I was one of the lucky ones to win the chance to buy a ticket for the Fan Festival. This was my first one, of any type. I didn't go in with high expectations, I was curious to see what I would find. My experience so far has been...frankly terrible.

Registration was the day before. Lineup was absurdly long, literally one city block. But that lineup also moved rather fast, impressively so in my opinion, so that I was only waiting less than an hour to register. This was one of the few positive impressions I've been left with.

Security seemed...bizarre, honestly. We could only use bags the size of the tiny packs we were provided on registration or smaller. (Roughly the size of a large purse.) No outside food and drink--obviously so we'd buy it on location. Water had to be emptied at the checkpoint and refilled inside, like an airport. Odd, but whatever.

The registration goodies consisted of that tiny day pack, a keyring gemstone, a paissa magnet, a carrot pen, a square grape squeeze ball, and a 10th anniversary pin. Seemed a bit meager for a $200 con, but I honestly don't have a basis of comparison here, maybe I'm being uncharitable, I'd like to hear opinions. (Oh, and they included a single FFXIV TCG booster pack, like a drug dealer offering the first hit for free.)

It was today, the first day of the fanfest, that things just...really went to crap.

Per the schedule: the convention doors opened at 7am; the fanfest doors opened at 9am. Intention was we had to pass a security check before entering the fanfest, and then at 10am would be Yoshi's address. I arrived around 8am, no real lineup, explored a bit, came back to the FFXIV entrance around 8:30, there were hundreds of people packed in the hall like sardines. Whoops. Joined the crowd (not the line, the crowd), and waited. Around 9:20 or so, we finally started moving, and we just walked right past security through airport-like gates as a horde, no real security checks conducted.

(I later heard there were lineups outside that extended for blocks, that were still slowly shuffling forward around 10am. In over-40-degree desert heat. Apparently, no one bothered to come out and tell them they could have just walked inside. Thankfully I was spared that!)

We get inside the main hall, there are maybe 3,000 chairs for 15,000 attendees. Most had to sit on the floor, or stand and watch for 2 hours. The keynote address was actually kind of cool, it was an amazing experience being in a large hall with 15,000 other fans cheering at each reveal. (I'm, uh, bringing earplugs for Day 2. ; ) Loved that part. But then the CEO of Microsoft walks on stage and it turns into a 20+ minute corporate XBox commercial. I finally got up and left, 15 minutes into that.

Or, I tried to. One of the events was labelled as a Battle Royale: an upcoming 8-man trial, I think? At the same time (and in the same convention hall), merchandise was being sold. Everyone was just sort of crowded together, shuffling forward, sort of hoping we were going in the right direction. No staff to guide or organize us. Eventually, 20 minutes into this slow shuffle, word of mouth passed back from the front that merchandise should stay left, battle royale should stay right.

You could pre-register for the battle royale, which I did, for the second time slot, 1-2pm (the prior one was 11:30-1pm, I think?). The opening address had run late, and after half an hour of shuffling uncertainly forward it was now 12:30 and I couldn't even see the hall we were supposed to enter yet. Someone nearby loudly proclaimed that those who pre-registered should push forward, he seemed to know what he was talking about, and so I followed him. Still don't know if he was right, I may have "budged" forward about halfway through the crowd, and if so I do apologize to my fellow attendees. But there were literally no staff clarifying anything.

After an hour of this uncertainty, I finally enter the huge hall hosting the Battle Royale. The lineup continues halfway down the hall, we continue to slowly shuffle forward. I'm scanned, my registration confirmed...and I join another line. Wait another 40 minutes or so until I finally sit down at a computer around 2pm with 7 other players. We're playing pre-made characters, thankfully only one player wanted healer and didn't play WHM, so I got the easymode healer role. 5-10 minutes to configure hotbars, 10-15 minutes of fight...and we're done. Our reward after two hours of waiting: a scanned badge on the fanfest app. More on that later.

I see there's a washroom at the end of the hall, I make a dive for it. Cross a line to get there, come out and ask what's it for? "FOOD!" someone responds emphatically. This line had hundreds of people in it. I was suddenly very grateful for my smuggled-in trail mix!

Finally I decided to wander the con itself. One kind of neat setup: they had staff standing under quest markers, giving us quests. One involved taking a perspective-picture where we seemed to holding up a huge blue globe dangling from the ceiling; another involve us recording ourselves dancing on a dance floor; a third had us tracking down fish in a barrel and selfie-ing us holding our nose over it. There were six of the, and they were kind of fun, honestly.

The stations were...less so. One had magnetic fishing rods used to snag magnetic fish cutouts. Another seemed to be some kind of ball toss? A third was literally just a FFXIV snapchat station. There was a library mockup that looked interesting, but I don't know what it was about. It all seemed...traveling circus like. Cheap and kitschy. There were about six in total, and each station had hundreds of attendees at it, slowly shuffling forward in snaking lines, taking up to an hour (maybe more?) to get through.

The goal of these things--including the Battle Royale--was to unlock "badges" in the fanfest app. Once you unlocked three, you...got in line. Shuffled slowly forward for another hour or so. Your reward at the end of the day for all the cool activities? A roughly 10x15-inch printed poster...and a tiny sticker. There was no benefit to completing more badges. That and the registration pack is the sum total of the freebies we got at the fanfest. The real kicker? There were three stickers available; we had to choose one.

I spent 4-5 hours today literally just standing or slowly shuffling in lines, sometimes not even knowing if I was in the right spot. Most (all?) of the major scheduled events were streamed anyway. The gifts seem cheaply made, pretty much worthless.

Some of the good points: the "quests" were kinda fun. The other attendees were all great, as were some of the costumes. Being in a crowd of fans was a neat experience.

Overall though, day one seems like a major disappointment. This is my first fanfest. Are they all like this? And if so...why do people go, particularly when it's so expensive? Am I missing something? Am I maybe just not the target audience?