2020-2021 Fan Fest North America - San Diego?

What happened to Las Vegas being the North American Fan Fest spot? Every single North American FanFest has been held in Vegas, it felt like tradition, a home, and gold saucer appropriate!

Pretty sure they said this is a bigger venue, which means more people can go.

The San Diego venue can hold double the people. This is a great thing.

Alright, I missed that information. That would be a nice thing to have more people there!

I wonder how much the prices are to go out there I'm guessing like 300 on travel + hotel for x amount of days around 250-300 lol

More info, please! Any dates?

Found it, Nov. 6-7

6.0 announcements this year! :D

Vegas is dirty and run down anyway. I was hoping for a new location this year, and getting a convention center is a good sign. Now, let's hope for a decent ticket-buying experience!

I've never liked going to Las Vegas and have always wanted to visit San Diego so this is a double win for me should I be fortunate enough to get tickets!

I'm glad they're finally picking a venue that can hold more people. Might actually have a slim chance of getting tickets this year.

I was one of the folks that got the "womp womp sold out" two years ago so I'm thrilled they've gotten a bigger venue. I wish it wasn't in November because my husband cannot travel with me (he's a teacher) .... but my FC and friends are all planning to travel as a big group again, which is the next best thing!

Travel expenses will be higher this year as a result of it moving out of driving range, but hopefully it'll be a decent experience. Hotel's already booked. Let's see what happens in the next couple months.

A bigger venue is nice, but I was looking forward to Vegas as being a closer location (making it cheaper and easier to get off work). I might not be able to make it this year as a result. But what can you do? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I just wish there was a centrally-located venue in North America that would work for big events like this. It always seems that it's one coast or the the other that hosts these kinds of things and you are either right next door or have to schlep all the way across the country.

Once again, the East Coast is snubbed. At least a bigger venue is...*something* though.

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Originally Posted by Andevom

Once again, the East Coast is snubbed. At least a bigger venue is...*something* though.

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Honestly, it's not that much more expensive to fly to San Diego than it is to fly to Vegas. Planes are expensive either way.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Honestly, it's not that much more expensive to fly to San Diego than it is to fly to Vegas. Planes are expensive either way.

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I understand that. My point is they never hold it on the East coast. I wouldn't have been thrilled if it was Vegas again either.

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Originally Posted by Andevom

I understand that. My point is they never hold it on the East coast. I wouldn't have been thrilled if it was Vegas again either.

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I lived in Florida for the first fanfest, and not near a decent airport. It still cost about the same for me to fly to Vegas as it did from the Seattle area for the 2nd one.

Plus, it gets you out to different places. I'd never been to Vegas before the fanfest. I plan on hitting up the USS Midway if I get tickets to this one. The bigger cities on the east coast are nightmares to get around. So is Seattle. Pax is terrible because of that.

Happy that they've realized there's so many people interested they can afford an entire con center.

Fanfest 2018 was my first one and while it was very nice, the meat of everything was essentially the main hall, and two split rooms (Game and Merch Shop).

I'm excited to see what they will do with this as this PAX East is their first year being on the main stage. Which is pretty nuts considering the previous years.


However all I want to really know are two main things(I'll chock more tickets available to them considering the venue increase as a given):

1) Is the ticket sale process going to be the same as last Fan Fest?

Many know last Fanfest that the ticket system was awful. With people bypassing the system and getting tickets that the venue sold out in just around 30 minutes. This was due to people not needing the special access code from their email and bypassing the url entirely. With some people reporting they bought 20 tickets for the event posted on the twitter page for the tickets being sold out. With the game being even bigger since 4.5-5.1 (almost 2), I would hope that issue be handled proper as looking back at those old posts showed many many many upset people.

2) Is moving to a bigger venue going to affect our programming/events?
Last year we had the main presentations on the show floor. These events were Keynote, PLL Live!, Q&A with Yoshi-P/Koji/Soken, Lore panel, UWU/battle design panel, Feast Regional Championship, Cosplay Contest, Piano Concert, Primals Concert (all on main stage). Mixed in with those we had gold saucer games in the back, interactive challenges, Kugane set piece for photos, a cool picture pose filter taker,art gallery, the white wall (with all of the signatures), and the fanmade but beautiful Haurechafaunt shrine (<3).

