In past Fanfests I’ve not made a point to blog about the experience, but I think for posterity’s sake and how quickly people lose information in the FFXIV fandom, I decided to at least capture some thoughts after about a month out from the event itself. Note, this comes from someone who attended the two previous FFXIV Fanfests in Las Vegas in 2016 (youtube video)and 2018 (youtube video) and also used to attend anime conventions until most passed the 25-30k attendance mark.
There’s a reason I do not like big conventions and that is inexperience running an event amplifies into sometimes dangerous situations when you have even bigger crowds to contend with.
Having attended both I can say that 2016 was a logistical nightmare where I spent most of Fanfest in the merch line. 2018’s experience was vastly improved as they implemented many changes to make lines less of a thing. As such, I got to do a lot of side things with friends from the former Aetherflow Media and Faerie server.
That said, going from approximately 3k-5k attendees to the 15k in 2023 and in July (not November) I knew that trying to attempt Fanfest 2023 was going to be a logistical risk. Sadly all my worst expectations were met and exceeded . While we had almost enough seating for most of the previous Fanfests (with some exceptions), this was far worse, with probably half of the people showing up sitting on concrete (not carpet) for keynote and panels and the two evening concerts.
If you were able to give up on the line hell and seat hell of this convention and ignore the lack of food options (two food trucks and 3 kiosks with several hour waits), and leave the building, you most likely had a better experience. (And yes, we did! We ate at our hotel on Day 1 and at Resort’s World Day 2.)
Thankfully the ability to meet people and hang out for meals, sticker exchanges, or just focusing on the music concerts kept the experience from being awful.
In any case, would I recommend this without major changes? No, I think the people who watched in their hotels or online were far better off (and many who hated Day 1 did that for Day 2).
Vegas is too expensive and too hot to experience like this again. Square Enix, please have a good look at what you do in the future. I don’t wish this experience on anyone else, even the people who waste my time in Duty Finder xD.
Thank you though to all the Faerie folks and some of my old Primal friends who made the weekend fun in spite of the con hell. Thank you twitter mutuals for that extra effort in finding me for sticker exchanges. Thank you lovely cosplayers for always being cheerful and snapping pics. I HOPE ALL OF YOU LIKE YOUR FANFEST CHARMS.
Youtube reel and pictures below. Enjoy!
The Swann Lodge 
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