With the recent outbreak of COVID-19 and many large functions being cancelled for safety concerns, FanimeCon has officially announced that they are deferring this year’s con to 2021.
FanimeCon released an official statement discussing the deferment as well as letting attendees know what to expect. First and foremost, they wish all fans to stay safe and protected during these difficult times. They had been working on a solution for what to do about the current state of things, when they finally decided it best to postpone the convention into the next year.
They have stated that anyone who has pre-registered for the con will get their badge rolled over to 2021, and a confirmation on this should be going out in the Fall of 2020. They have deferred tickets as opposed to refunded them for operational costs, as they are run by a non-profit (known as FANS), and this will help them run the convention even with the expenses they’ve already had to deal with in this year. As for hotels, they’ve said that all rooms reserved through the official con listing will be automatically cancelled with no penalties; 2021’s hotel block will open with the same selection windows based on when badges were purchased.
The convention staff will also be communicating with all vendors and guests from the appropriate departments involving them, as well as anyone running anything in programming.
Eric Wu (Chairman of FanimeCon) and FanimeCon staff immensely thanked everyone involved with the con in any way, and also gave out kind words to their fans and community: “Anyone would be hard pressed to find someone in this world not touched by this pandemic. We hope that you remain safe and healthy (physically and mentally) in the coming weeks and months of this crisis. We hope that come May 28-31, 2021, our world will be in a more stable place and that we may once again celebrate with this wonderful community that you have helped us create in and around FanimeCon.”
The statement also included details on how to contact them or who to stay in touch with, and can be found here.
