Everfree Northwest: My Little Pony Convention - My Experience

My 2002 collection of My Little Ponies, plus some other items.

I have always been a fan of My Little Pony (MLP). When I was very little I received my very first MLP toy and I remember watching the episodes and movies on TV with my sisters. Later when I married my husband he let me collect some of the ponies off of eBay. I had quite the collection while I lived in Ohio, but had to sell some of them because money was getting tight so I opted to keep all of the ones with sea or ocean related cutie marks. I still have those and two I purchased that were made custom for me with dolphins on them. I also have a few cute plushies I couldn't part with.

We all absolutely love the new series Friendship is Magic (FIM). The writing is incredible and the show has great moral endings. The writers even tuck in easter eggs into the shows that only fans like myself would get: like similar A-Team themed music or references to Doctor Who and Terminator...even Discord, one of the bad guys in MLP FIM, is modeled after Q in Star Trek: The Next Generation (John de Lancie is both the voice actor for Discord and the actor of Q).

The fans span generations: from little kids to grown adults. We call ourselves Bronies or Pegasisters. The fan base is amazing and so supporting. It has given many charitable contributions over the years spanning the fandom. There are also tons of us that do MLP themed artwork and music. It is astounding how much great stuff comes out of the fans.

My whole family just went to Everfree Northwest in Seattle, Washington on Friday. Everfree NW is a My Little Pony Convention for fans of MLP. As with most TV/Movie/Comic based conventions, people can and do dress up as their favorite character(s).

I love to dress up, cosplay (costume play), and roleplay. I threw together a makeshift costume at the last minute because I didn't have the money to buy anything for it. My costume was representing one of my favorite characters, Fluttershy. Fluttershy is a Pegasus pony that is yellow with pink mane and tail and has three pink and blue butterflies on her flank as her cutie mark. I had a splash of pink hair attached to a barrette to go in my hair with a pink flower clip. My mother had given me a yellow t-shirt that had a butterfly in sequins on the front for my birthday and I thought that it was a great Fluttershy butterfly shirt. I dawned some white fairy wings too. I also had some jeans that had three white embroidered butterflies down the side so I chose those to wear. While at Everfree NW I decided I also wanted to make a pair of ears. There was an arts and crafts room that was set up to make your own ears, horns and wings plus you could color pages out of a coloring book of ponies or make your own art out of felt, construction paper, string and cardboard. I made some pony ears out of the cardboard and construction paper supplied.

We listened to fan made MLP themed music while drove to Seattle. When we arrived we parked in the Hilton Hotel Parking garage. We saw some Bronies there that had taped their car so that it could be drawn on with sharpies with pony themed artwork and then found our way to registration. The lines were really long, but apparently if you have kids you get to go straight to the front of all lines (foals: fillies and colts, are treated really well because hey, the show wouldn't be here without them). So we got first priority and that was really nice. Everypony that was anypony was there.

After registration we headed to the vendor room. On our way there we picked up free Derpy trading cards from the Enterplay table. The vendor room was so packed we were having trouble seeing everything and there were Brony traffic jams everywhere. We wove our way around the tables trying to take it all in. There was a lot to see. We showed off our newest item from Pony Feathers to some of the venders that were there...wooden wing shaped headphone cups. I loved ChaoticBrony's jewelry, Equestria Rags' Celestia, Luna, and Cadence Plushies, Firefly's Farm and her awesome Princess Luna/Nightmare Moon and Princess Celestia leather corset she had up for sale. I ended up buying three Patchwerk mini prints: Princesses of Night and Day and Call Upon the Sea Ponies. There were so many other things that I saw too that I loved. Maybe next year we can have more money to purchase some other things. The kids received free MLP stickers, fake tattoos from different vendor tables and apples from the Sweet Apple Acres table (Zari got a small gift bag full of apple candies and an Angel Bunny eraser instead of a free apple). They also got their pictures taken with different plushies that they were selling.

Next we went to the Opening Ceremonies. Opening the ceremonies was the Convention Chairman (Royal Coat), DustyKatt, and Mic the Microphone. They crowned Royal Coat this year as prince and he received a sash and a crown. They also announced "Dear Princess", where you could write letters to any of the princesses, not just Celestia and I guess they would be reading them off later. They had some of the features guests come on stage as well to say a few words. They also did a skit where the Mane 6 and Spike found 3 kids (foals) to become members of "The Royal Court" and be changed into Alicorns (Princess/Prince ponies with both a horn and wings). These foals had already been chosen previously by receiving a special invitation from Princess Twilight Sparkle in their registration bags to join her to learn the magic of friendship themselves. We also sang Winter Wrap Up and Smile at the opening ceremonies.

We then found lunch at 7Eleven and brought it back to eat at tables in the hotel foyer. In the hall of the hotel they had a small concessions stand that sold refreshments including..".mmmmmm muffins!" and I bet the lady that worked there heard that phrase every time a brony passed.  Later we went back to the vendor room to have another look at stuff and I had to scout out a new badge for Zari with registration because she lost her first one. We headed to the Art Display and that was disappointing. We thought we would see tons of artwork on display for attendants to look at, but there was hardly any. We were used to seeing a lot because we had previously been to AnthroCon and they have a fabulous display there. Jaedan decided to enter his picture he drew of his pony character, Wolf. Across the hall was the arts and crafts room, so we headed over there and the boys made themselves ears, tails, horns and wings. The girls colored pictures from coloring books. Somepony had made an Art Castle out of boxes, cardboard, and artwork and Jaedan posed with his drawing and handmade ears.

