You can find the more positive side of my Dragon*Con 2026 experience here Dragon*Con 2026 but this experience was so disappointing, I had to put it in writing.

We stayed at the Courtland Grand for Dragon*Cons 2024 and 2025 and for the most part we had a good time. The hotel is a little dated but it has a charm to it. Staff was cool and it was pretty convenient. Food trucks were outside and we didn’t have to wait 30+ min every time we needed to use an elevator.

Last year we booked our room for 2026 before the con was even over. That money was taken out in October 2025 and we confirmed multiple times throughout the year that the resy was good.

I believe it was in July when the first wave of reservation cancellations hit. We were “fortunate” enough to not be impacted by the first culling. A friend received an email saying their room was canceled but interestingly enough when they reached out they learned it was a false alarm. All was good, but their experience put me on edge and I would call every few months just to make sure things were good.

On August 21st, ROUGHLY TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE CON IS SUPPOSED TO BEGIN, I see posts from friends saying the Courtland Grand is canceling reservations and to check our emails. My heart drops, I check my email and I see I received an email saying our reservation was cancelled with no explanation as to why.

We were offered two options:

• A refund
• A transfer to the Signia Hotel (by the Georgia World Congress Center).

Both were unacceptable.

Regarding the refund, due to the time window there was NO time to find a viable alternative. Last minute hotel rooms go for roughly $1K+ a night and most are already booked up. Every AirBnB in the area was gone as well. Dragon*Con brings 75K people annually. That block was locked down. Even the rooms we snagged sold out in the first 10-20 minutes once released. We originally booked for a group of 8 (split between two rooms). This split our group up and complicated things.

The second option wasn’t ideal either. I live in ATL. The entire point of spending the already inflated price to be at a host hotel was convenience. We wanted to walk out of our room and be at the con. Dragon*Con is a 24 hour con where we don’t return to our rooms until 5am on the regular. The last thing we wanted to do is walk 30+ minutes at 5am in downtown ATL or uber every time we needed to get back to our room. It’d be quicker to just drive home.

Now I understand things happen but the way this was handled was insane. I’ll do my best to simplify the clusterf*ck of a timeline this was:

August 21st

• We receive an email saying the reservation we booked and paid for last year was cancelled.
• I call corporate (Wyndham Hotels) looking for answers and by the end of the call they assured me the reservation was still valid.
• The call ends with them sending me emails with the confirmation number showing the reservation is still active in their system (I confirm this by visiting the Wyndham site).
• I call the number provided in the cancellation email to get insight regarding what happened. Not much detail, they say “If you got the email, it was cancelled. We’re sorry”. No explanation as to why.
• I call corporate AGAIN just to be sure and they reassure me the reservation is valid and we would be staying there come September 3rd.

August 25th

• This time I get a call from corporate directly at 3:30PM ET. I answer and it’s them proactively CONFIRMING that our resy is valid and checking to see if we need anything. We ask if they can put two rooms together. They confirmed they already had the request in their notes and that all was well. I relay everything to the group. I’m excited about having a good con.
• 3 hours later at 6:20PM ET, I get another call from the Courtland Grand’s Assistant Director of Sales (Ben) saying that the room is CANCELLED. During this call the Wyndham site still said my reservation WAS active so I wanted some answers. I explained to Ben that neither option was viable and it put me in a rough spot. I have to explain to 7 other people why we lost a room, figure out what half of us are going to do, and find an alternative with now just 1 week before the con starts.
• I don’t want to get off the phone without some explanation. I’m livid. My first thought was “I bet they sold our rooms to somebody at a higher price.” but at some point in the conversation he says “If I had the rooms to give you I would. There’s literally no rooms for us to give.” Remember this. At some point he mentions a fire that happened last October that supposedly made the south tower of the hotel unusable. It still wasn’t adding up. They should have known those rooms wouldn’t have been available well ahead of time so why did they wait until the last minute to notify everybody? It still wasn’t an acceptable answer.
• The call ends with them leaning on the fire that happened last year as the Courtland’s out and discussing upgrades and booking for 2027. I still didn’t feel any better about any of this. If the fire was the real reason why this happened, why didn’t they lead with this and why would they wait so long to inform people? Something didn’t feel right but at least it looked like there was one less thing to worry about for 2027.

We figured things out (kind of). One of the roommates managed to find a room and that solution came at a premium. It also fractured our group of 8 and put a massive damper on an experience we had planned for a year. We opted for the refund but the solution (while better than the Signia option) ended up costing everybody more (some more than others).

To make matters worse, the supposed priority booking wasn’t an automatic process. We received an email at 2pm on Friday of the con… primetime. I can’t speak for others but I know I’m not thinking about checking emails at the peak of a con. I didn’t see this email until AFTER the 24 hour deadline. I would have hoped that everybody who called in was automatically rolled over for the next year but we had to fill out the blanks in a Google Doc which was pretty clunky on a phone but I guess that’s the best they could come up with in a short period of time. I replied back to the same address with the Google Doc but so far it’s been 6 days and no response so it looks like we don’t have a room for 2027 either. For those who were fortunate, not to have their rooms canceled, the link for 2027 went out on Monday per usual but it would have been nice if they delayed this just one day to process the requests of those who missed the cut off during the con.

Now remember when they implied the fire from October was the reason for the rooms weren’t available?

During the con, we learned the rooms that were cancelled likely went to Georgia State for a better rate. It was what I feared most. Apparently, the rooms “They didn’t have to give” were available and supposedly being sold even as the con was going. This entire experience ruined my faith in the Wyndham brand because it’s wasn’t just a failure at the Courtland Grand level… This was a reflection of corporate as well. For those of you who don’t know I’m a stroke survivor. While it’s not obvious and I wear it well, there are daily hurdles. Staying on campus isn’t just a matter of convenience. It’s a key part of making sure my quality of life doesn’t tank during such a massive and potentially overwhelming event. I handle a lot of things super early so I don’t have to worry about them at the time of the event. Between this and badge pickup this property feels cursed.

I can’t see myself staying at another Wyndham property unless it’s the last resort ever again. I’ll give them the hotel and corporate a call this week to see if they’re going to make right on this but I don’t have much faith in them at the moment. If they do, I’ll update this post. Please share your experiences below if you stumble across this post and was one of the rooms impacted.

Until then… Wyndham hotels… until you right by us….

y’all know the rest.