Something I tend to underestimate in myself a lot is how much I genuinely really love Pokemon. I think a large part of it is that I’ve never been fond of the competitive aspects of it– I don’t care for tournaments and my least favorite part of Pokemon has always been the actual battling component. What has always captured me was the world itself— the idea of going on this journey and making friends with various creatures and exploring everything together.
It’s such a weird thing to deal with because most people do play Pokemon for those battle aspects– even with the TCG, many people collected to actually play before they blew up into some investment mess. I always just liked collecting cards because I liked them. I have such clear memories of when I was younger and I’d put one of each card into a binder and all the doubles into a round old cookie tin. It doesn’t mean I couldn’t play the game– I played with a deck my father and cousin made and won at our local Pokemon League, even completely earning all the badges and Elite 4 Sticker for our badge. And while I never was fond of the actual battling, I did enjoy collecting the badges in the games as well.
That said, despite this event being largely said to mostly be a thing for families with younger kids, I was really excited to see some version of Pokemon come to life. I never managed to make it to the local Pokemon Center, despite living in New York my entire life, and who knows when I’ll get to Japan again to check out PokePark so this really was the closest experience I could get since Pokemon celebrated their 10th Anniversary in Bryant Park and seeing Pokemon placed around the park and hanging out in the fountain.
Photo Credit goes to Tom Hall
So, despite everything happening, I really hoped we could go and while I wasn’t able to experience everything (health issues are the worst), I’m genuinely really happy we went. We had arrived a bit early for our timeslot, so I took the time to wait in the shade. There were banners and a cute little picture right near the entrance to the Piers to instruct that you were going the right away.
Of course I had to bring one of my Mega Audino plushies as my buddy for the event. This one is by Cherrbunn.
When it was finally getting close to the timer for us to go in, we quickly headed to line up which had banners alongside the barriers. As we had reserved a time slot, we didn’t have to go on the walk in line which was absolutely huge.
That said, I quickly learned one big issue with the event: They weren’t actually limiting how long you were in. While we were waiting the last couple of minutes to tick over, someone who had been part of the 2PM group was immediately let through despite being fairly late. And I think that easily led to the biggest issue with the event: The lines.
When I had read about the event and reserving a time, I had hoped that meant we could be in and out very quickly as it has been hot lately and my body struggles a lot with heat, but it was not the case in the slightest. There was very little seating as well and I want to say there were only two sections that really had any seating for adults (Which even if they expected a lot of kids, an event for families usually requires a guardian that is over 18) and it felt like such a huge oversight, especially when there wasn’t actually that much shade and the breeze from the water could only do so much. We also genuinely did see just as many adults by themselves as we did families with kids, if not even more of them.
With shows happening on the hour (such as meet and greets, Pokemon Dance Parties, and Pokemon Yoga), I shouldn’t have been surprised people were staying. They even have multiple food trucks set up. As for why they didn’t also bring more seating in the giant main area, I don’t know. But what I expected to be roughly 30 minutes to go through the booths and see everything (Would I like to stay longer? Of course. But ignoring health issues, as mentioned, I thought we were limited on time and I wouldn’t want to hold up other people wanting to check things out) turned out to be a multi-hour thing where I was trying desperately to not overheat (I failed) and had to call it early rather than checking out the last few things because I was already beyond my limit which did make me really sad.
While there was a free water station, it was only at the very start. Right after you got in, there was a water cooler with some cups and then everything else. It wasn’t really a simple thing to get back to, especially as more and more people were being let in. The exit all the way down back from the end of this area of the Park to the street near where the Ferries would park.
Regardless, while I got heat stroke and have been sick the last few days dealing with that, I still did enjoy what we got to do. The very first thing was going through a cute Pikachu arch.
There were four rows for us to pick our “Starter” for our badges. My husband picked Charmander so I decided to pick Pikachu as I had also picked Charmander for my very first foray into the Pokemon World with Pokemon Blue (yes, I played Pokemon Blue and picked Charmander), but the only other starter I picked in a Kanto game was Pikachu in Pokemon Yellow (and the Let’s Go title) so it felt right!
