The con suite is the heart of MarsCon. It's a nice suite of rooms, complete with a balcony and a view of I-494, on the party floor of the hotel. Key attraction: FOOD. There's a couple tables by the windows that are continually replenished with cheese and crackers, chips and dip, bread and cold cuts and mustard, sometimes peanut butter and jelly, Skittles and M&Ms, and even, at one point, a tub of foul-smelling tuna salad. Near the door, where the floor is covered in heavy-duty plastic, squats a seven-spigot pop dispenser. (This year's model featured only Pepsi products, much to my Coke-loving dismay.) And there's coffee. Always plenty of acrid, industrial-grade coffee.
If you've paid your con registration fee and collected your badge, you're entitled to come to the con suite any time it's open (about 20 hours of the day), load your plate and fill your glass. In other words, you don't have to pay hotel prices at the cafe downstairs. You can stare out the windows at that foreign commodity called sunlight or cluster around the table to discuss ethics in the vampire and werewolf communities. Or you can wander into the Tulip Lounge, the sitting room that's been taken over by the Tiny Tim impersonators and decorated in an unseasonably floral theme. If you're lucky, you might even be there when the karaoke machine comes out.
If, like me, you're one of three people sharing a hotel room to which there are only two keys and you can't find the other guys for a handoff, the con suite is a blessing. There's a bathroom, a water cooler, Cheez Balls — I ate Cheez Balls at every "meal" — a place to sit and read for a few minutes.
And no one at the con will bug you if you sit down with a book, not even to ask you what you're reading, not even if you do it in the main ballroom in the middle of the costume parade or the belly dancing, or in the dark at a movie screening where you can see the pages only thanks to your glow-in-the-dark alien-head lapel pin. Non-readers-in-crowds can have no idea what a beautifully blissful blessing this is, but to those of us prone to bouts of spontaneous book cracking, MarsCon is Heaven on Earth. The con suite is that little slice of Heaven with the best snacks.