DDC 45 Hotel Move

We are proud to officially announce that we have signed a contract with their much larger sister hotel, the Santa Clara Marriott Hotel, to hold DunDraCon conventions there starting with DunDraCon 45 in 2021. We will have the same helpful, friendly, and professional service, as we are staying in the Marriott system, but we will have more function space, sleeping rooms, and parking.

As posted below, Mark Schynert was interviewed by Saul and Jolene Morales at Podbean.com. We will post further details on DunDraCon 45 in the future. Here is Mark's summary of the podcast:

High points:

In 2021 we move to the Santa Clara Marriott, preserving the relationship with the Marriott, as we simply have outgrown our venue in San Ramon. Moving will answer our concerns about room availability for our membership, persistent problems with parking, and a need for additional space for games and other events.

We have an initial block of up to 433 rooms that members can reserve at the contract price of $140/night. Once those are gone, the Santa Clara Marriott will likely still have plenty of rooms, but they will be at a higher rate, to be determined by the hotel. Of those rooms, 333 are doubles, and 100 are kings; all the kings also include a sleeper sofa.

Parking is a separate room charge (or separate voucher for day visitors) of $5/day, comparing favorably with what other conventions are costing. There is much more parking, since guests have access to gated parking away from the parking structure, leaving the latter strictly available for day visitors.

We have much more space for nearly everything, since we have over 5,500 additional square feet of convention space, plus five more break-out rooms than before. All break-out rooms are in the same area, on two floors, with easy access from a staircase (as well as elevators). There will be no more elevator bottlenecks while trying to get to a game.

There are about five restaurants within walking distance, and more within a short drive, plus a shopping center located on the other side of Mission College Boulevard. There was also a detailed discussion of some programming changes we're considering, both with board and card games, and with RPGs. The emphasis here was on DDC 44, with onward application to DDC 45.

Listen to Mark's interview on Gaming Perspectives with Saul and Jolene