These last two weeks have been out of this world. I attended Furgeddaboutit and Furry Weekend Atlanta. Attending two cons back to back was totally a first for me. It started off with going to Furgeddaboutit that is right in my home state of New Jersey. Thankfully it was close by but I don’t think I could have done 2 cons if I needed to travel a long way for both of them. I was really blown away with how much fun I had at Furgeddaboutit. It's the first year and has a very chill hangout vibe to it which I love. It reminded me of how smaller cons used to be. It feels like everything is getting so huge these days. It was great to see so many locals and familiar faces from the FA:Unted days when the con was hosted in NJ. Maybe because it was so close to home, it felt so relaxed and I wasn’t really stressed if I forgot anything because really I could have just run home to get something.
I had a really great time at the car show. I wasn’t sure how it was going to be organized but thankfully it sort of materialized around where I parked my VW bus. There were so many great cars that showed up. It was fun to see Regular Car Reviews there and when I got home the next day I was surprised to see he actually used a pic of me as the title card for his car show video. I was blown away by all the awesome comments left on his video about my little segment about my VW Bus. Totally check it out on YouTube.
Then the weekend after Furgeddaboutit was FWA! I wasn’t really planning on heading down to FWA but it turned out my friend Scurrow was going so it was easy to tag along. I can’t thank him enough. I hadn’t been to FWA since 2013 so I never got to experience it in the massive hotel where it is now and I was always curious what it was like. That con has gotten so HUGE. I had no idea that it spans the 3 hotels now. It really was like a furry city, absolutely incredible. It was awesome to see everyone down there. There were some furries I hadn't seen in over a decade since some of them don’t travel up to MFF or AC. I also ended up going to one of the most epic room parties thrown by Doral up in his suite. Like literally everyone I knew was there. I did end up drinking a bit too much and staying out too late but remarkably I didn’t feel too bad the next day. I just needed a small breakfast to get back on my feet so it wasn’t like the whole next day was a loss.
I was really happy with the amount of fursuiting I got done at FWA this year. I suited over 20 hours with a perfect balance of time to do things in and out of suit. Unfortunately I ended up missing a cat room party and also the cat panel in the hotel but I still had fun. I even ventured out to the world of coke on Sunday which was really fun. I loved tasting all the weird sodas. I love stuff like that.
Overall FWA was a great time but I personally think its a bit too much for me. I’m not a big planner and I kind of just go with the flow when it comes to what I do at conventions. FWA is just not a convention you can really do that with due to the number of attendees. Everything is a huge line, from reg, to getting food and even the bathrooms in some cases. There was even a virtual queue system to get into certain events. So things like the dealers den, I never even got to see.
I attend other large conventions like AC and MFF but there is a very disconnected feeling about FWA with its maze-like layout. AC and MFF have dedicated conventions spaces. I know where the main space is. FWA on the other hand is so spread out on different floors and different hotels you can easily miss interactions with people. I had this constant feeling like I’m missing something going on on a different floor or in an entirely different hotel altogether. It kinda stressed me out. Also the elevators were an ordeal. It was nice to have priority in fursuit to go up to get back to my room but it was an impossible task to get back down to the lobby. 90% of the time I had to take the stairs down and when in fursuit that is really not fun. It sucks to get all ready and set to fursuit and end up being all sweaty before you make it to the lobby floor.
I had fun at FWA but it also took a lot of extra work managing crowds, elevators and scheduling to get anything done. I don’t think I’m going to plan to attend FWA again, its all a bit too much for me. It was great to see everyone there but I can officially say FWA is “been there, done that” for me now. I would like to check out other conventions out of my usual con line up like Megaplex and Furnal Equinox in the future though.