FWA 2026

i promised myself i would start making these blog posts in a timely matter so i wouldn't have to lump them together. now it's two days one day until i ship out for Anthrocon, so i'm right back to throwing this together at the last minute. :P

last year i flew into Atlanta for FWA, which i think made sense for solo trips. (i get really lonely in the car driving for a long time.) but this time i had planned to drive up with my room crew, which was going to consist of chase, Oz, Kira, and Mikey. then a couple things happened all at once:

• a local fur, Softy, had his room plans drop out from under him
• quat, from last year, was looking to potentially go
• t-dog had vacation time to burn
• and my boyfriend, Maze, had only been to one other con, Frosty Fur Fest, and it was a con he was working at, not one he attended

(oh yeah i met Maze at FFF and we started dating. hims a very sweet yote <3)

so i decided to grab all the +1's i couldn't take and stuff them all into a group chat, and figure out what the new plan is going to be. what wound up happening is that quat was going to fly in, and i was going to drive myself, Softy, t-dog, and Maze up to FWA, and meet up with chase and his crew there.

the drive up (Wednesday)

"middlespace costco"¹

gas was getting up to (and past!) four bucks a gallon, so i took notes ahead of time about every costco along the way since it's about twenty cents cheaper per gallon at any given costco than the immediate surrounding area. this saved (looks at the writing on the back of my paw) "big black smudge" dollars, so it was worth it to do

it was mostly a straight shot. we got stuck in standstill traffic only once, and it didn't last but 20 minutes or so. we also stopped at a Walmart once around 11. nobody i asked seems to remember this. i don't remember this. but it's in my notes, so... did we stop at a Walmart??? maybe we ate the electronics section for lunch

quat landed around 3, we arrived at the room around 4. our stay was at the Motel 6, which while obviously not the most fine of hotels, i found perfectly serviceable (especially on a budget). except for the fact they ran the front desk over zoom...? they literally had giant ipad video call instead of someone at the front desk. except for the fact that they DID have someone at the front desk anyway, so when i went up to the real physical desk, the person in the giant ipad was just very confused and repeatedly tried to call me over while the person at the desk was helping me.

i wanted to immediately go to the grocery store which made everyone groan and hate me a little bit But i think it was worth it because once the con stuffs got started there wasn't much break to go find food. i expanded my strategy from FWA last year and got plenty of apples, bananas, bread, sandwich stuffs, and some snacky snacks.

FWA had quietly soft-launched super-early registration, which we went to around 8:30PM. we managed to get through SUPER quick, in only around 20 minutes or so. if they do this again next year, this would definitely be the way to do it.

day zero (Thursday)

i woke up raring to go at around 8:30AM, but without much to do (and everyone tired from the haul in), we mostly just let ourselves either sleep in and yap. at around 11 we decided to head down to the floor, and i gave t-dog and Maze a little tour of the conspace before things got too hectic.

as with last year, we decided to swing by the Garden Deli at the Truist plaza. it's a small food court only open on weekdays that me and quat found out about last con. still a solid recommendation. oh and on the way over we ran into Sox who has somehow been at every con i've ever been at including a tiny less-than-two-dozen one in the middle of bumfuck nowhere in my state. seriously Sox how are you everywhere.

after lunch we met up with two other furs from our area, Cache and Abacus, and hung out in their room a bit and yapped some more / watched some minecraft lets play i dunno. it had create on it, that's all i remember. somewhere around here, chase and his crew arrived at their room, also very confused by the ipad front desk, and realized they were short one aquarium ticket. i was the only person in my crew that had gotten one, so it only made sense for him to go with his partners. alas, Georgia aquarium, i shall see you someday... but it was fine because i got to go to the Oklahoma Aquarium back in August.

myself and quat went to the help desk to register our cameras and actually ran into them in the accessible registration line! quat was the very first to register his camera(s) and myself second. pro tip: read your emails carefully!

we got to swing by the con store, one of the only things open at the time. i appreciated that they made their con shirts on colors that were not black this year, since if you aquire any number of furry shirts, you're sure to have 50%+ of them be black...

we crashed back at the room since there wasn't much going on. i spent a good amount of time fnangling with the TV to hook my phone up to it, in case we wanted to watch something. i don't think we ultimately did, but it's important to hijack your hotel TV's whenever you get a chance to do so

we split up a bit since some of us wanted to peek at opening ceremonies and others wanted to go to a sysadmin panel. later we reconvened on the gaming floor and i got to play one of the pokemon pinball machines :3

we yapped a bunch in the room while i waited for my hair to dry and eventually i passed the fuck out

day one (Friday)

another slow wake-up day since there wasn't much going on that i wanted to hit in the morning. mostly i just wanted to make sure i made it to the sticker swap! i got a nice haul of various critters which wound up on the suitcase (keep scrolling to see that).

