Flight of Fantastic Fancy: Fanfests of All Kinds, Thriced!

05.28.26 // 7:01pm

I’ve been really slacking on writing this blog post! Right now, it’s May 28th—I’m currently in Cincinnati with Bear after a visit to Momocon, which I’m planning on writing another blog post about! But before that, I have to cover a trip I made last month—a journey to Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival!

Not only am I visiting Bear now, but he also came to visit me at the end of April, from the 22nd to the 29th. We’ve been planning the trip we’re currently on for at least a year—Bear has been attending Momocon religiously for the past couple of years to hang out with his online friends (although it sounds like this might be the last one they do, given the over-expansion of both their friend group and the con itself)—but the April trip was a little more spur-of-the-moment. Ish.

Every couple of years before the release of a new expansion, Square Enix puts on Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival events all around the world. They’re pretty competitive to gain access to: you can only attend the region where your Square Enix account is registered (as you have to use your account to apply), and it’s a lottery system to see if you get selected.

Bear and I both tried for tickets when they were announced. I tried for tickets last Fanfest, too, for Endwalker into Dawntrail, but I didn’t win, and neither did Bear. Probably for the best… in 2023, we weren’t that close yet! It would’ve been awkward to share a room. But this time, I won the lottery! And I chose Bear, my now boyfriend, as my plus one.

This happened around November of last year—so it’s been a minute since we knew we were going, but it was still after we had already prepped for Momocon. So we wound up taking two big trips back-to-back! It’s been really nice to be able to spend so much time with Bear! But I will say… I am pretty tired, haha.

But anyway! Back to Fanfest!

Bear came in on the 22nd, and the first thing we did was go to Jollibee. In celebration of Fanfest, Jollibee had a FFXIV collab that featured a chicken sandwich, Chicken Joy, choice of side, choice of pie, and special blue Aetheryte lemonade. It came in a super cute branded box with stickers, and you could upload your receipt to get a special /eatchicken emote. I’ve never actually been to Jollibee before, and I thought it was pretty good! The whole restaurant was decked out in FFXIV theming. A couple of my friends went for dinner later that day and apparently they were already sold out of the collab item… so I’m glad we went for lunch!

The chicken sandwich was kinda mid, but the Chick Joy ruled.

We had dinner at a local farmhouse restaurant with my mom that evening, and then we left the next morning—Thursday the 23rd—at around 7 in the morning. Unlike other Fanfests, which have historically almost all taken place in Las Vegas, 2026 was to take place in Anaheim, California in the Anaheim Convention Center, literally right across the street from Disneyland. I’ve been to that convention center before: I went to the AM^2 convention in June 2012 with my normie older sister because it was the only place in the United States that was showing a subtitled version of the Ace Attorney movie. I’m pretty familiar with Los Angeles because of said sister—we went to Disneyland a lot growing up, since she lived in San Diego and got military discounted tickets—so it felt much more doable than Las Vegas… even if Las Vegas is technically just as close of a drive!

I drove a little bit of the way there, just getting out of Phoenix, and Bear drove the rest of the way. There isn’t a lot to see on the drive to Los Angeles—the only thing of any real note are the windmills when you get super close to the city—so it was a bit of a boring drive. I kept passing out, as I often do in the car these days. Bear tried his best to keep me entertained, even stopping at a rest stop for a bit of ~exercise~, but for the most part, it was a pretty easy drive.

We arrived in Anaheim around 1ish, before we could check in to the hotel. We dropped off our luggage and walked down to the convention center, which was about 3/4th of a mile away. Not that bad on paper, but when you’re walking around in the sun, it takes a lot out of you!

We walked right into registration. I was kinda stressed about there being a line, but there wasn’t one at all! We moseyed down easy-peasy and picked up goodie bags (consisting of a hat, a bag, some pins, and a sticker book) and our First Sticker.

For the past couple of Fanfests, there’s been a pretty big turnout for community-orchestrated sticker rallies. You essentially just trade stickers of your Warrior of Light! This kinda thing is common enough at furry conventions and the like, but there was enough of an interest that it seemed to have gotten the attention of Square Enix. One of the official swag items was a sticker book, and one of the main themes of this Fanfest was playing little minigames to win stickers. There was even a big sticker wall near the front of the expo hall where you could put your WOL sticker next to everybody else’s at the con!

Bear and I had a couples’ sticker featuring our two WOLs. Bear had his made through a company called SpeedySlaps, who did a great job. I… kind of completely forgot about needing my own stickers and got them through a local place, who did a frankly terrible job. Not only were the stickers kiss-cut rather than die-cut, but they were such low quality! It was so embarrassing! I managed to get a partial refund, but… man, upsetting!

