Flashback Weekend 2026 Costume Contest: A fun ride that went off the rails!

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Flashback Weekend 2026 Coverage Continues…

I awoke refreshed and straightened up the hotel room for Svengoolie & crew. Both they and Mayor Don were kind enough to let me stay there that night, which was great considering I’d been without power due to a tornado (see my last post). With a larger event in my near future, all my available cash for Flashback Weekend was reserved for autographs – no Hyatt breakfast buffet today. With the Svengoolie crew slated to arrive at noon, I went downstairs as soon as the convention doors opened to get as many as I could before their arrival. I’ll discuss those interactions in my next post, as this blog will focus exclusively on Svengoolie’s appearance.

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2026 Flashback Weekend Svengoolie Talk Show!

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Less than two weeks after G-FEST, Flashback Weekend, a.k.a. my favorite horror con, set up shop in the very same hotel. Despite the short time between these events, however, it felt like a lifetime. Just that previous Monday, strong tornado-producing storms plowed through the Midwest, and my humble town of Homewood, Illinois got slammed by an F-1. My entire neighborhood was strewn with busted trees and electric wires. Nobody was hurt, thank God, but despite ComEd’s best efforts, we had no power all week and still hadn’t when I arrived at Flashback Weekend on Friday. This made for one rotten week! The heat was so unbearable that at one point I attempted to sleep outside on my deck (until two raccoons got into a dispute below me). Fortunately, my friend Jason Lucas, whose power returned that Wednesday, invited me to stay with him for a couple of days. Regardless, I had very little sleep that week and admit to being a bit ill-tempered at the beginning of this event.

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The Winning Models/Dioramas of G-FEST 2026!

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Coverage of G-FEST 2026 Concludes…

Sunday, July 12th, 2026 7 am – I wake up, pack my things, and start loading the car. No breakfast buffet today; just protein bars, and we all get our rooms in order and prepare for the final day of G-FEST 2026. 

8:50 am – We all head downstairs to attend a panel only to discover that it’s been canceled. Dejected, we head downstairs to see who won the model contest.

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The Vendor Room vs G-FEST!

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 G-FEST 2026 Coverage Continues…

6 am Saturday, July 11th, 2026 – My three sons and I go downstairs for the hotel breakfast buffet and are the first ones there. We know it won’t be long before there’s a line to get in this place (and we weren’t wrong). The subject of G-FEST may be Godzilla, but the crowd it attracts is the real monster.

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A Closer Look at the Models of G-FEST 2026!

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I now interrupt my G-FEST (Godzilla Festival) diaries for an interlude on the event’s model room. This has always been one of my favorite aspects of the weekend. There was one year when I actually participated in this contest and won “People’s Choice.” It was my first model and depicted Biollante. I used the wrong type of glue and the wrong paint (this was obviously pre-YouTube), and it looked terrible. Not wanting my kids to think I was a quitter, I ran to the Michaels craft store and bought a bunch of fake plants and Sculpey clay. I then proceeded to cover up and embellish the mess I made. How it won anything is still a mystery, but one thing is for certain – it could never compete with this year’s selections, which were absolutely unbelievable.

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Wrapped up in activities at G-FEST Friday!

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G-FEST 2026 coverage continues…

6:15 am Friday, July 10th 2026 – My son, Luke, and I wake up and get ready for the first official day of G-FEST (Godzilla Festival) 2026. One of the hotel’s house channels is playing Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris (1999), a pretty good kaiju film, and we each watch snippets while the other gets ready.

6:40 am – We head downstairs for the Hyatt Regency O’Hare’s breakfast buffet. The buffet is $25 per person, but we learned that the best way to conquer a full day at G-FEST is to indulge in a “lumberjack” breakfast since we always skip lunch. The food is decent, and they have a chef on hand who will make you an omelet on request. My only gripe is that they used to have really tasty pork sausage links but have since replaced them with chicken sausage, which tastes horrible!

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