Maze wanted to go to the vendor hall at or around when it opened up, so we decided to hop in the long line there around 12:30 PM. it actually wasn't too terrible all things considered, almost two hours on the dot at 2:30 PM. (usually i wait a bit until lines die down, but Maze was concerned about makers selling out of stuff.) i think FWA greatly benefitted from having both the vendor hall and registration be in separate buildings -- it meant that the opportunity cost put a damper on the amount of people hopping in lines just because they were there. or at least, that was my impression.

at around 4 and with a couple of goodies in paw, i got a bit overstimulated in the vendor hall. i managed to lose a print i had just bought. fortunately, i left it at a dealer's table and they were kind enough to hold onto it for me. the only thing i had eaten since that morning was my pocket emergency granola bars (highly recommend!!), which meant it was high time i went to go find some food. unfortunately i have the brain where it is very easy for me to forget to eat. i went to the Peachtree Plaza food court and met up with chase once again. i got a meatball sub from Firehouse Subs, which ohhhh my gods i really needed. damn i think i'm hungry writing this i might have to go find one

another fur that used to be local to my area, Leo, invited me over to one of the official pool parties being hosted! it was LOUD as FUCK and also very crowded so i mostly stayed in pup hood and chatted by the poolside instead of getting in.

i got a very brief peek at the pool toy room (neat) before i went to what would become Maze's favorite event: the church of Baja Blast. he got to go up and confess his baja sins which was very fun. i got chased out for drinking water

after that was the fatfur meet which quat dragged me to as his token twink, and then a pup play lecture and a vore meet. i kinda pinballed back and forth between friend groups, it's a bit of blur. i ended the day meeting back up with Leo and Muddy, as well as Pickles, yet another local fur, at the Metro Diner and Bar. the food was nothing special, it was just one of the only places open that late, but it was nice to be with more peeps i hadn't seen in a while.

Softy arrived late last night to the room and we forgot to blow up the air mattress, so he had to sleep on the chair -_-

day two (Saturday)

in what would become a pattern very quickly, i needed biiiig sleepies and woke up at around 10. quat went down to the con floor a little bit before 11 to grab stickers from a maker he had made an order with. i eventually popped back in the conspace to hit up the adult dealer's den, snagging a Bowser daki. i had a crash around 4:30 PM, sleeping until nearly 7, by which time our night market reservation was coming up. i got a huge pp Lucario print, and Maze and t-dog both got leather harnesses :3

most of the day was spent just snuggling and yapping, as tends to happen. all in all a very nice time <3

day three (Sunday)

the final day! once again a slow wake up, but i decided not to lollygag in the room and make my way over to the conspace to try to snap some photos since i hadn't really had a chance to do nothing but that yet.

i swung by the con store again to grab one of the posters to go on my wall, and Maze surprised me by getting me last years's badge (if you recall, i lost my wristband ;_;) to make up and it was so sweet <3 after that, i went back to the Peachtree for lunch and got Bull Gogi again, same as last year. i'm fairly certain the same sweet old man who served me last time was there and he was lovely as ever. after that, i had to sprint to the blue dog meet up on the 10th floor of the Mariott! by virtue of holding a camera, i became the official pho-dog-rapher.

after that, i made my way back over to the dealer's den to find Maze, who was doing his second pass now that traffic had died down a bit. i got to stroll through too and found a vendor that was selling Toothless dakis! unfortunately, they had a manufacturing defect, having two frontsides / two backsides on them instead of one front and one back. they were offering them at a super cheap discount, 1 for 25 or two for 50. i hatched a plan to snip and re-sew them rightways, so i grabbed two...

the rest of the group wanted to take a second pass through the 18+ dealer's den, so i tagged along for that, but then we all decided to crash back at the motel. after some quality snuggle time i wound up crashing once again and waking up at 7:30 or so. since i wasn't falling back asleep anytime soon, we decided to stay up and talk more. at around 1:30 we decided fuck it, lets order a pizza, and got one delivered to the room. absolutely worth it, 100%

epilogue

on Monday we had to say our goodbyes -- quat flying back to his home, and us driving back to my house. i think we blew Softy's mind by taking him to a Costco food court and getting the pizza there. the weather was absolutely rancid, so Maze and t-dog spent the night at my place while Softy drove back.

i discovered a couple things -- namely that using cheap amazon slop chain for the cool collar i made before FFF did in fact result in the stainless steel (?) plating rubbing off, exposing the copper and turning my neck green. so the fix will that will have to come in the next upcoming anthrocon blog post... which will hopefully NOT be written in the space couple of hours before the NEXT next con...