Celescoix and F’zeem on the sticker wall!

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. Thursday was just registration day for the event—it started in earnest on Friday and ended Saturday. Before that, we had to explore LA! Bear had never been, and I wanted to show him all of the cool sites! We took a jaunt down to Santa Monica Pier, where we ate a corndog and watched the Pacific Ocean crash onto the shore. We even saw the famous carnival! Just like in Vampire: the Masquerade Bloodlines….

There’s a place on Ocean Avenue~

LA traffic is miserable, so by the time we were finished with that, it was time to head to our next stop: Universal Studios Hollywood! That Thursday was the opening night for that summer’s Universal Fanfest Nights… so we decided to Fanfestmaxx! Bear is current running a game of Waterdeep Dragon Heist for me and my friends (where I play my beloved Lux), and one of the attractions at Fanfest Nights was a Xanathar experience, so it seemed too serendipitous to pass up!

We ambled around Universal City Boardwalk for a bit (after struggling to park), and we bought some Yoshi-themed souvenirs and ate an overpriced Sanrio-themed berry tart at the Hello Kitty Cafe. The event was set to open at 7, but it didn’t actually get rolling until 7:30, whereupon we headed straight for the lower lot to check out Xanathar.

We also shared a strawberry cream milk tea that was pretty good!

The attraction was a lot of fun! It was essentially a walk-through show carried by three actors: a tiefling rogue, a dwarvish bard, and an evil elf priestess. The tiefling rogue yelled at me at one point for giggling… how immersive. There were a handful of rooms you got to walk through that had all sorts of cute references to the Forgotten Realms and Waterdeep Dragon Heist itself! You got sorted into classes—Bear and I were clerics—and the characters would occasionally ask you to wave your hands around to cast spells and whatnot. There was a “puzzle” the group had to do that involved standing on some colored lights, and there was even a mimic animatronic that popped out of a normal-looking chest!

I didn’t manage to take good pics, only videos! But since I’m not about to upload video to poor Neocities, you’ll get pics instead.

The real highlight though was the GIANT animatronic of Xanathar. He was huge! And he lit up! And he cast spells! And he even had his little goldfish that the rogue knocked over! It was really cool. We stole the Dragonstaff back from him, and even thwarted a priestess of Tiamat! It was a whole lot of fun.

That was the main thing we came to see. There was a lot of other cool stuff, like Sailor Moon and One Piece shows, but Bear and I aren’t super big fans of either property. We instead moseyed to the Mario part of the theme park to ride the Mario Kart ride and take pictures with some colorful Yoshis! We also stopped at the D&D themed tavern. I got a gelatinous cube treat… which I was super disappointed by! The promo material made it look like it had blood and bones and stuff in it! But when I got it… it was just a giant blue raspberry gummy! Lame… but we also got fun D&D-inspired drinks. I got an Eldritch Blast-themed cocktail, while Bear got a Detect Magic-themed mocktail. After that, we rode the Mummy ride, after which the cocktail made me start to feel sick… so we decided to head back to the hotel and try to get our rest. We had to be up early the next day!

We rushed down to the convention center to stand in line at around 8am. We really wanted to be in the room for the keynote, which is when they’d announce the new expansion! We stood outside for at least an hour or two… Bear got frustrated at how slow our section of the line was moving, so he grabbed me, then kinda shoved his way up to the front. It was kind of nice. Because of him, we managed to get seats! Though we were behind a big pole… but hey! We were in the room!

They announced the new FFXIV expansion, Evercold! The trailer… seemed a little strange. It had a lot of exposition and lore that I don’t think anybody was really prepared for. The whole keynote, really, had a lot of crazy announcements that people were split on. They announced a “season pass”-ish calendar, a complete overhaul of the tomestone system, a completely NEW way to play EVERY job… there was a lot of confused and concerned muttering. The craziest announcement was probably for the 8.0 alliance raid tier, which would be Evangelion themed. Absolutely bonkers work. Hey, at least it isn’t Persona 5 themed… that would spell the end of the game.

Alpha! You can see the sticker wall behind him.

Something about being in that room was giving me some anxiety. It was a whole lot of fun to be able to see Yoshi-P in the flesh, as well as be surrounded by fans during such a huge announcement… but it was pretty overly stimulating! We popped out to grab Taco Bell for lunch, but our order took over an hour (we wound up missing our scheduled meet and greet with Jason Charles Miller), and that left me feeling even more anxious and upset, so I had to go back to the hotel for a little bit of a recharge.