In the game room end we had the Yojimbo Battle Challenge (The trial from SB Hildy before it came out), Trial Roulette wheel, Eureka Survival Challenge, Fashion Report and Wolves Den PVP(With fight sticks).

I state all these because these events were very fun, and SE seems to be appealing to the mass market with these changes to this year's fanfest. I hope that the programming is on par with these if not better as they were full of fun moments. Considering the event is two days as well I feel we get everything we wanted out of it as well which is even better.

At the end of the day Fanfest was a great way to meet people and have fun with the game we play so much. Please don't have a situation like last year where many people couldn't make it in due to an exploit in the system. I'm thankful I went and want to go with more people (including my static) so I can not only see them in person, but also have fun at an event that is catered to all of us who play.

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Originally Posted by Andevom

Once again, the East Coast is snubbed. At least a bigger venue is...*something* though.

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I know that feel. I traveled all the way from Boston to Vegas for it in 2018. It wasn't actually too bad considering it's other side of the country but the jetlag suckeddddd. It is an experience though, I legit landed in Paradise, Nevada. Never thought I could say that on a status before.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

I lived in Florida for the first fanfest, and not near a decent airport. It still cost about the same for me to fly to Vegas as it did from the Seattle area for the 2nd one.

Plus, it gets you out to different places. I'd never been to Vegas before the fanfest. I plan on hitting up the USS Midway if I get tickets to this one. The bigger cities on the east coast are nightmares to get around. So is Seattle. Pax is terrible because of that.

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Vegas flights are notoriously affordable because their MO is essentially "get them here so we can get their money," so that's a bit of an anomaly; most flights are going to come down to how far you're flying. New York to Miami is roughly half the expense of going to San Diego.

Obviously there isn't going to be a magic city that's going to work for everyone, which is why taking turns is as fair as you can do. Also, considering New York is home to the most populated city in the country, you'd think it'd be a nice idea to hold it there at least *once*.

keeping it on the west coast solves a couple problems - Square Enix's offices are in Cali so it's less of a hassle for them to coordinate things. Also the japanese staff/devs don't have to fly as long.

I would want to go to fan fest but I fear planes, since they could crash. With the recent news of Kobe's accident makes me even more weary of flying craft. Although I live 1 state away Oregon I think that would be a 24 hour drive.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

I would want to go to fan fest but I fear planes, since they could crash. With the recent news of Kobe's accident makes me even more weary of flying craft. Although I live 1 state away Oregon I think that would be a 24 hour drive.

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Planes are, statistically, the safest way to travel. More people die in auto accidents in a single year than likely the last 50 of flying related accident deaths. (commercial airlines)

But if you get in an auto accident odds are you can live and walk away from it. My mom, dad, and brother for example all have been in car accidents and all lived cause it wasn't a high speed collision or anything. If a plane has an accident there is no walking away from that.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

But if you get in an auto accident odds are you can live and walk away from it. My mom, dad, and brother for example all have been in car accidents and all lived cause it wasn't a high speed collision or anything. If a plane has an accident there is no walking away from that.

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Not exactly true. There have been airline accidents where people walked away with minor to major injuries. You only hear about deaths because it's incredibly rare for airline accidents to occur. And the media loves to capitalize on these instances cuz it gets them views.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

But if you get in an auto accident odds are you can live and walk away from it. My mom, dad, and brother for example all have been in car accidents and all lived cause it wasn't a high speed collision or anything. If a plane has an accident there is no walking away from that.

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Statistically speaking, you are more likely to be struck by lightning eights times consecutively than you are dying in a plane crash. If you prefer numbers: 1 in 5.4 million. That percentage is so absurd, a regular calculator can't process it. You're more than safe in a plane.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

I would want to go to fan fest but I fear planes, since they could crash. With the recent news of Kobe's accident makes me even more weary of flying craft. Although I live 1 state away Oregon I think that would be a 24 hour drive.