This area also had a big Pokeball in the center, some silhouettes of the Starters (+ Pikachu) that you could stick a color circle on (I didn’t get one, but I think they may have ran out of yellow…), and statues of the four as well.
It was then onto the first little mini-zone: Electric Cityscapes (though, you could also head to the right to see a giant inflatable Pikachu). In here was the Feed Morpeko minigame which was essentially a Cornhole (Beanbag Toss) game– you had two berry-shaped beanbags and needed to aim into one of the two holes: The top being Morpeko’s dark/Hangry mode form and the bottom being their Normal/Full Belly mode.
This line was moving fairly slow despite there being five spots. It got to the point where everyone only was given two shots to try and get them in, but either way you received a Sticker which was the main prize for interacting with each minigame. You could put them on the back of your pass. This one was mine, though it’s going to haunt me forever knowing there were likely ones I missed out on:
We then hit a Coloring area where you could pick out coloring pages to, well, color in. But they also just gave the sticker for anyone who didn’t feel like coloring– while I would have liked to, the only seats not for kids were in the Sun and I was already struggling after the first long line so I just held onto my coloring pages and took my sticker as we continued our journey further into the park. I’m not sure if I actually got one of each, but I did my best– they were kind of laid out all over the place and not really organized:
After this, we also got our hats. You could pick from any of the four, but we picked the ones that matched out badges. Unfortunately, it was one per person or I would’ve loved to get Squirtle and Bulbasaur too…
We then headed through the Fire zone and this is where– living up to its name I suppose, the shade was really gone. I don’t have as many pictures as this was the big open sunny area, but it also was the worst of the lines. It got to a point where some of the Staff actually started just handing out stickers to the line encouraging people who didn’t care to skip it and/or come back later. As much as I wanted to play the fire-type game (It was Ski-ball), the line was moving agonizingly slow and with no shade, it just wasn’t possible right now. They did have neat flame fan things decorating the area though.
With our sticker in hand despite not getting to play, we headed towards the Giant Lapras where the line was for the Fire-type match-up game. You needed to flip two tiles to make a match in order to get a sticker. No, I don’t know why this game was so close to the giant Lapras.
Again, the line was definitely fairly slow and I’m not sure why they only had the one board for matching instead of multiple, but it was still less people than the other lines had been. After, I ended up sitting on some rocks under some trees to try and cool down a bit before meeting up with my husband over to the next “game”– sticking a Flower sticky note with some words on it. In addition to the sticker though, this has a cute bonus prize of a Pencil with seeds at the bottom that you could plant after the Pencil is done:
We then passed a Soccer game (or Football for those of you outside of the USA) which we also just got the sticker from because it was very sunny, another long line, and honestly you don’t want me kicking anything with my terrible aim. This let us out by the stage where they had just finished a Meet & Greet. We made our way to the Water area next which probably had the quickest moving line in a Super Rod Fishing game. This game was easily my favorite. I love the duck fishing games at carnivals and this was essentially that, but you could catch Magikarp, Goldeen, and Finneon. Of course, it is a Super Rod and so Magikarp was actually the hardest to catch… While I managed to get a few bites, I didn’t successfully pull one up (though, my husband did). I did get two Goldeen and two Finneon though!
After this, we headed to the line for Ices… Which was… honestly ridiculous. They were free, but they clearly underestimated the number of people so only about 16-20 would be put out at a time and they just let people go at them, with some people literally taking one of each flavor for themselves. Thankfully, there was a bench next to the front of the Ices Stall, but it was right in the Sun. This was the line at one point:
There were only 2/3 flavors left when we were on it and by the time we actually got close, just one flavor remained :(
On the other side of the stage were the last things to do such as a gachapon and putting a “favorite Pokemon” sticker up (there was a small selection and Mega Audino sure wasn’t one of them) before going towards the Food Trucks, but I couldn’t do anything more unfortunately so we took the long run out. To our surprise though, we received a special pack of Cards.
Also Ball Guy was there. I don’t know if it was the real Ball Guy or a cosplayer, but he was doing a very good job.
Anyway, I’d love to see more events like this. Just… with better line management and hopefully some better ways to stay cool (and more seating).