FanExpo Vancouver 2025

We had a lot of fun at Emerald City Comic Con last year, but going to the states and staying in a hotel during a con, and having to eat every meal out is so expensive. Plus there’s the whole thing with the US tariffs. Either way, we decided to go to Vancouver FanExpo this year instead. 

I did a couple casual cosplays at ECCC last year, but I haven’t properly cosplayed since well before the pandemic. I knew I didn’t want to do full-on cosplay, so I came up with a couple outfits to match the guests. Sadly, I didn’t really take pictures because I’ve apparently become a bad cosplayer. 

Originally Catherine Tate and Jenna Coleman were supposed to be guests on Saturday so I had a Rose Tyler (Doctor Who) cosplay planned for that day, but they ended up cancelling the week of the con, so I rearranged my outfits a bit, and wore it on Friday. I wore jeans and a jean jacket paired with a Union Jack shirt, boots, and too much eyeliner. I wore my hair down with the front clipped up, but I completely forgot to wear the big hoop earrings I bought just for this cosplay. 

The first panel we wanted to go to wasn’t until 4:45 so we were able to sleep in and not show up at the convention centre until the afternoon. After getting our badges we wandered the floor, looking at art. Good thing we ended up doing this on Friday, because the floor was too packed to even walk for the rest of the weekend. We didn’t buy a lot but we did find a gorgeous rat print, some cool magnets, and I got a great Star Wars skirt. 

Our only panel on Friday was John Rhys Davies, who was a complete… delight? I mean he was extremely existential, but a delight nonetheless. We saw him last year at ECCC as well, but he was on a panel with Elijah Wood and Sean Astin, who were silly geese and toned down his existentialism. He did go on a whole rant about what his speech would be if he became the leader of Genovia (yes, my favourite role of his is Chris Pine’s evil uncle in Princess Diaries 2, thank you for asking) and the entire thing was glorious. 

Saturday, I wore a casual Princess Leia cosplay due to Manny Jacinto, who was in The Acolyte, being there. I wore my Star Wars skirt at got at ECCC last year with a white turtleneck, space buns, my Mandalorian eyeshadow palette, and my Leia necklace.  

We showed up in the early afternoon, in time for Manny’s panel. I had no clue that he’s from Vancouver and went to UBC for engineering. I don’t really know why, but because of his character in The Good Place, I kind of also assumed he was from Florida like his character. Angela didn’t know him from anything so I was a little worried she was going to be bored, but she found him as delightful and adorable as I did. 

We didn’t have a lot to do between panels, because the floor was way too packed to move, but we braced it briefly to go grab a couple wooden Doctor Who signs we’d been eyeing up on Friday. After that we pretty much just hung out at a wall and introverted as much as we could until the next panel. 

Second panel of the day was some of the cast of Supernatural. Mark Pellegrino, DJ Qualls, Samantha Smith, Alexander Calvert, Jim Beaver, and Ruth Connell were there. I wasn’t super familiar with all of them since I stopped watching in season 10, but it was still fun. Jim Beaver wore a rainbow shirt that said “ally” like the icon he is. The only thing that ruined the panel, was the people sitting next to us wouldn’t shut up and it made it really hard to hear. 

Sunday I wore my hunter from Supernatural outfit since there was another panel with Supernatual people. Jeans, black t-shirt, red and black flannel, docs. Looking at me you’d never know if I was a Supernatual fan, a lesbian, or from Vancouver. 

All we did on Sunday was panels. First was Andy Serkis, who was a delight and told us his voice for Gollum was inspired by the noise his cat made when he threw up hairballs. Next was Bonnie Wright, who was adorable and gave out wands to tiny children who asked questions. Last was another Supernatural panel: Jared Padalecki and Mark Sheppard. It was probably my favourite panel of the weekend. They were so funny and bantered the whole time. My personal favourite thing was Jared denying he knew anything about being a guest star on season five of The Boys (which has Supernatural costar, Jensen Ackles). Yeah… two days later it was announced that both Jared and Misha Collins were both going to be in The Boys. Sneaky bugger. 

It’s definitely not as good of a con as Emerald City. It’s not organized very well and is a bit of a mess. To be fair, I don’t think FanExpo realized just how many people would be there this year (I’m assuming because of the trade war with the States and the general state of that country people opted to go to FanExpo in Vancouver instead of ECCC in Seattle). They weren’t equipped for it. You couldn’t even walk because there were so many people. I’ve never been to a con that packed before, even before the pandemic. Artist alley tends to be better at ECCC too, although there was a lot of good stuff here. It was nice to be able to pay CDN instead of USD as well as just be able to go home after the con day and cook dinner instead of restaurants and hotels. 

I don’t know if it’s because this was my first con with a cane (those floors are murder) or I’m just older and less tolerant now, but I found I got exhausted way quicker than usual this time. Maybe part of it was because I could, if that makes any sense. There was less I wanted to see and I could go home after. But wow, I get way too exhausted and overstimulated by cons now.