It shouldn’t really be a surprise that I play Neopets for anyone who didn’t already know, but I’ve actually been playing it since I was ten years old and still have that same original account my parents faxed in the approval form for. While I may not have a lot of older items due to getting hacked as a kid (oh, Limited Too virtual items…), I still have my very first Neopet, a blue Chia who is now a Water Chia, and was very excited to receive an invite for the VIP Night on Thursday before the official opening of the pop-up store!
Unfortunately, with the absolutely terrible weather, I had to be somewhat quick as to make sure we could still get home, but I’m happy I was able to go at all. As soon as I got in, there was already a pretty crazy line so after receiving a cute Usukicon Bag as a gift (which also had some very cute stuff in it which I’ll show further into the post), I actually ended up going downstairs first.
It actually has a cute inner pocket/pouch with the Neopets logo on the inside as well
If I had to give one critique about the event, it’s the way things were organized. The downstairs was so open and had some nice seating, but also relatively empty as the merchandise was set up in the small part of the front where the line was wrapping around. The rest of the main floor was for crane games and someone doing tarot card readings (I’m assuming autograph stuff would also be put here). The downstairs area essentially let you “Adopt a Neopet” which was picking a black and white picture to color in with various markers. I, unsurprisingly, picked a Chia. There were only a couple of tables, so I mostly ended up using the seat next to me as a coloring surface. I made mine look like an Angel Chia. I thought we would keep these considering the whole Adoption moniker, but we actually were given some tape to put it on the wall, so farewell Angel Chia. I wish you and Valentine Chia’s existed outside of in-game plushies and that you got more love instead of them constantly killing you.
Of course I had to give her a cute pink Warf for a petpet too.
They also had adorable Neopian Times pamphlets on the tables and it was very cute. I only took a picture of the Front and Back, but it does open to more stuff in the middle as well.
Someone kindly gave me a mini-cupcake and another nice person gave me a cute keychain of Fat Cat! I wish Fat Cat would return. Regardless, you’ll see this further down when I get to what I ended up picking up ^^; Also downstairs was where you could get a free soda and play the Minigame Collection that recently released. Unfortunately, you weren’t allowed to use the other stairs so I had to head back the way I came which is when I realized that the actual shopping for merchandise and the line to pay for said merchandise was pretty much one in the same. I genuinely don’t know how this situation could have been improved– I definitely spent 85% of the time I was there just being on line and it wasn’t really the nicest way to shop. There are some things I would have loved to get a better look at (such as the Standees), but there just wasn’t a good way to do so.
The line had gotten so long that they even gave out some Healing Springs Water to thank everyone for their patience (and it was definitely rather warm in the shop as well). The bottle on the right is the Soda I ended up picking.
When I finally did get to the top, there was actually a mix-up with my order so I ended up paying more than I was supposed to ^^; Support is talking to me on it so hopefully a fix will be found soon, but it’s another thing that I probably could’ve noticed sooner if the lines weren’t as hectic as they were and I wasn’t worried about holding anyone up.
Regardless, after getting a late dinner (as we had to leave quite early and the only thing I had there was a cupcake), we finally made it home and this was what I ended up getting!:
I really can’t say enough how excited it was to be invited to this, even if things were kind of hectic. Finally, here are more photos from the venue as well:
