Anime Detour 2025

I can't remember when Anime Detour applications opened on Eventeny, but I applied on August 18th, 2024. I know I joined staff in 2024 for the 2025 convention year and they were going through some changes. I even got to design the pin for 2025 Spies and Syndicates! I don't know when applications normally open but people seemed to think they were pretty late. Either way, I feel like we got acceptances fairly quickly. Detour is a con that gets a lot of applications. I was accepted on November 17th, 2024 and paid on the 18th. They gave us until December 10th, 2024 to pay invoices, which felt like a pretty good amount of time. 

They also gave us the link to the Anime Detour discord. I always find discords great to join as you can advertise there before the event so people know to find you. This helped me a lot with my first convention, Momocon, in 2024.

On January 27th, 2025 they sent out several things that were relevant to selling at the event. This included the artist contract, table assignments, tax information (ST-19 for MN), hotel reservation links, badge information and the hours for load-in/selling/load-out. I was assigned table 77 in Artist Alley, so I am unsure if it's good or bad to be so close to the front. This was where the boba vendor was set up in 2024.



My personal advice is to just book the hotel when you apply. I am local so I don't have to deal with that for this event, just the parking situation. Setup on Thursday is limited to evening 3pm-7pm. You have way more time for setup on Friday before the event officially starts, as it's from 10am to 1pm. 

Badge pickup is on the 4th floor where the AA is. 

Before the Event & Setup
So like 2 days before Detour, I guess they realized they never added my helper badges. They also sent out like two more emails - one letting us know about our access to the consuite on floor 2 that was open to artists, VIP, volunteers, etc for free food. For people who couldn't make it to the second floor, they could stop by the table they picked up badges at for registration. 

So Thursday night after all our appointments and dinner, we went to get just the basics set up - mainly the bones of the display. Got the cubes together, the sticker display and put hooks up. Since my display is pretty basic anyways with no real strategy or organization to it, it's always quick to throw things up.



I really like my location. I was booth 77. I was basically next to the boba stand and near badge pickup by staff and across from all the tables where people could sit and relax. People would just get up and rush over after staring. It was great.

Probably a good thing because we were super late arriving on Friday afternoon. We had to go back to the house 3 different times before finally leaving. We arrived around.. noon but the parking ramp was full already. It didn't help either that the parking garage has been in a constant state of repair since last year, and this time the entire 4th floor or maybe it was 5th floor was unavailable to park on. Hopefully this construction is all finished before Convergence. 

My husband found parking while I wheeled everything inside and set up, with some help from Amanda. I also had to go drop off my stamp rally stuff to KawaiiRabbits and pick up the cards. 

I never made it down to the merch hall before the convention started, so I had to randomly tell people I designed the pin this year and try to get them downstairs to buy one. I guess they were selling at $5 (from what a friend told me), but either way I wanted to push everyone to get my pin so they will hopefully let me design a pin again for 2026. The theme for 2026 is basically vampires and undead. 

The Event Itself
Friday was a whirlwind for me. I was rushing to finish getting my stickers out since I was so late arriving before opening to begin with, and the crowds started flowing in. I moved behind the booth to set the last few stickers out, but I made $600 in sales in the first hour! I also never got a photo of my booth for setup. I did eventually take one Saturday morning, so that is the picture you'll get.



The stamp rally hosted by Kawaii Rabbits included myself (Robot Dragon Studios), person 3 and person 4.

I left my husband to watch my table so I could go down to check out the free food at the con suite. I guess there are only certain times they have certain foods, but I went around 3:40pm - in between lunch at noon and dinner at 5pm. I heard them telling someone else that they had sandwiches. I didn't get photos of the room itself, but they had coolers with drinks and labels for them. The water was basically gone by the time I arrived. I don't drink soda anymore for health reasons, but they had Dr. Pepper which I loved when I did drink it. They had coffee as well and a wall of ramen cups you could grab, heat up and eat. I think the only other con I remember giving us food options was Range Fan Con, so this was pretty cool. I snagged two bags of Doritos (snack sized) and two Rice Krispy Treats for us to snack on. Once I got back to the table, not even 30 minutes later one of the staff came by with a cart of treats. The snacks on the cart were much different than what was available in the con suite. We tried the japanese snack crackers, but unfortunately, they were not our favorite. They also came by one more time before closing to see if we wanted something. I can't remember exactly when but they came by at least twice.

We were basically steadily busy until around 5pm when people started to finally drop off and start getting dinner with friends. I will say a lot more people participated in the stamp rally than I expected. We were almost completely out of cards by 8pm when artist alley shut down.

I also forgot parking is about $25 a day because we can't arrive before 9am. Either way, Friday was fantastic and set a really good tone for the rest of the weekend.

Saturday we were a bit sluggish getting to the convention. I spent my morning rushing around doing things and trying to work on the blog before we left while my husband was making the steak we were supposed to have for dinner the night before into a steak and eggs breakfast. It was quite good, so we were very full and prepared for a busy Saturday. Since we did arrive so late and there was construction going on, we still had to go up and back down quite a few floors to find a parking spot, but did manage to snag one. 

We arrived early enough that the merchandise booth wasn't actually open yet, but they let us buy a pin! I finally got my hands on the pin I designed and it made me so happy. Christina later stopped by and gave us a free pin like she had planned to do anyways, so my husband ended up with one as well. I will say them selling pins at $5 feels kinda bad since I can't sell my own pins that low because I can't order thousands at once. That being said, I am thrilled thousands of people will own my art as a pin even if my name isn't all over it.

