Am I in a position to give furcon advice? I dunno, probably not (creds: I’ve wallflowered at Anthrohio 24 and 25 and had a blast at FWA with a buddy.)
I don’t know anything about fursuiting.
Preregister. There’s no reason not to and you save time for everyone. Sometimes cons even give you a discount for early preregistration. After you complete the registration line (with your preregistration info and a photo id), you’ll get something to mark you as part of the con; maybe a wristband, maybe a badge.
Most people wear at least one other decorative badge with their fursona on it, maybe about 5 inches big, with their name in large print. I made mine out of a cut-up manila folder, my friend got its laminated at Staples.
Wear an N95, oh my god. It’s not hard. I got so sick after AO ’25 and definitely regret not wearing a mask like an idiot.
People jokingly mention the “6 2 1 rule” (six hours of sleep, two meals, one shower a day at minimum) because the only way to get furries to take care of their basic needs is to make it into a ironic sex joke. Also bring a stick of deodorant, duh.
Remember to eat, remember to drink water!
There are fewer fursuiters than you might expect from the photos. There are lots of fursuiters, yes, but lots of regular people too, as well as people in funny shirts, people with cat ears and hats, people with unusual accessories… I love people-watching. Any con worth its salt has an “ask for photos” policy, though, and it’s just harder to ask non-fursuiters for pictures, so you often don’t get to see em online :)
I like taking and editing photos but I’m usually too shy to ask the fursuiters as well, so I end up with a lot of architecture pictures etc.
Apart from that: It is a unique feeling to exist in a space where literally everyone is LGBT friendly and additionally some kind of weirdo. Good feeling in the stomach. I don’t really know how to describe it.
A feature found at some mid-size cons. Too small and there’s not enough fursuiters, too big and it becomes impractical to do. But if there’s a suitable place to cram all the fursuiters in one room, a bunch of photographers will clamor at the chance to take a group photo, then everyone will be directed to walk out in a single-file line, where, weather permitting, the walk is done outside in public – not only can you watch furries, you can watch all the passerbys with weird looks on their faces.
Highly recommended.
It’s fun to photograph the walk since hundreds of fursuiters go by one after another and everyone loves posing. You’ll have to be quick. Give a nod or thumbs-up after you take someone’s picture.
Things you can expect to find: tshirts, buttons/pins, stickers, little fursuit tails that mount on a belt, the belts in question, stickers, artist alley people taking at-con commissions of various types, more stickers, prints and originals, books, assorted trinkets, embarrassing dakimakura pillowcases, and if you can believe it: stickers.
Scientists are still researching whether there is a tangible difference between the “dealer’s den” and the “artist’s alley”. I think the DD is more for “small business” types who set up a large display table and stay there all weekend, and the AA is for sole proprietors with more lowkey setups who pop in and out of the alley as time permits, but there is a mix of both types of business.
If you want a big tail, beware: all of the “basic” tails will be picked over by the second day. They will only have unsually-colored tails and rodent tails in stock. No shade to the rodent furs.
Tip.
Range from kinda dorky to kinda fun. If you think it’ll be popular, arrive early, especially if you think you’ll need a chair.
Interesting to think about: if you’re in a fursuit your arms and hands are physically larger, which means you need exaggerated movements for things to look they same as they do on humans. Or in other words: I have no idea how these people do it, but damn these people can dance.
Bring earplugs. Or you won’t enjoy it, if you’re anything like me.
It’s rare for cons to provide food; it’s expensive to feed that many people, and hotels forbid it since it cuts into hotel-operated restaurant profits. Anthrohio was able to provide some snacks though (through herculean effort).
If you’re a local, you can eat at home. If you’re not, don’t just do restaurant food all weekend, grab some fresh food from the store. Or maybe this is just advice for my stupid sensitive stomach.
Furries love Telegram. It’s just the way it is. You might find Telegram group invites on business cards scattered around various tables.
Bluesky continues to pick up steam. Just search up the name of the con and sort by latest.
(I don’t know what happens on The Everything App anymore.)
Yes of course it’s cringe, duh.
Aim squarely between its eyes and shoot your cringe stone-dead, then you won’t have any problems with cringe. This is actually a really good rule for everyday life too
I don’t have advice about partying, drinking, or drugs since I don’t party, don’t drink, and don’t drug. I trust that if you are going to do partake in those sorts of things, then you’ll know your limits and you’ll know the relevant safety information. Have fun, stay safe, and get enough rest.
