Register for Minicon 56

Preregister

Preregistration closed March 15, 2023. You can also register at the door.

At the con

The registration desk will be on the 2nd floor of the hotel, in the atrium, approximately overlooking the hotel restaurant.

If you are pre-registered, come to the reg desk at the con to pick up your badge and materials. If you're not sure if you're registered, check the list of members.

If you're not pre-registered, go to the same desk. We accept only cash and checks. There is an ATM across from the hotel restaurant on the 1st floor (which will charge you a fee), and several nearby banks (which might not).

Before coming to the con, please take a moment to review our covid policy.

Reg desk hours are 10am-9pm Friday, 9:30am-8pm Saturday, 9:30am-4pm Sunday.

Registration Pricing

At-the-door

Full adult membership
  • All weekend: $75
  • Friday-only: $35
  • Starting Saturday: $55
  • Sunday-only: $20
Discounted rates
  • Full student membership (13–20): $25
  • Full kid membership (6–12): $15
  • Full child membership (0–5): Free
  • Convert from supporting: Additional $40

Pre-registration

Adult Attending Membership
  • Was $40 until April 24, 2022
  • $45 until March 15, 2023
  • $75 at the door
Adult Attending Membership (Hardship Rate)
  • $35 until March 15, 2023
Student Attending Membership (13–20)
  • Was $15 until April 24, 2022
  • $20 until March 15, 2023
  • $25 at the door
Kid Attending Membership (6–12)
  • $10 until March 15, 2023
  • $15 at the door
Children (0–5)
  • Free (online $0.01 for technical reasons)
  • Registration optional, but gets your child a spiffy badge
Supporting Membership
  • $15
  • Upgradable to full membership at the door for an additional $40

Registration FAQ

What are the fees that you're charging?

We add the Paypal transaction fees to the amount we're charging. This saves the convention hundreds of dollars. You have the option of mailing in your registration with a check to avoid these fees.

I'm a student, age 21 or older, do I get the student rate?

Sorry, I'm afraid we're just using "student" to mean an age range. (We considered calling it "youth", but didn't like that either.) Even if you are in school full-time, if you are 21 or over, you fall into our "adult" category.

Is there a cap on the number of members?

Nope.

What exactly do the age ranges mean?

They refer to how old you will be at the con. If your 6th/13th/21st birthday is during the con, you can take the lower rate. (For checking if you can drink, we will refer to your state-issued ID and not your membership type.)

Are memberships refundable?

Sorry, no. But see the next question.

Are memberships transferable?

Yes! You can change the name on a membership by e-mailing or when you arrive at the convention. There's no fee for transfers. (So feel free to buy several even if you don't know which of your friends you're going to sell/give them to.)

In order to get the right name printed on your badge, please send changes by the pre-registration deadline. For transfers after the pre-reg deadline, we will issue a new blank badge and you can write your name on it in Sharpie.

If you are the recipient of a transfer, please make sure that the original owner of the membership has contacted us before you arrive at the con. Failing that, please bring a note signed by them authorizing the transfer. We can also call the contact number for the original owner from the reg desk if needed, but this is the least reliable option.

What is the hardship rate?

We'd like for everyone to be able to attend Minicon, but we know that money can be tight sometimes. If you feel you need it, you can choose to pay the hardship rate instead of the full attending rate. Your membership will be the same as a full price membership, it just costs less. We do not publish who uses this rate. It is only available for pre-registration.

What's a supporting membership, exactly?

Supporting memberships are inexpensive memberships that do not confer the right to attend the convention. They play three roles:

  1. They are a way of contributing a bit of cash to the convention because you like us and would like to see us succeed (thanks!). We will thank you by listing you on our members page (unless you ask us not to, of course).
  2. They let you hedge your bets if you're not sure whether you (or a friend) can make it. Supporting memberships can be converted to full attending memberships for an additional cost such that the total that you pay is greater than any full pre-reg rate, but less than the at-the-door rate.
  3. They keep you active on our mailing list. If you can't make it to Minicon for several years running but want to make sure you keep getting our progress reports, this is one way to accomplish that.
I have a supporting membership and want to upgrade it to something other than a full adult membership, eh?

Although we don't detail these cases in the table above — since they are generally relevant to fewer than one person each year — we'll handle it in a reasonable way, don't worry. E-mail us if you are concerned.

What restrictions are there on badge names?

There are no rules for the "realness" of your badge name. However, we suggest considering the possiblity of putting the name you want to be called, so that then people know what to call you. Totally up to you, though.

Please limit badge names to characters that can reasonably be expected to exist on a modern American computer with nothing special installed on it. This means that ASCII is certainly ok, Greek and common mathematical symbols are probably ok, arbitrary selections of Unicode are probably not, and Klingon is right out.

Obviously we reserve the right to not print anything we think is going to offend a large number of people, but we don't really expect this to come up.

There is no hard limit on length. Up to about 23 mixed-case characters will fit in the usual font, or about 16 characters in all-caps. If your name (i.e. everything you put in the "badge name" field in the form; see next question) is longer, we shrink the font until it fits.

How do I include my pronouns?

One option is to include them as part of your badge name, like "Chris Doe (he/him)". Alternatively, we will also have Sharpies, in several colors, that you can use to add pronouns (or whatever else you like) to your badge when you arrive. Alternatively alternatively, we plan to have ribbons, stickers and/or buttons you can use to indicate pronouns.

Do I have to give you all that personal information (e-mail address, phone number, etc.)?

No, not really. We like to be able to contact you in case there is a question about your registration and so that we can send you convention progress reports and so forth. So it would be nice if you gave us either a postal or e-mail address. (Just a phone number will work for questions about your registration, but not progress reports.) However, all that we absolutely require for you to register is some sort of way of telling who you are when you show up to claim your badge. So if you give us no contact information, you at least need to give a name/badge name combination that is definitely unique. Blank registrations under "Mike Larson" are a bit risky, but blank registrations under "Mike Larson", badge name "Bleeknob the Undestroyable" are fairly safe.