Saturday felt slower than Friday did sales wise, but it was actually higher than Friday despite that. We had AMKE earlier in the month, and I will say adjusting the hair claw display seems to have helped with sales of those. They nearly tripled compared to AMKE just for Friday and Saturday alone. We'll have to compare it with future cons and see if it continues to be consistently higher or not, but for now, I'm saying that the display change helped. It could be the convention itself more than the display changes as well, but this is just something I'm taking note of. 

Went to the con suite, and they had different items than the day before. Lunch seemed to be steamed rice and something else I didn't bother to look into. I just saw them stirring the rice and the other container said not ready yet. Maybe it was just more rice. I guess now that I am thinking about it, I saw the Flaming Cheetos and Doritos and mostly checked out before looking at what was against the other wall before leaving. Either way, they had some fresh fruit and basically just a ton of ramen. I went back to my table and sent my husband to find us some food around the convention center instead. We settled on chicken at the hotel restaurant (prairie? look up later add this). We split that since it was a ton of food, and that lasted us for the rest of the evening.



Kenny manned the booth while I wandered around spending money I was trying not to spend. Cremechii is my weakness. The freaking cat bee plush was there taunting me but he didn't have any left and I had to yell at him after my purchase because he doesn't have backstamps on his pins. If you're an artist reading this, PLEASE PUT BACKSTAMPS ON YOUR ENAMEL PINS. Yeah, it's an extra cost but you have no idea how many people buy pins then can't buy from you again because they have no idea where the first pin they purchased even came from. This helps you. If you're selling fanart, I guess proceed with caution haha. Original art though, seriously you should be backstamping. Okay rant over. Amanda and I also ran over to Inkbean and picked up the most beautiful Zelda pin ever. We got the last two they had on hand and I have no regrets. Zelda art is legitimately my only weakness at conventions.

Someone also came by before the final call and dropped off a little booklet after making a purchase. It was pretty creative and cute. They recently graduated college and were looking for work opportunities. Maybe they wanted to work with us as artists or wanted to make connections through our networks. Not sure but it was fun to look at. = ) Good luck Gray Heille!



We were on such a high leaving from such a good day. We had a great conversation with some other Minneapolis locals about tacos and they gave us some suggestions to check out. We had fully intended on just walking down the road to the restaurant, it was cut short by rain. I'm a pansy and didn't want to be wet and cold. We ended up wandering around looking for our car for about 15 minutes. Apparently we parked on the 6th floor on the downward slope. It was silly and gave us a good laugh. We both love Taco Libre in Roseville, so that was where we ended up. Highly recommend if you don't mind a drive from the convention center.



I didn't see until after I was home Kawaii Rabbits posted about running out of prizes for the stamp rally later in the day on Saturday, so it's nice to be able to say the stamp rally was a big success. We had 100 cards and 30 prizes from each of us.

Sunday morning I realized I had forgotten to charge things before the event. We decided to take one vehicle instead of two despite having to bring everything back with us a well as having 3 teenagers in the car with us. The WRX can hold quite a bit at least, but hey we don't have to bring a wagon when we have 3 extra sets of hands as well.

My husband dropped me off to park so I could make it to setup in time. I was able to get everything setup before opening and do a quick stop to KawaiiRabbits with some prints we quickly printed before leaving. The kids got their passes and spent the day hanging out around the convention and playing games. 

Sunday was pretty slow overall, but that is just how conventions seem to trend in general. This did allow me to leave my husband to watch the booth a few times to shop with the kids, chat with artists and sort of wander aimlessly with Jen since she stopped by for the day to hang out (which was a treat I love Jen!).

I did discount items Sunday just to get some plush into people's hands. I never usually do that since my products have such a high cost to produce to begin with, but there is just something I can't resist about people being so happy to take home a Panic Puff. I did them for $15 all day long and many of them went home with people. I don't usually do that since I make no money, but like.. I really just want people to take home my art.

We ended the day higher than expected after a slow start though, but it was higher than I expected for the whole weekend. It actually beat my best show of 2024, which was Momocon.

What Worked & What Did Not
This is not a convention problem, but I wasn't a fan of the loss of a whole floor in the parking garage due to construction. It's not a real problem, but one floor you couldn't access even if you parked near the elevators, so you had to go up or down.



The access to a con suite and someone bringing things around on a cart for us all weekend was probably the highlight for me. If I was alone, this would have made the event substantially better. It's hard to table alone, especially when the days are so long.

Table size was good, plenty of space between the tables and behind the tables. I guess it would have been nice for the table to come with two badges instead of one, but honestly, that's such a minor gripe in the end.

Conclusion
I love this event so much. Staff is friendly, having both a free food con suite for artists as well as bringing food for those who are alone is so thoughtful, the tables are properly spread and sales were very good! Could you really ask for more? 

I hope I get the opportunity to be a part of this amazing artist alley again next year, but I do understand they gotta keep variety in the artist alley.

The Details (TLDR)

Event: Anime Detour 2025
Dates: March 28-30, 2025
Location: Hyatt Regency Minneapolis, 1300 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis, MN 55403
Hours: Friday 1pm-8pm, Saturday 10am-8pm & Sunday 10am-4pm CST
Total Vendors: 129 
Attendance: ~8,000
Travelworthy: I do think this event is worth traveling to if you can keep your expenses low. 
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Booth Cost: $250.39 
Total Sales: $3,355.40 (this is before all costs are taken out)
Transaction Fees: $62.90
Taxes: $268.30
Total Profit: $2,773.81