Overview

Our first time to Virginia Beach & Tidewater Comicon, mainly to visit old friends and check out the event at the same time. Covering our experiences with the event, the local area and the interesting local networking experience.

Applications, Payments & Planning

I had applied to Tidewater Comicon in 2024, got accepted, paid and had to request a refund as my sister's baby shower ended up falling on that date. Probably also worked out just because the logistics of doing Tidewater, then Momocon then Nashville Comicon were already crazy. I wanted to apply again so the girls could hang out, I could work and my husband could see his friend since they live in Virginia.

Tidewater applications opened sometime in November. I applied on November 29th and was accepted on January 16th, 2025. I didn't pay immediately as I needed to discuss things with both parties to see if we could find time to hang out. I paid January 20th and then reserved the hotel. Payment was due in March for anyone curious. I just like to pay and forget.

I kept putting off looking into taxes until the beginning of June, which is a bad idea generally. I started off looking at the site then decided to just call. You do not need to open an account for taxes and you can just remit payment online with the ST-1 form. This may not always be the case, so always verify, but as of June 2025, that is how we were expected to pay.

Load in information for Tidewater showed up in my email June 23, 2025. Apparently the exhibitor badges get us fast pass access to celebrities on Sunday which is really awesome if you care about that sort of thing. One thing I do not like is that we do not have booth numbers in advance. I have no idea why this is.

Load-in times are Friday 1pm-8pm EST or Saturday from 6:30am-9:30am EST. It gives the load in information on the website at least saying that you need to go to the rear of the building (where the red star is on the map) then check into Hall B for your badge and wristband. Lost/broken/cut bands are $25 to replace, cash only. I guess that's a good thing to note.

Parking is stated to be free but you need to park on the side of the building. If you park behind the building you will get towed. The artist alley spaces are not 8x10 and you only get one table, two chairs and two passes with about 2 feet max behind you.

Load-out starts at 5pm Sunday. Instructions were very clear at least.

 

Before the Event & Setup

Our hotel, Hampton Inn Virginia Beach-Oceanfront North, was about 9 minutes from the convention center, and honestly, a quick and easy drive. I don't think I realized how close it actually was to the beach. Not quite walking distance, but still very reasonable. We gave ourself extra time for this event instead of showing up exclusively for the con itself. We did not really plan to do much of what was around the area outside of the beach, but the girls did say they wanted to go to Busch Gardens. We couldn't make that happen without having planned it out a little better, especially since it was an hour drive from where we were and we didn't meet with our friends until later Friday afternoon. We did learn that they do special discounts for active military and veterans, so this would have been really fun if we had looked into it earlier.

Thursday was mostly just us exploring the boardwalk area, which had a lot going on the whole weekend. I also don't think I realized how close this place was to Norfolk, VA which is where a lot of my military friends ended up in the past. Even ran into a friend from high school, Dennis, during Tidewater. He was one of the people who had ended up stationed out here when he was still in the Navy. Guess he ended up staying in the area! Anyways, enjoy the photo dump!

Our hotel parking was $20 a day, not included in the price of the hotel, and you had to make sure to keep a parking pass in your window. Cars were parking in the lot and getting towed. The spaces were already pretty limited for the hotel, so it made sense why they were doing that. Across from the hotel were two lots intended for beach goers as well as a parking deck next to the shopping center that directly connected to the Hilton. Either way, there was ample parking in the area.

 

Since we were waiting on Stephen and his family to arrive to the area, we decided to pick up the badges and do a partial setup Friday instead of an early morning Saturday. We had from 1pm to 8pm to do this, but we arrived a little before 1pm. The line was very long to get in, but we could walk all four boxes through the gate at 1pm without issue, according to some vendors who joked about charging us for parking.

We parked in the lot and walked everything in since there were three of us. Honestly, we could have driven in and walked things over as well. The line looked a lot worse than it actually was. People were able to park inside against the back fence and walk/wheel things up as well. We were told to enter through the back at Hall B. Artist alley was near the Hall B entrance while vendors were across from us near the entrance of the convention itself.