18+ panels range from “they wanted to say ‘fuck’ a few times” to “beautiful fetish vibes” to “creepy fetish vibes”; use your judgement. You can always leave. Beware of the occasional “fetish-fuel panel that wasn’t marked 18+ but really, really should have been”.
Some cons are chill with pup hoods, others are weird about em. I think most are chill. Leashes are forbidden for very good safety reasons.
Just like how fursuits aren’t consent, gear is not consent. But you already knew that, right? (If you go around overstepping people’s boundaries in public because noone invited you to a private party, that’s a great way to ensure nobody will invite you to a private party.)
I went to Anthrohio 2024 and 2025. In 2025 they moved to a new hotel downtown so this will pertain to the new location.
I’m local and arrive by bus, so my bus advice:
If you are heading to/from the airport (CMH) during the daytime, you can… take COTA bus 7 to East Spring St / North 4th Street and walk a few blocks to the hotel? This isn’t the best experience in the world – bus 7 isn’t super frequent, the ride will take about 1 hour, and the route does a loop-de-loop. But hey, it’s $2.
I didn’t stay at the hotel so I’m not sure whether you got to pick between the small building (west) or the big building glued to the convention center (east). There is more demand for the 4 elevators in the small building, since that’s where the convention is and people use elevators to get between floors of the convention. The large building isn’t visited as frequently and appears to have 6 elevators.
If you enter near the big Hilton sign, which is the business address of the hotel, you will enter the large building and might wander into the convention center. The correct building is the smaller one on the west side of High St; look for the angular skybridge with blue lights in it, or more accurately, look for the giant cloud of furries.
The skybridge is pretty cool!
If you enter the small building through the front door, you’ll enter into the hotel’s main foyer. This is a fun place to socialize and take photos; natural light hits the area most of the day. Exits are up (the spiral staircase), south (a hallway), and north (elevators).
If you take the hallway to the south, you will first find a staircase to the lower floor, then you’ll find con ops, and if you keep going and turn right you’ll find registration and con store, hospitality, board games, video games, and the headless lounge. There are restrooms and water fountains at the end of the hallway and lots of seating peppered throughout.
If you climb the spiral staircase, you’ll find more places to sit all over the place, the Gallerie restaurant and bar to the east, and the very pretty skybridge taking you to the convention center/other hotel building to the northeast. Usually a slightly chiller place to sit and relax.
If you take the staircase down, to the south is Panel Rooms 1 and 2, to the north is the Main Stage, and to the west (right by the foot of the stairs) is the dealer’s den. Artist’s Alley was lined up on the east wall. More restrooms are behind the panel rooms.
In 2025 Anthrohio had about 2500 attendees. That number will only go up from here.
There were some growing pains - the dealer’s den was occasionally uncomfortably crowded during peak hours, one late-night event had a standby line stretching all the way across the hall, and the lower-floor hallway between the panel rooms was frequently pretty busy. This was before I went to FWA though, so I had no idea what an actually crowded event looks like…!
Anthrohio prides themselves on having their own snacks in the Hospitality Room free of charge, which is unusual for cons. The hotel sets out coffee there in the mornings but it goes quick. The fresh fruit provided in Hospitality also gets picked over. Plenty of chips and sodas all day, though.
That said, you are in downtown Columbus and you can’t throw a rock without hitting a fantastic place to eat. You are only a block away from the North Market which holds about thirty neat businesses under one roof. I caught several groups hunched over boxes of Mikey’s Late Night Slice pizza on the con floor. Tasty Dawg is a bit of a ways away, but they’re a “friend of the show”, as it were.
There’s always the Gallerie right above your head, too; in 2025 they had some silly furry themed items available after 4pm. And there’s a bar on the top floor, or so I’m told.
They set out some pamphlets – I forgot the cute little name they had – with locations of other places to eat.
I think the hotel was well air-conditioned. AO25 was held in early spring instead of the typical Memorial Day weekend, though, which might have helped.
Make sure to look at the skybridge after sundown, it’s cool.
Do not congregate near the bottom of the staircase. Adherents to this policy will go far in life.
They are chill with puphoods.
I went to FWA 2025 with ebu and had a great time (despite it all).
