I pre-registered and had a very easy, smooth time with picking up tickets on Wednesday evening. The Indy Convention center had plenty of room yet walking from one end to the other was short (5 minutes tops). The will call line was amazingly short as were the lines for generic tickets and selling back tickets.
The town itself, at least what I saw (within a few blocks of the convention center) was clean, new, plenty of lights, and friendly folks who didn't seem to mine 20,000 gamer freaks invading for the long weekend. Plus the city didn't smell like stale beer (sorry Milwaukee). Even the concession stand food was of good (for concession stand food) quality and there seemed like a much bigger and more diverse choice of food there as well as in the nearby restaurants. Pricing was about what you'd expect--gamers on a budget would do well with bringing some food with them. The dealer room had bigger walk areas/paths and more space: it was a treat after some of the claustrophobia of last year.
One complaint: there was often eight to twelve gaming tables per room. The walls and much of the ceiling was not sound absorbing, making it VERY VERY LOUD. Some kind of partitions, like the curtains in the arena (for the RPGA) would fix that problem and let gamers focus more on the game at hand, than suffer distraction from other tables. However, that was a minor thing.
Overall, my experience really couldn't have been any better and I was amazed at how smooth it went.
However, for walk-ins or folks who didn't preregister, it looked like another layer of hell. The line for badges went way around the building: it had to be a couple of hour wait. It was not last minute friendly at all.