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Kobe's accident was a helicopter crash. Copters are little more than flying engines, so when something goes wrong, there's little you can do to control it. Planes have wings, so if the engines fail, you can still control the glide. This is why US Airways Flight 1549 resulted in 0 fatalities.

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Originally Posted by Lumina

You're complaining about having to travel domestically? Try being Canadian and having to go to an entirely different country for the North American fanfest. People outside the UK going to the EU fanfest are going to have to travel from all over Europe to make it to theirs as well. Hell, you're lucky.

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Hey, I'd much rather it be in Toronto than West Coast USA all the time. Would take a fraction of the time for me to get there, and be more affordable.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

I would want to go to fan fest but I fear planes, since they could crash. With the recent news of Kobe's accident makes me even more weary of flying craft. Although I live 1 state away Oregon I think that would be a 24 hour drive.

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Flying is safer than driving.

Well San Diego just had it's first confirmed case of the Corona Virus. I wonder if this will affect fan fest in any way?

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Originally Posted by Kisik

Well San Diego just had it's first confirmed case of the Corona Virus. I wonder if this will affect fan fest in any way?

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Don't think so. At least at the current state of things, 80% of Corona Virus cases only show mild symptoms. The common Influenza is still a way more deadly disease, and it doesn't get events cancelled.

Well, despite that, it's still some time until FanFest, so the Corona Virus could get both more severe or regress.

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Originally Posted by Raiya

6.0 announcements this year! :D

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Are you sure about that? Seems like it’s a bit too early for that, but I could be wrong.

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Originally Posted by EpicOverlord85

Are you sure about that? Seems like it’s a bit too early for that, but I could be wrong.

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Every North American fanfest has seen the announcement of the next expansion.

2014 FanFest - 3.0 introduced
2016 FanFest - 4.0 introduced
2018 FanFest - 5.0 introduced

Feb 2020 - 5.2
Jun 2020 - 5.3
Sep 2020 - 5.4
Dec 2021 - 5.5
Mar 2021 - 5.55

Jun 2021 - 6.0

prob wrong timing but eh lol

Went to my 1st fan fest 2 yrs ago @ vegas. Looking forward to this fan fest in San Diego....be my 1st time in Cali!!

It's too bad having two venues, one on each end of the country, is likely not feasible. If there was one a bit closer to where I live it would maybe be possible for me to consider going, but then that's just me personally. It is a positive thing that they're able to host it at a bigger venue this time around, allowing a lot more people to participate. Even if I can't be there myself, I'm looking forward to watching the streams and seeing what's coming at any rate.

They needed a bigger venue, but apparently forgot that the main Vegas convention center has double the capacity of the San Diego convention center.

They should have learned last fan fest, when they realized well before ticket sales happened that the venue was too small and many people pointed out that Las Vegas has one of the largest capacity convention centers in the country.

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I just wish there was a centrally-located venue in North America that would work for big events like this.

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The problem is that centrally located in the US is the middle of nowhere. That said, Dallas and San Antonio both have convention centers with greater capacity than San Diego and are significantly cheaper. Dallas is also a regional hub for several airlines, and San Antonio is right on the Riverwalk for pre and post game hijinks (but is like Anaheim's venue in that you really dont want to be driving down there at night)

keep in mind the costs of said venues. sure Vegas may have a main convention centre that is double the capacity of San Diego. BUT!

Is it available for when they want it?

Do the costs of acquiring such a venue outweigh the benefits of having such a venue?

my guess is for cost vs reward SDCC was the better choice.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

Every North American fanfest has seen the announcement of the next expansion.

2014 FanFest - 3.0 introduced
2016 FanFest - 4.0 introduced
2018 FanFest - 5.0 introduced

Feb 2020 - 5.2
Jun 2020 - 5.3
Sep 2020 - 5.4
Dec 2021 - 5.5
Mar 2021 - 5.55

Jun 2021 - 6.0

prob wrong timing but eh lol

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This actually sounds about right. Expecting 6.0 to drop June-July 2021. Or maybe August?

At any rate, I'm glad FanFest 2020 isn't going to be in Vegas anymore. I've been to the first one in 2014 and never went back because Vegas is awful imo.