Furnal Equinox 2025
| 2082 words
It's been about a month since I went on my trip to Toronto to attend my first Furnal Equinox, so I figured it's about time to write about my experience!!
Thursday:
My journey started on March the 20th, where I boarded a VIA Rail train on route to Toronto. This was actually my first time taking the train, so I was rather excited about it, and it was a pretty fun trip! I really enjoyed being able to listen to music and watching the scenery on the way, even if the train's Wifi bandwidth was so bad that half of my Spotify library wasn't loading. I got to pass most of my time by chatting with one of my friends through Discord, whom I was going to be meeting at the convention later that weekend!
When we finally arrived in Toronto, we went straight to my mom's AirBNB that she rented out. Her and I decided that it would be best if she came along as well and stayed in the vicinity of the Westin, especially since this was my first time going to this convention, so that she could be there to help me out whenever I needed it. This system ended up working pretty well, and there's a chance we might do it again next year if I feel like I need it!
Regardless, after settling into our AirBNB, we went out for dinner at Boston Pizza, which was really tasty! Our garlic bread, personal pizzas, and my drink which had Absolut Raspberri vodka, raspberry puree, frozen citrus slush and value curaçao! Afterwards, we were both pretty exhausted from our trip to Toronto, so we took it easy for the rest of the evening and went to sleep pretty early
Friday:
We woke up early on Friday to get to the hotel early, and also because we wanted to try traversing Toronto's underground tunnel system, known as the Path, for the first time. Naturally, due to us not knowing where we were going or how to read maps, we got lost, but luckily we were able to find our way to the Westin after asking a few security guards.
Once we arrived to the hotel, I was able to get into my room earlier than expected, and was able to drop off my stuff there. From there on, I met up with one of my friends and we walked around the hotel and chatted for a bit before my other friends finished with their breakfast and were at the hotel themselves.
My first panel of the weekend was the kandi trading panel, which I had a lot of fun at and got lots of new kandi from, but I felt very overshadowed by other peoples' large kandi collections, when I myself made maybe 18 singles in total. Everyone else had a much bigger selection, and some even brought cuffs to the panel!! Regardless, I had a fun time, and met many new people there!
I don't entirely remember what we did in between my next supposed panel (which I'll explain in a bit,) but I think my group and I checked out the dealer's den during this time. Dealer's was great by the way, there was a huge selection of stuff to chose from, even if I didn't end up getting too much stuff myself this year! We also got lunch at the Path's nearest food court as well in between events.
Unfortunately, due to the fact that the lines for the North Tower elevators were constantly long and I had forgotten to get disability access that day, I completely forgot to get my Littlest Pet Shop figures that I was going to trade at the LPS panel, so I decided to skip it entirely, which I am still pretty bummed about missing out on.
The rest of the day was pretty quiet, as I found the events for the evening to be pretty sparsely spread out. I know we checked out both the SFW and 18+ dealer's den several times during this time, but before one of our last panels after dark, our group pretty much just sat around chatting with each other.
Our final panel of the day would be Zoology 101, a panel hosted by Dr. Wildlife where him and a group of people would drunkingly attempt to teach the audience about zoology! Naturally they didn't get too far into their presentation, as they all have ADHD and this was dialed up to 100 when they've all been drinking. Still very funny nonetheless, I'm glad I got to see it!
Saturday:
I woke up early on Saturday, and spent the morning getting myself ready, and going down to the lobby to people-watch for a bit until dealer's opened. I also finally managed to get disability access, so I didn't need to wait for the elevators for as long anymore, which came in handy for the rest of the weekend! In fact, I managed to get up and get suited up between going to dealer's and the fursuit walk, which we were all gathering for at 12pm that afternoon. I, for one, am very glad that the fursuit walk at Furnal Equinox happens during the afternoon, because I don't think I could ever handle walking around in-suit during the morning when I'm still half asleep!