I took a bunch of pictures of people dressed up. I got Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Apple Jack, Twilight Sparkle, Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, Nightmare Moon, Princess Cadence and Shining Armor, Cider Brothers (Flim and Flam), Vinyl Scratch/DJ Pon-3, Photo Finish and the Cutie Mark Crusaders. I saw all kinds of great costumes! I wanted to get more, but I didn't have time to. There were some pictures of cosplay I didn't get the chance to take. I saw some great costumes of Rarity, Spike, Rainbow Dash, Discord, Zecora, Derpy, Doctor Hooves, Granny Smith, Big McIntosh (Big Mac), Cheerilee, Trixie, Queen Chrysalis, Spitfire, The Wonderbolts, Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, Snowflake, etc. that I wanted to, but never got pictures of.

Last we went to Ponystock and they had some great musicians presenting. Among them were: Michelle Creber (she does both Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle singing voice), Living Tombstone, Odyssey, Alex S., Mic the Microphone, AcousticBrony, etc. I sat outside in the hall with the girls because it was really loud and also because we had a slight mishap. Teela had ingested a penny she had found and got a stomach ache from it. She said she put it in her mouth because she didn't have any pockets and then ended up swallowing it after she had eaten her dinner. From what I heard of the concerts Ponystock was awesome! Michelle Creber took center stage and rocked the house most the night. On Saturday I also watched Ponystock from home on the the live feed Everfree NW had and all the musicians were awesome! Saturday's performances went on longer than Friday's and I ended up staying up well past 3am to watch them all.

Before we left on Friday for home we doodled on the car that the Bronies had taped and then exited the parking garage with pony music blasting. We wished we could have stayed for all three days, but we needed to get home to our dog, Prince. I did get the chance to see the Costume Contest, Meet the Voice Actors, Whose Line is it Anypony?, Charity Auction, and Ponystock on Saturday...along with a little bit of Guys of MLP with Peter New (Big Mac) and Andrew Francis (Shining Armor) on Sunday at home from the Live Feed. I will enjoy watching more of the panels once Everfree Radio uploads them to YouTube later. I also believe that they really need a larger venue next year or at least larger rooms to host things in. All in all it was a very good experience and we are definitely going to try and make it again next year.

DISCLOSURE/DISCLAIMER: No compensation was received for this post. This post is a personal post written by me.

Ganz Tail Towns Friends Facebook Game Review

Tail Towns Friends by Ganz, the makers of Webkinz, is a new Facebook game for grownups. It has the feel of a soap opera with cute animal characters and is a very social game that you can play with your Facebook friends. It has adventures, tasks to complete and is rich with tales of intrigue, treachery and, dare I say it... forbidden love! The drama in this game is not really for little kids and the characters sometimes even swear...well they say "bleeping", but still...I thought it was very unnecessary. Unlike Webkinz, Tail Towns Friends was made for adults by Ganz. This game officially launched on October 9th.

The landscapes are semi-realistic and you can add to them, making your dream garden landscape, by completing tasks and buying items from the store to place on your property, thus developing it into something unique from how it started. There is a typical storyline that this game follows.

Then there are also hand painted figurines you can collect to create an exclusive even more elaborate storyline from the character your figurine unlocks that off shoots from the first and becomes part of the game. You can collect them all to unravel the storyline even more and give you an exclusive specialty virtual item per figurine. They retail for around $14 each. I received the Chef hand painted figurine from Ganz for the game experience. He came with a secret code that I registered in the game to unlock his exclusive storyline and “Secret Diary Goals,” which gave me more information about his life and more tasks to complete. The figurines are not only great for the codes, but they are also kinda cute and would be neat to display.

Here is my gaming experience: At first I had trouble with Tail Towns Friends. The first task to complete has you harvesting 5 crabby apple trees. The problem I was having was that the crabby apple trees were never on the Old Orchard so I couldn't harvest them (see the top picture of the above image). I cleared the dead trees and grass on the Old Orchard at the beginning thinking that would do something, but it didn't move any thing forward. I couldn't finish the quest on my own because the crabby apple trees were never there like they were supposed to be. There was also a mysterious dirt patch in front of the house and the logs in the corner weren't there either. I was thinking oh yeah I'll just buy some seeds to plant some crabby apple trees myself but there were no seeds to be bought either. The game started out very frustrating at first.

I got on a group on Facebook for Tail Towns and they couldn't help me, but were very nice and even showed me what the game should have looked like when I started out (see the bottom picture of the above image). I was told the TTF Crew were on Thanksgiving vacation since Oct. 5th (Oct. 8th is Canada's Thanksgiving and they were Canadians) and I should submit a ticket for customer support. I had already submitted a ticket on the 6th, but I waited some more. They got back to me on the 9th and fixed the glitch for me so that I could resume playing. They just completed the task of harvesting the crabby apple trees that didn't seem to exist for me and I was on my way. I guess since this is a new game they haven't ironed out all the glitches yet.

My first time on Facebook I had fallen into the Farmville trap and was spending way to much of my time on the game. I finally broke down and blocked all Facebook games, but I thought I would give this one a try. Like all games that I have found fun Tail Towns Friends also proved to be very addicting. After the glitch was fixed I set a time limit on how long I was to spend on the game to limit myself so that I could get other things done too.

In no time at all I was creating my own landscape from the Old Orchard and completing tasks from picking produce from my friend's gardens and orchards to bottling juice to making bouquets from flowers I had gathered. It was fun, but it did take up some of my precious time. I probably will play occasionally, but I don't see myself being so immersed in this game that I be on it every moment...I know better than to do that again...I hope :)

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DISCLOSURE/DISCLAIMER: I received product for free to facilitate my review. My thoughts are mine and my family's own opinion and have not been altered by anyone else. I did not receive any other compensation for doing this review.