Gary Con XVIII – Shuttles, Hotels, Parking, and Events Updates

This year Gary Con has coordinated shuttles to-and-from a few key locations in Lake Geneva to offer hourly service for Gary Con XVIII. 

The daily shuttles, running Thursday morning through Sunday afternoon, are expected to offer service starting at the Lake Geneva hotels around 7:00am, and to end service for the day with the last shuttle leaving the Grand at 12:00am (midnight) for one final drop-off at the hotels on the route. Estimated arrival time at the Grand Geneva will be approximately 10-20 minutes before the top of the hour.  

We plan to share complete route maps and hourly schedules on our website soon, but the hotels serviced by shuttles are listed below…

Bus Route (A):

• Grand Geneva ➡ Cove/Harbor Shores (Lake Shore Dr.)
• Cove/Harbor Shores (Lake Shore Dr.) ➡ Seminary Park (Lake Shore Dr.)
• Seminary Park (Lake Shore Dr.) ➡ Mill Creek Hotel
• Mill Creek Hotel ➡ Grand Geneva*

*There will be an additional stop at the Geneva Lake Museum between the Mill Creek Hotel and Grand Geneva stop, planned twice daily Thursday through Saturday at ~1:30pm (13:30) and ~6:30pm (18:30).

Bus Route (B):

• Grand Geneva ➡ Geneva Wells Inn  
• Geneva Wells Inn ➡ Lake Geneva Lodge
• Lake Geneva Lodge ➡ Comfort Inn & Suites 
• Comfort Inn & Suites ➡ Fairfield Inn  
• Fairfield Inn ➡ Grand Geneva

We apologize in advance to people who have a disability/impairment that requires the aid of a motorized mobility device, as our shuttles for this year will not be able to adequately accommodate these needs. If you have any inquiries about our shuttle service and parking with specific ADA needs, please contact our Customer Service Team by clicking the link below.

SHUTTLE USAGE SURVEY

This will be our first time utilizing a shuttle service—and we need your help to ensure it goes smoothly! Help us plan better by taking a short survey about your expected shuttle use. If you think you might use the shuttle, please spend a minute to help us better meet your expectations and avoid capacity issues.

The venue parking situation got tough in March of 2025. This year the Grand Geneva will charge for parking and using plate readers during the convention. The expected cost is about $10 per vehicle per day.

Logistically, for those paying to park, you will go to a website where you will either use a pre-paid parking pass* or pay for a single day of parking, then input your license plate number. There will be an abundance of reminders with links on our normal messaging you get with a link to remind you.

*Attendees must activate their parking each day and provide a license plate, even if they have prepaid.

At this time the following attendees are not expected to pay for parking, but will have to enter their license plate number into a form to follow parking procedures:

• Guests of the onsite hotels (Grand Geneva Resort, Timber Ridge Lodge, Holiday Inn Club Vacations)
• Game Masters and Special Guests running 8-hours or more of scheduled events
• Volunteers with accepted shifts of 8-hours or more
• Exhibitors

We will share more details on the website as soon as they are available. This is also new for the Grand and they’re trying to make it as painless as possible, but with growth comes adjustment—we highly encourage ride-sharing to the convention and making use of the free shuttles.

We have updated our Hoteling page on the Gary Con website to include images denoting if a location has service from the on-site Trolley (or step van) or the new off-site Shuttle that stops at the Lake Geneva hotels (explained in the details above).

We also updated who has spots in their room blocks based on our last check—so book with them now!

THE COVE OF LAKE GENEVA

One of our newest Hotel Partners, The Cove, is running a special offer until December 31, 2025! For every $100 in gift certificates purchased, the buyer receives a bonus $25—so a $200 purchase would include a $50 bonus.

Guests will need to call to make reservations with The Cove. When calling, let the agent know you’re using a gift certificate and provide the certificate number so it can be applied at the time of your booking.

The Cove asks that you bring the physical certificate when you arrive, but it’s most important to providing the certificate number during the reservation call when you first make your booking.

To take advantage of the promotion, call The Cove at 262-249-9460 and make your purchase over the phone.

Buy a badge to day to avoid disappointment later, as there are less than 150 Silver Badges remaining!

On January 1, 2026, after the release of the official GCXVIII Events Schedule, we will reassess our badge capacity based on the total number of submitted events. We never oversell badges at Gary Con, as we pride ourselves in exceeding expectations—to do this we keep our initial number of available badges a bit lower than expected game/table capacity until we’ve ensured the number of submitted events is adequate… 

…and the events sure do look great this year (we’ve read them all)!  We anticipate we will be able to add a limited number of extra Silver Badges to the pool when we release the official Event Schedule on TTE.

We’re using some new event spaces this year, which has allowed us to schedule even more events from our awesome Game Masters. This is going to be an amazing smorgasbord of every kind of RPG you can imagine—as always, but even more this time!! We have added…

…the Timber Ridge Lodge and Waterpark—where we’ll have Limithron, creator of Pirate Borg! We’ll call that area “Pirate Island.” Plus, we’ll also be utilizing the ten atrium areas near the elevators for additional scheduled gaming/event space.

…and the Geneva Lake Museum—is being tested to run a couple games in-town! In the Gygax Exhibit, there’s a gaming table where we’re going to play some D&D. It will start with Allen Hammack running Assault on the Aerie of the Slavelords!

As previously mentioned, the public release of the GCXVIII Event Schedule is January 1, 2026 at 12:00pm (noon) Central…

…but there’s still time to submit events!! Make sure you reference the available tables/time slots on Josh Popp’s favorite Gantt Chart!