You’ll arrive at ATL, the busiest airport in the United States and probably the one with the largest number of restaurants. If you follow the signs to baggage claim, you’ll head down some escalators to a pair of shuttles that run back and forth between all terminals (and the baggage claim).
Strongly consider taking MARTA between the airport and your hotel. It’s fast, it’s fun, and there’s no point paying out the ass for an Uber when public transit is right there. You can purchase Breeze cards right before you enter the metro. The MARTA can be somewhat unreliable, so budget some money for a cab or a lyft and budget an hour for delays. (As of 2025 the MARTA stop at the airport is indeed working – there’s a press release saying it’s closed, but that was last year and they didn’t write the damn date on the press release.)
If you are flying out the day after the con, 9999999 other furries are doing the same thing, so budget an extremely generous amount of time for the TSA line – it took me about 90 minutes to get through and the line only grew from there. Show up at least four hours before your flight. Don’t trust the estimated wait time.
Not the Marquis. There are eight (!) elevators and somehow it’s still twenty elevators too few. Every single elevator is packed and it will take several tries before you find an elevator with room for you. You really don’t need to make this a part of your life.
The Hyatt and Hilton wouldn’t be terrible choices, but I also noticed some substantial lines for the elevator at the Hilton which is very tall. Also, very annoyingly, con staff will hog skybridges between hotels for queue lines and force you outside if you’re doing something other than queueing.
We skipped all this drama by staying “off campus” at the Aloft, a few blocks west. I liked it!
If you are walking a significant distance outside, it would be a good idea to bring a friend to walk with you.
It takes a while to get used to the hotel layout, especially the Marriott Marquis; here’s my notes on that.
FWA 2025 was the largest furry convention in history and it was kinda falling apart at the seams. I’m gonna be honest; I didn’t attend too many events because I didn’t feel like wading through crowds or queueing for hours. The virtual queue system got too much shit, IMO. Really the problem was the sheer number of people.
“Arriving early to beat the lines at registration” does not work. 500 people all have the same idea + security will prevent a line from forming too early. During 2025, they waived badge requirements for things on Thursday and most of Friday just because so many people did not have badges yet. Registering does not need to be your #1 priority.
You will just have to brave the reg line, sorry. It took us about an hour but someone brought balloons to slap around while we waited. Wear a mask, bring a full water bottle and hand towel from the hotel, and of course preregister!!
First of all, head to the Publix and/or the CVS for some snacks you can keep in your hotel room.
For lunch, everyone likes this place called “The Hub”, which is a gigantic mall-ish food court. It is south of the Hyatt, a skybridge connects it to Marquis One Tower, which is reachable from the west end of the Atrium level of the Marquis. If you go to The Hub and eat from the chick fil a, I will kill you. There’s a Firehouse Subs and a Bull Gogi and a million other places. Why would you go to the chick fil a?
On Friday we ate at this random food court from… truist tower or something? It’s accessible only on weekdays via a north skybridge from Marquis Two Tower. We liked the sandwiches from “Garden Deli”; there’s also a Dunkin and a bake shop and a few other places. Much less busy than “the hub”.
And of course there are actual sit-down restaurants too but we didn’t look in to any of those. We were full enough.
Don’t bring a towel (just borrow towels from the hotel), maybe skip the jacket - on days when I wanted the jacket I never brought it with me that morning.
When riding the Marquis elevators down, if you are able, don’t be picky about what floor it stops at. Get off at the Atrium Level or wherever it first stops and take stairs or ride escalators to your destination. Clears it up for other people.
Places that are unusually well air-conditioned: entry and exit points to hotels, and (for some reason) the Furality portal room.
There are Elkay ezh2o bottle fillers on the Marquis level toward the east end. 🚰
Some say the real con happens on the 10th floor. It’s a common spot for unofficial meetups.
They are extremely chill with puphoods, lol. I have never seen more pups in my life including at Pride.
Never go to con floor while already tired, especially at a large con. You will only get more tired. Go to bed.
Knowing the symptoms of heat exhaustion is one thing. Recognizing them when they happen to yourself is another.
Dont push yourself too hard just for FOMO. Cherish the things you did do.
Also – I am not an expert on this topic, and I’m speaking vaguely to avoid embarrassing myself – sometimes “doing too much fetish stuff in one day” can be a problem, sometimes “thinking about kink after experiencing something you need more time to process” can be a problem. If your kink battery is low: pause, talk through it, leave, and/or sleep on it. You’ll recover.