The line to pick badges up wasn't that bad, but you also had to have wrist bands this con. I hadn't encountered this in the past, so that was interesting. It was $25 for a wrist band in cash so I had to pay that so my daughter could attend. We got a total of two exhibitor badges and three wrist bands. Helpers only needed the band not the badge as well.

Tables felt randomly assigned even though they were saying placement would be based on when you arrived. We were pretty early and ended up with A611. This was near the food and bathrooms on the opposite end of where the entrance was. I also felt like the space we were given was not very much. Not only were tables slammed up against each other, the way to enter was in the middle. You couldn't enter or exit from the end of our aisle and we had black curtains between us and the people behind us. The tables were 6 ft, but I guess some people said there was a chance that they would give us 8 ft tables. Our space was 6x4 ft, so I couldn't really understand how we could have ended up with 8 ft tables anyways, but it's worth noting that maybe this is something they can sometimes do. They just didn't for this event either way.

Load-in didn't feel like the AC was on at all, so it was a little hot.

We put out the table cloth, my banner, set up the grid cubes and the hooks then shoved everything under the table and left. I am fairly fast at throwing everything onto my display anyways, so I wasn't worried about how long I'd take Saturday morning. We left but probably should have set things up a little more than we actually did. I always stress myself out about being late to events in the morning, especially now that my family comes randomly.

We walked around until it was time to meet with our friends at the beach, but before that we met a local corgi owner who happened to be in charge of a local group I can't recall the name of. She told me she would let the locals know I was in town so they could come get some stuff from me! Unrelated, but a lot of the local souvenir businesses had AI art on their products. I don't want to promote them, just know I am disappointed.

Decided to kill time by having ice cream at Lolly's Creamery before meeting up with our friends. After some quick beach fun, we then had some pizza at the restaurant attached to our hotel. It is dog friendly and had good ratings, but honestly I would not really want to eat there again. It's called ZZAS and they had a choice of indoor or outdoor seating. Outside was really dark but we wanted to sit closer to the beach, so we opted for that. We got a birria pizza and pepperoni. I don't think it was terrible, but definitely could have been better.

We went and saw F1 at 11pm Friday night, so we didn't get back to the room until almost 3am. We knew we needed to be up by 8am at latest to get ready, walk to the Starbucks for coffee and feed the teens. We were mostly successful in this, but I guess we didn't allot enough time for eating still. We left a little later than I expected. I had only partially set up on Friday, so I was in a panic to arrive by 9:30 at least.

The Event Itself

I think several of us were confused about hours for VIP. I was thinking it was 9:30am. It was actually 10am, thankfully. We arrived a little after 9:30 on Saturday morning, and the parking lots were already full. I'm not sure what I expected but not that I guess. I hopped out of the car with my badge and went into the event while my husband was stuck with parking and walking with the girls into the event.

The lovely artist from Dragon Knight Dice stopped by my booth and said hi. We're both part of the same artist discord, so it's always nice to get to meet the people we frequently chat with as well. She makes really awesome dice so definitely go check her work out! I believe she was also at Momocon, but some events are so large and chaotic, it's hard to find people. She was on my row at Tidewater, so I really should have.

I realized I never took any photos of how busy the event actually got so guess you get the few photos I took coming in Saturday morning and that's about it.

My first few sales were to corgi owners and they bought a lot of items. It definitely made my day! Add in all the corgi photos people were stopping by to show me, it made for a very fun event on my end. I even got a photo of Finnigan, who was in a dog carrier.

I was barcoding stickers, carding taco dragon pins and sorting bags of other pins in my downtime. I did manage to get everything carded and barcoded before the end of Saturday, so that is a win! Otherwise I was steadily busy even without sales up until 4pm when Ron Pearlman left.