When I had recovered, we headed right back to the con and started sticker hunting! The con hall was full of a bunch of decorated areas themed around locations in Dawntrail—Solution Nine, the Arcadion, Tuliyollal, etc. It was all pretty cool! Not going to lie, the pictures from last Fanfest looked more elaborate… but I’m not complaining too much. It was still a lot of fun! Several of the attractions had sticker rewards if you participated in them. Me and Bear’s favorite characters, Urianger and Thancred, were both locked behind one event: the Dancing Green attraction. There was a dance floor in front of a GIANT Dancing Green, and you had to dodge out of the ways of his AOEs while dancing. And there was a camera broadcasting your dance moves to the entire convention.

*yoshi-p voice* NIGHTMARE

I would have never in a million years done this if I was by myself. But Avery convinced me… and it wound up being fun. Horrifying! But fun. We even got to see the Jollibee mascot breaking it down. If I just don’t think that hard about the fact that thousands of people saw my shitty dance moves, I can pretend that it was a good time. Our reward was a beautiful sticker of Thancred, Urianger, and Y’shtola!

I guess it was worth it.

We then went to stand in a Honey B Lovely meet and greet, which was essentially just a photo with a cosplayer. We didn’t care about this too much, but we did really want the Alphinaud and Alisaie sticker you got at the end. Throughout all of this, we were trading our little WOL stickers with everyone we could! By the end of the convention, we managed to pass out all of them!

Not gonna lie, the cosplayer looked a little miserable. I would be too, having to wear a heavy costume all day.

Not only was there a Honey B Lovely, but there was also Jollibee Lovely: a commissioned cosplay of the character in Jollibee colors. Jollibee was the major sponsor of the event, and pretty much everywhere we turned, there were employees desperately trying to hand us more and more Jollibee stickers. It was pretty cute, but I do wonder if the overemphasis on Jollibee was what made the expo hall feel a little lacking….

Those two events don’t really sound like much, but they took up the entire day. Both had, like, two-and-a-half hour-long lines. By the time we were done with Honey B Lovely, it was time for the piano concert, performed by Keiko. It was lovely, relaxing, and very emotional. My favorite part was the performance of Bee My Honey featuring Amanda Achen—it was so cute and upbeat!

After the con, we got dinner at Red Robin, then turned in early. We were back at the event a little past ten the next day. We really wanted to complete our sticker run, so we stood in line for three hours for a Crystalline Conflict minigame that was essentially rolling a die over and over again… it was incredibly lame. BUT, we did see Soken posing for photos at the crystal! It was really cool! Though I do wish we had been the ones to actually get his picture…! Oh well. Not everything can be perfect. We got our Estinien & Tataru sticker, anyhow.

There was only one sticker left: G’raha Tia & Krile. The activity was a photo op in a gondola with a G’raha cut out, which was really cute… but it had a MASSIVE line. Thankfully, there was a guy handing out stickers, so we didn’t actually have to stand in it. Thank goodness. That guy was the MVP of the whole con.

Managed to snap an empty pick after the piano concert on Friday.

Bear tried his best to stand in line for merch, but he didn’t manage to get anything. Meanwhile, I attended the translation panel featuring Koji Fox and what was supposed to be Ironmouse. They advertised this panel pretty aggresively, always highlighting that Ironmouse was a panel guest… but it took FORTY MINUTES for ANYONE to bother to introduce her. And then Koji Fox didn’t let her speak at ALL. He just kept going on and on with unfunny AI jokes, and every time Ironmouse tried to contribute something, he’d shut her down or flat-out ignore her. I got the sense that he was miffed about having to share his panel time with some VTuber. It was kinda sad, because apparently Ironmouse really likes XIV. I hope she still likes it after how poorly they treated her… I gotta admit, I now dislike Koji Fox as a person. He seems like a smarmy asshole, which does wind up affecting my ability to enjoy the Primals… but at least they did let Ironmouse perform. Thirty minutes late, but hey, it was something.

And it was only three songs. Dude.

Anyway—we watched the Q&A with Yoshi-P, and then we watched the Primals concert. It was so cool! I wish we were standing… but we were in seats and nobody around us stood up, except for the people a couple rows in front who blocked our view. That’s not really anybody’s fault, though—it’s just people being dumb at concerts, as is the norm. Overall, though, it was a good time! We had dinner at the most expensive Outback Steakhouse on the planet, then headed back to the hotel.

