After careful consideration we have decided to drop the fursuit parade from the Eurofurence schedule. It wasn't an easy decision, as this ends a long time tradition.
The reasons are manifold. For one, despite the numbers of fursuiters at Eurofurence constantly growing, the number of fursuiters in the parade has declined considerably over the last years. The audience, both of Eurofurence attendees and general public, has shrunk even more.
Furthermore, as the authorities of Neukölln don't allow blocking Ziegrastraße (the street in front of the hotel) for a longer time any more, thus restricting the parade to the sidewalk for the last two years. The sidewalk is quite narrow and has a number of bollards in the middle that are invisible to many fursuiters. Fursuiters running into them and cringing with pain are not a very nice view, we think.
Last year the parade couldn't even go through the dealers room due to safety concerns, which made the route even shorter and less interesting. The room was already crowded and overheated at the time the parade started, with a long line of attendees waiting to get in.
Last not least, the parade was an "all hands on deck" event for our security crew, paramedics and support teams, and required a surprisingly high amount of planning and logistics. It simply doesn't make sense to block a full afternoon off of other programming for an event that sadly has lost much of its attraction.
Due to high workload and time constraints, we were not able to come up with a cool fursuit event in time for EF25 to replace the parade. We will be grateful for any practical suggestions for next year: what would you like to see or do, preferably something that hasn't been done elsewhere yet?
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Topic: Update on the Eurofurence fursuit parade (Read 19313 times)