My booth neighbor was stuck in Atlanta, so I got to know his amazing sister, Eva(?). She was really selling his brand and taking photos of people who came to see him with merch they had purchased. Since he was stuck at the airport, it was definitely making his day better. A storm had grounded all the flights, so he didn't actually board until a little before it was closing time.

My husband and daughter both mentioned that the gaming room was awful. They had fewer games than we do, and compared to events like AMKE, my daughter said it was super boring and unfun. She also saw the sonic voice actor was there and was sad she didn't bring her sonic poster for a signature.

While we were packing I handed something from Krampussy to them and I honestly hadn't looked at it at all. Apparently it was a very graphic advertisement and a sticker of a Stitch showing his pink butthole. My husband had noted earlier some NSFW booths around and I was pretty shocked since this was a kids friendly event. I think this event had more kids than any other recent Comicon we'd been at.

The bathroom near us had one toilet break just before 6pm. I had to walk all the way to the front to use the bathroom after we closed up for the day. I don't know why it shocked me so much but I don't think I'd ever seen such a small bathroom at a convention center. Four stalls is so few.

We were more prepared Sunday morning. I am pretty happy we somehow picked the only hotel in walking distance of a Starbucks. The girls got ready while we left for Starbucks and attempted to get donuts. The only donut place was Duck Donuts and apparently it's made to order, so we couldn't just pick up donuts. People were struggling to decide, so they had to have hotel breakfast again.

As far as the convention went, it was a lot easier to park this time around. For some reason they had some gates up blocking both sides. Someone looked like they decided to ram the gates at the very last entrance, so we just casually parked in that lot. Thanks mystery person!

We all walked in together this time. Our daughter's friend only had a VIP badge so the staff just said she had to stay with us. Her dad was coming around 11:30, so it was really nice the staff let us have her tag along. All she had to do was stay with us.

We uncovered my booth and the went to browse artist alley. There was an artist, South of Wonderland, who had these amazing handmade dragons for $100. I actually couldn't resist after walking off and came back. The plush was really nice and it was weighted too. I wanted to know if she'd be interested in collaboration on making a Nebula dragon plush so hopefully this pans out. Plush makers understand shapes and fabric a lot more than I do for sure. When I was snagging her IG info for this post, I saw that she had more than just the yellow ones! Guess she did really well because by the time I saw her booth on Sunday morning, she only had the two yellow dragons left.

I know Alan Tudyk didn't make it, so not sure how much this impacted attendance overall. Sunday was a lot less traffic compared to Saturday as well all day long.

I spent a lot of time chatting with people and one of my first sales Sunday morning was from a lady who had seen a post from the woman we met at the boardwalk with her corgi. If you're reading this, thank you so much!! It was great meeting so many corgi people in Virginia!

My table neighbor was actually there on Sunday. I can't recall his name at all, but his brand was Balisong Media. Was really nice to chat with him when he wasn't busy. Apparently he's in his 50s and teaches marketing. I knew Saturday from his sister that he was a teacher, but honestly thought he was an art teacher. So that was a little bit of a shock. His table was always full of people who knew him from the area or from the college. Other people were recognizing the Philippine flag. I had overheard him say that Virginia Beach was the second highest population of Filipinos next to some city in California. San Diego? San Francisco? I guess I wasn't listening that carefully. His whole super heroes based on mythology and lore was really cool though. Maybe one day we'll see his series as a movie or kids cartoon.

Oh and since I am randomly thinking about it, I brought both my Square Terminal and the new Square Handheld device that scans barcodes. I was primarily using the Handheld, but I had one customer who had some issues with their card being read. I swapped over to the Terminal and it went through without any issues. Not sure what the problem was in the end, but I guess having a way to slide a card is still convenient. I may continue to bring both and take notes since I had fully intended on retiring the Terminal at some point.

One thing I happened to notice despite watching the news while we were in the area, Tidewater was never mentioned. It really stood out to me since there were several events in the local area happening at the same time as Tidewater, but they went through them and never touched on the one we were there for. In fact, there was a La Fiesta event and a small pop-up market that were both mentioned in relation to the boardwalk area. We saw those as well since our hotel was near them, but I guess maybe this event was a lot more like Nashville Comicon than I was expecting.

