My Experience at Command Fest Atlanta (Great!)

Just thought I'd start a thread, and see how everyone else's experience was.

TL;DR:

Pros:

Events all started quickly and everything was run on time, which was great and appreciated.

Pricing and prizing for events all felt very fair.

Everyone in general was very nice.

There was in general MANY judges.

Cons:

The entry fee just to get inside was very expensive. (3 day pass was $150ish i think, I bought it awhile ago; at the door right now the website says $170).

The area around the convention hall is bad. In the past, magic conventions in Atlanta are usually held at the Georgia World Congress Center, which is a relatively nice area, and the convention space itself is massive. This time it was at the Courtland Grand Hotel, and the hotel itself was honestly fine, not quite as big/nice as GWCC, but still overall pretty good. The area around the hotel is bad, unsafe and gross, not at all a good part of Atlanta, and I love Atlanta. This is a very minor Con in all honestly, my walk from my parking to the hotel was literally 3 minutes tops, I just wanted to point it out.

Not TL;DR:

I went all three days, I paid for the regular 3 day pass, not the VIP one. Friday, I did what I called my chores, which for me was get all the cards I wanted signed which was an enormous number of cards (thanks Kieran Yanner). I did feel bad for Jason Smith, he has literally done one card for magic ever, and it did seem like his table had no one at it 99% of the time. I feel bad, but also like, not sure what he was thinking. I also did the scavenger hunt, which was extremely tedious, but it was "free" and I got $20 worth of promos. Once chores were done, I did a commander pod or two, and I think a draft Friday. Saturday and Sunday, just commander pods and drafts, all which went great. I was able to do a ton of trades, and there was also ample free table space to play with randoms for commander as well which was nice. It was not gatekept like at other conventions. I was matched with a seven year old in my commander pod, which everyone was very nice to him, but 7 is too young to be playing commander, a up to two hour game is way too long to expect a seven year old boy to sit still and pay attention to a card game. That was unfortunate, but I mean, it's just one game, so whatever.

Overall, great experience! Conventions are literally my favorite thing in all of magic, I love being just absolutely inundated in Magic and Magic people, it feels so unique and special. For those of you who went, what did y'all think?

EDIT: Formatting