The fursuit walk itself was pretty awesome! It was my first ever, as the one at CanFURence got canceled due to severe weather. I have to say, the weather was beautiful for the fursuit walk, and it was great getting some photos around the Toronto harbour! Great first fursuit walk/parade experience, and I'm definitely excited to participate in more in the future!
Right afterwards, we went to get some lunch at Church's Texas Chicken. It was pretty good food, but unfortunately I completely misunderstood the menu and accidentally ordered a family/group platter, all to myself. In my defense, their menu on their website just wasn't showing up at all, but I still felt pretty stupid for accidentally ordering myself so much food- most of which would unfortunately end up in the trash as my group couldn't finish it all either.
Afterwards was the unofficial bat meetup, set up by my friend Seam/Suture! It was great being able to meet all kinds of other bat furries! Unfortunately, I couldn't stay long because there was the Build-A-Bear meetup happening at the same time, but I'm still glad I got to meet everyone there, and hope that an official meet can happen next year!
Speaking of the Build-A-Bear meetup, that was also fun! We got a group photo with all of our bears, and got in a circle to talk about our bears and what made them special! It was fun being able to chat with everyone about our love for plushies and Build-A-Bear.
I don't quite remember what we did afterwards, but our next panel as a group was the Dragstravaganza at 9pm, which was a ton of fun! The drag queens were beautiful as always, and they were also so hilarious too. Really great stuff, and I hope they have another event like it next year!!
We wrapped up the night by going to check out the trance/prog set by Tailspvn for a little bit. Although maybe not as long as we had hoped, since my friends didn't get main hotel this year and had to walk 30 minutes from the Westin to the overflow hotel and didn't want to be doing this too late into the night. Still, it was a ton of fun, and I always enjoy getting to dance to live DJ sets in-suit!
I believe this was the night I left my hotel key card in my hotel room, again. For some reason, as soon as I get into my hotel room, I have a habit of putting it on the desk instead of back in my bag, and this was something that happened to me back during CanFURence 2024. Thankfully there was someone at the desk who was able to give me another hotel key card, but I'm really going to have to figure out a system to make sure that this doesn't happen for a third time!
Sunday:
My last day was the Sunday, as I was having to take a train back to my city later that afternoon/evening. I started the day off as per usual, before going down to the lobby and waiting for the panel I had anticipated the most- the plushies panel!!! It was the reason why I had bought my SOS serval plush from Ebay, with the intent to bring it with me to the con's plushie panel. Thankfully everything worked out, but there was a good while where it was estimated to be arriving on the day I was leaving for the convention, so it was possible I needed to bring someone else instead! Nonetheless, it was awesome being able to see everyone's plushie friends, and it was a surprisingly very popular panel, as evidenced by the amount of plushies that ended up getting included in the final picture! It was a ton of fun, I always get super excited to talk about plushies with likeminded people.
The last thing on my agenda for the weekend was to watch part of the dance competition, which I was quite sad about having to miss the bulk of, but there wasn't much I could do, considering I had booked my train tickets way before the schedule was released. Regardless, what I did end up seeing was a ton of fun, and I did end up watching the rest of it on YouTube afterwards!
Once it was time for me to leave, I left the ballroom and found my mom at the lobby, who had already checked out for me, and we left for the train station by 2pm. We were ready and boarded by around 3:30pm, but unfortunately for us, we'd end up getting delayed. We already knew that there were going to be delays on the way going home, but we didn't know the extent of these delays, so we weren't expecting it to take us an extra 2 hours to get from Toronto to my station, rounding up to about 7 hours straight of sitting in the train. It wasn't terrible, considering I did have free wifi and a place to charge my phone, but it was rather boring when all I wanted was to be home and sleep already.
But that wraps up my time in Toronto for Furnal Equinox!! Even with some bumps in the road getting to and coming back from it, I still feel so lucky and privileged to even have had the opportunity to go, and I really hope that I can go next year! My next convention will be CanFURence 2025, and I'm already so excited for another furcon experience this year!