We went to a pizza place after Tidewater that really shouldn't have pulled up as a place with chicken wings. La Vera Pizzeria - it was seat yourself and order online. They had wings but only the choice of buffalo sauce. We decided to leave and walked down to a place my husband found while I was getting frustrated about feeding people. We had a mix of lactose intolerance and doesn't like seafood, so we ended up at The Bunker Brewpub. It was a really good choice. It had a mix of seafood items but also had burgers, chicken and steak. The girls both got burgers, my husband got chicken and I went with the shrimp and steak. It was really good either way, so it more than made up for the frustration of finding something for everyone. We also went to Ben & Jerry's across from the street from the hotel. Marshmallow Sky is one of my favorites, so I was happy to see it. The place is really expensive though, so it makes sense that it's only in the touristy part of town.

We left on Monday to head home since we had Convergence load-in on July 2nd. Talk about a quick turnaround. We also apparently left at a good time since storms started rolling in and I received a text message about flash flood warnings in the area after we had arrived home. Even as I was writing this blog, there was another text that said there was an electrical storm. The beach was closed because of it.

 

What Worked & What Did Not

Apparently it was very boring for attendees who were looking for things to do. Other Comicon have more panels or games, but this one really lacked in things for people to participate in. I had two teens and two other adults with me who reported back, so this could also be a reason people wouldn't stick around the whole weekend. They were there for me but even left both days to find things to do during the event.

The event center just really lacked bathroom stalls. Nothing the convention itself caused, just something annoying. There were lines nearly every time.

Parking being free was a huge perk. Convention food tends to be awful, so it was nice they could leave to eat and bring something back to me. My husband brought me BonChons on Saturday and Sunday we just ate convention food which was not good.

Local community was really big into supporting the artists there and making suggestions on how to grow, what they liked and didn't like, and suggestions. There were a surprising number of people who had worked or currently worked for Disney, Netflix, Universal, etc.

It's a family friendly con and they did boot the vendors breaking the NSFW rules. They were no longer there Sunday so artists got to expand their setups.

The roads in and out of the area were under construction and aren't scheduled to finish until sometime in 2027, so people need to plan around sitting in the tunnel for an hour. There were plenty of accidents and car fires while we were there. Time of day probably also matters quite a bit, but it's worth noting at least.

Booths felt like no one with a disability could get in or out. Things were crammed in and there was hardly any space between the chairs and the back drape. People having backdrops with posters or other things also took up a lot of free space. There was no space for a wheelchair and anyone with a cane would have struggled.

 

Conclusion

Honestly, I expected a lot worse for this event. While I didn't do as well as others have mentioned doing in the past, I think I did really well given that I do so poorly at comic cons as a whole. It's a decent convention if you want a vacation con and apparently has some of the same attendees that go to Awesome Con just for the celebrities.

I don't think I'd recommend doing this if you can't afford to lose money, but if you're planning a vacation and want to do an event around it, this is a fun one. Virginia Beach seems to be a very active area in general and things are still open even after the convention ends on Saturday, so you can still get out and have some fun. Overall I had a really good time, but I won't be applying to this again.

The Details (TLDR)

Event	Tidewater Comicon 2025
Date	June 28 & 29, 2025
Location	Virginia Beach Convention Center, 1000 19th St, Virginia Beach, VA 23451
Hours	Saturday 10am-6pm & Sunday 10am-5pm EST
Total Vendors	96 vendors & 127 artists
Attendance	Waiting on an email back so TBD
Travelworthy	No, this is only for locals or people who want a vacation con since it's short & expensive.
Booth Cost	$184.28 (+ $25 extra badge)
Total Sales	$1,140.40 (this is before all costs are taken out)
Transaction Fees	$25.82
Taxes	$62.06
Total Profit	$843.24