passport that I thought was really cute. I didn't realize how much those cards & that passport would play into our Dragonsteel experience.
While we were shopping, we saw another person pull out their passport, & hand it to one of the shop owners. She pulled out a stamp & stamped the passport. We didn't think much of it, until we saw another shop do it. We started opening our "passports" & realized we were supposed to be collecting passport stamps throughout the entire convention. We had no idea why, but everyone seemed to be doing it, so we started asking every shop owner if they had stamps & sure enough a LOT of them did. We got probably 12 stamps that first night. We knew they'd be important, but didn't know why yet.
The experience was only beginning. . . .
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