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PAX South Space
macbitt
Atlanta, GARegistered User regular
Atlanta, GARegistered User regular
For those wondering why San Antonio was chosen for PAX South available convention space was probably a factor.
The total usable space at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio is 841,000 square feet (78,100 m2), and that doesn't include the 2,300 seat theatre on site. The entire complex is 1.3 million square feet (120,700 m2).
Compare that to the available space at PAX Prime and PAX East:
The total usable space at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio is 841,000 square feet (78,100 m2), and that doesn't include the 2,300 seat theatre on site. The entire complex is 1.3 million square feet (120,700 m2).
Compare that to the available space at PAX Prime and PAX East:
- Washington State Convention Center - 432,700 square feet (40,200 m2) + The Conference Center - 71,000 square feet (6,600 m2) + 2,500 seat theatre
- Boston Convention and Exhibition Center - 1,126,100 square feet (104,600 m2), which does include the concert area
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Thanks for the tip. I pulled floor plans for Prime and East and redid my numbers. So much for everything being bigger in Texas
Let's be reasonable - San Antonio has the Alamo, and that's it. The Riverwalk is a dirty creek, and six flags - who cares? Dallas is bland, I agree with that. Houston has terrible traffic and the humidity is awful, but the food variety cannot be beat. Austin is the best city - its diverse, far more interesting places to visit/things to do, and the weather is generally the best in Texas.
I've lived in Houston and Austin, traveled to San Antonio and Dallas. There is nothing - NOTHING worse than Houston traffic. Austin has bad traffic, but its nothing compared to Houston. Dallas is actually not bad for a major city. San Antonio is a non factor.
I quickly found a dozen hotels within a 10 minute walk to the convention center, many within a 5 minute or less walk and many again are pretty big. I can only imagine the hotel room capacity around the convention center.
The convention center hosts other large conventions and has glowing reviews on Google and various travel sites. I haven't looked at food options yet, but there is a restaurant in the convention center, another in the hotel connected to the convention center, and the hotel's lounge becomes a sushi bar in the evenings. There's also a mall a 5-10 walk away which I assume has a food court and surrounding restaurants. Even the airport is only 8 miles away, though it looks like PAX is at the very end of the public bus route so it will feel a lot longer
As for things to do... I haven't looked at that yet but even with a Thursday arrival I wouldn't expect to have that much time to be a tourist. Surely there will be new pre and post-PAX events and traditions started and late parties, not to mention PAX itself.
Texas Train Trip, anyone?
Well, for one, your numbers are off. BCEC is bigger than that once you factor in all the available space - and your numbers ignore the fact that Prime consumes every ballroom, theatre, orchestra space, lobby, and outhouse in the entire Seattle downtown area. I'm not sure how much square footage that equates to, but I'd bet money it equates to more space than BCEC all said and told.
The question becomes, as in another thread, whether South will ever need even close to that much space given the odd time of year it's at, the largely underserviced airport in the city (even if you include AUS), etc.
I made an estimation sheet awhile back to compare the sizes of WSCC, BCEC, & the OCC (since a few people were saying Portland was much bigger) and I just added the off site areas used in Prime 2013 to it.
The main Convention center areas I used an On screen estimating program to calculate the exact Square footage of available space based on the floor plans. The additional area for Prime I just added what square footage the hotel website said they had for the areas Pax used.
Even with being generous with the Paramount & Benaroya, Prime still falls well short of East.
I agree, but Downtown San Antonio is quite small and full of interesting things to explore.
This is true. The Alamo is half a mile from the convention center, the Riverwalk is across the street, and off the top of my head I can think of half a dozen outstanding bars and restaurants within walking distance.
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Dibs on couch space!
I don't blame them since they had no way of knowing. MAGFest has consistently been the first half of january for as long as I've been going. Also, they apparently did their market research and found only a 5% crossover between pax east and pax prime, so apparently geography is a pretty heavy influence.
Sadly, that space was spoken for within moments of the tweet!
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