Hello everybody! Andy Lagopus here, doing some legitimate journalism! …Sort of!
On Saturday, I had the great pleasure of attending a Zootopia Meetup Party in Southington, Connecticut. Organized by Redman404 and promoted by ZNN, this event was a blast for everyone involved!
Redman404 described it very well over on reddit, so I’ll turn it over to him for a minute.
I find it hard to put into words just how incredible this meetup was. I have a new perspective of our community, and how close we all truly are. It didn’t matter who showed up, how old they were, what they looked like, we were all there simply for our love of Zootopia, and sharing that in the company of friends. We joked, laughed, offered fanfic and comic recommendations, discussed headcanons, thought of some ridiculously funny AU’s and other ideas, and of course watched the movie (‘watch’ is a loose term, we mostly commentated over it, which was a ton of fun). The sense of family and respect I witnessed between us was just amazing. I felt like we could stand there for hours talking about anything and everything related to this movie (probably because we did). There is so much more I want to say about this experience, but I’m really not sure how, perhaps tomorrow when I’m not super tired I’ll put up another post.
For now I’ll leave it with this: On this night, I learned a lot about organizing meetups, I connected with the great community that the Zootopia fandom is, and I made some wonderful new friends.
I wholeheartedly agree! It was fantastic to be able to meet you all, share suggestions, and talk about our mutual favorite movie.
Also, special thanks to MaveriKat, who gave me this awesome Metal Gear Zootopia T-shirt!
[Photo on Twitter] That was so kind and unexpected, thank you so much!
Check out after the break for photos and more of the story of how it all went!
I arrived with a friend just before sunset, as instructed, and was surprised to find this enormous field almost completely full.
It turns out, this is a very popular summer activity in the community. There were kids and families everywhere. Which is absolutely how it should be!
The only slightly irritating thing was, because I had gotten there right in time, my friend and I had to park several rows back, behind some big trucks and a pavilion. But to be fair, that was on me for getting there when I did. We still got a decent view of the screen though.
After borrowing my friend’s phone to get on reddit, I was able to send a message to the others who had shown up from our little online community specifically for this meetup. Once we had found each other, we hung out in the pavilion, which had speakers playing the movie audio.
Overall, it was a ton of fun! Like Redman404 said, we came to the conclusion that we had all seen the movie so many times, we were there more to just hang out with each other. We discussed each other’s fanfiction, headcanons, and awesome stories and comics that we wanted to share with each other.
MaveriKat was super kind and got me both the T-shirt shown
in this tweet, and a box of Zootopia Fruit Snacks!
Overall, we had a wonderful time, and left with new friends all around! I hope to be able to do something like this again soon, and encourage all of you, wherever you are in the world, to find other Zootopia fans and meet them face to face. It’s a great experience that I highly recommend you all try!
From left to right
Josh S. (FreeLoveForever) | Shea L. (Redman404) | Kevin R (YFWE) | Julius ?. (Andy Lagopus) | Alex B. (AlexHohem55144) | John C. (MaveriKat)
I wish I could've gone. Glad to see it was a great turn out!
Sounds like an awesome time 🙂 So cool that a movie could inspire this sense of community. Wish I could have been there. Shout out from the west coast of Canadialand ;D
This is so awesome. I know I wouldn't have been able to go in any sense, but just seeing the meet up makes me happy.
Also, I have finally seen ANDY'S FACE. This is revolutionary.
BTW, nice plaid. I love plaid shirts.
Thank you! I'm not especially fond of putting my face around the internet, but for an occasion like this, I figured it was worth it.
I was too far away for this event. Wish I could have went, but driving from Texas to Connecticut would be impossible for me.
Had an awesome time. Was fun meeting everyone that attended!