Hello, everypony!

While there are many cons taking place around the world, Czech Republic is quite unique. We have “Festival Fantazie” which is the largest multifandom con in Czech Republic. You can meet many fandoms there, starting with Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings and ending with Harry Potter, Twilight, Game of Thrones and Bollywood. There are even programs for Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, Karaoke, or video games of all sorts. I’d dare to say it’s comparable with ComicCon in its range of interests, since there’s also a good lot of additional sections like Orclympics, random dancing and singing in the streets and so on. But this year was the first time ponies emerged - and we did it in style!

The festival itself lasted for 9 days, starting on 28. June and ending on 7. July, and the last 4 days were infested by ponies. But let’s take a look at a couple of earlier days, when some of us had already arrived to the convention. We had many amazing cosplayers and that, of course, had drawn some attention; for many con visitors it was their first encounter with ponies, but luckily those people are very open-minded and also crazy in their own way. Yet not very surprisingly we were laughed at, so we decided to take part in the toughest competition of the Festival – Orclympics. First competition in its program was beer-drinking. Few bronies had chosen to participate and two of them actually made it to the second and third place in the finale. Ponies are tough too! And then there was Orcball. It’s a game very similar to rugby, but with only two rules:
1. Don’t eat the ball
2. Don’t eat the judge.
And bronies made a team! And to the surprise of many they won the third place. These events really helped us in proving that ponies are serious business!

On the evening before the Pony program started, we had a Gala evening. And to our big surprise, Russian band Przewalski’s Ponies arrived in Czech Republic to play a concert! They delivered a whole lot of fun, and before the Gala, they even got the idea to take chalk and paint the pavement, so quickly the whole area of Festival Fantazie was covered with ponies. The Gala evening was also the grand opening of the very first My Little Pony Con on Festival Fantazie. There was a short introduction and then the concert started. It was an amazing experience, because many of us never actually heard brony music live. After the concert, a party quickly took place with well-known pony songs and also loads of brony music. It lasted till 3AM. Party hard Pinkie pie style, YAY!

The next day, the pony program started. Every morning began with an hour-long show watch and then there were presentations, panels, workshops, competitions and even a charity auction. Presentations and panels were various – about physics in Equestria, music, Source Filmmaker, videos, fanfiction, other cons, cosplays, cider, Trotmania, but also about bronies themselves since many visitors of Festival Fantazie had no idea about who bronies actually are. Workshops were lots of fun too, for example “How to make your own parasprite”, “Music workshop” (in which Przewalski’s Ponies took part too), “Artistic workshop” or Karaoke (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vy0UHxrvp0).

But nothing lasts forever and the Festival ended on Sunday 7/7/2013. On the last day panels ended by 1 PM. The final one was about the convention itself and we’ve discussed some ideas concerning the next year’s FF and other conventions yet to come. We’ve also watched photos from the convention and the last thing we’ve watched was “Great to be different”. Quite fitting for the occasion. Then there was a Huge Hive Hug and all the bronies said goodbye, put posters on their cars and went home. It was an awesome con, full of ponies and friendship, and we all are looking forward to the next one!