I really enjoyed Fanfest, though there were some glaring issues with it that I would personally like to see fixed before the next one. First of all… it was just flat-out not worth the price of admission. Writing everything down made me realize that, man, we did, like, six things. Period. Throughout the whole two-day convention. And it cost, like, close to 300 dollars to enter. If we had been able to do all of the cute little minigames or attend more panels, it might have felt more worth it. I’m aware that at Blizzcon, they have livestreams of the current panels playing in the main room where all of the attractions were, which would’ve been a great way to keep us occupied… instead, all we could see were people doing the Dancing Green minigame. Which was fun! But despite being at Fanfest, people not at the event knew more about what was happening than I did, which wound up feeling a little meh.

There’s also the matter of the sticker rally. I like the idea of earning stickers from attractions! It was cute! The issue was that only four attractions/minigames had stickers, and the rest had no reward. This meant that EVERYONE was waiting for the attractions that provided stickers, while there was no wait for any other minigame. If every minigame had had a sticker, or if there was a guy standing at the end of the line willing to pass out stickers, then I think this could’ve been rectified: people would only stand in line for the attractions they actually wanted to do versus felt obligated to do because they wanted the limited-edition sticker.

Anyway. Besides that. It was fun! I do wish I had managed to go to the Endwalker-themed one instead, or even Shadowbringers, because I wasn’t the biggest fan of Dawntrail… and I don’t think I feel the need to ever go back. But I’m really glad and grateful that I got the opportunity to go!

On Sunday, Bear and I headed over to Little Tokyo before the car ride home. We got some mochi from Fugetsu-Do and okonomiyaki, since it was fresh on the mind after the last LA trip I took. We tried exploring some of the shops too, but between Fanfest, LA’s Miku Expo, and a Hoyoverse popup, Little Tokyo was pretty crowded—and pretty miserable. Nonetheless, it was fun to see! And we headed back to Phoenix with bellies full of mochi.

Monday was a lowkey day: we had dinner with my group of friends at a trendy millennial Asian-fusion restaurant that had really good pork belly fries. The day afterwards, though, on the 28th of April, there was yet another event: Miku Expo 2026!

God, I love Hatsune Miku. It was always my dream to go to a Miku concert, and I did manage to go to the 2024 Expo with my friend KXL. We had front-and-center floor tickets at 2024, and it was amazing! This time, we had also floor tickets, but in a back section… because, man, inflation had hit the Miku. The tickets were 70 bucks last time, and this time they were around 200. Absolutely ridiculous….

I wore a decora-ish outfit (didn’t want to go too ham, since I’d be dancing a lot), and I got lots of compliments and trinkets passed out to me! Even though we were in a back section, we were still on the floor, and we were pretty close to barrier. I could see the stage super well! It was me, Bear, KXL, Skye, and Amber—me and Bear carpooled with Skye and Amber since the venue was around an hour out from home.

Bear doesn’t really like Vocaloid, but he was a good sport. I swung my light stick and sung along to so many songs! They played SO many good ones, including Love is War, World’s End Dancehall, Catch the Wave, and ODDS&ENDS, the latter of which is probably my favorite Miku song of all time. I cried real, honest tears. The crowd around us was a little lame, but that didn’t stop me from dancing my heart out! It was so much fun!

I LOVE YOU MIKU

The setlist and performance was WAY better than 2024, too. One of my major complaints from the last show was that Miku didn’t have very many costume changes. She pretty much just had her main outfit, the contest design winner she wore during Magical Cure Loveshot, and a previous Miku Expo’s signature outfit she wore during Lucky Orb. This time, though, it felt like she and the rest of the Cryptonloids changed costumes for almost every song! She wasn’t a hologram, but they really went out of their way to hide the LED screen, and they even had her interact with more virtual props, like taiko drums and curtains and stuff. All in all, it was a really great show! I enjoyed myself immensely.

The next day, Bear had to take his leave… but it’s all right. A couple weeks later, I flew out to Cincinnati for a two-week vacation to visit Momocon, Georgia, Pigeon Forge, and more! I’m still on that trip,, so I’ll write that blog when I get back. So much traveling, and so much adventure! I’m not sure I’m cut out for this! I miss sleeping until noon and playing video games all day… although, I’ll always love hanging out with Bear, no matter what we’re doing!

It’s almost the one-year anniversary of this website! How exciting! Maybe there’ll be two blogs next month—one for my trip, and one reflecting on this website… we’ll see! No promises! I’ll be pretty busy with this VTuber debut coming up!