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.
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.
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.
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!
10 am Thursday, July 9th 2026 – My youngest son, Luke, and I pick up my eldest son, Alex, to kick off this year’s G-FEST (Godzilla Festival) 2026. Technically, this is G-FEST XXXI, but it seems the Roman numerals have been dropped. It makes sense, since COVID screwed up the whole numbering system anyway, but I’m kind of surprised they didn’t do it last year instead of actually going forward with G-FEST Triple X. We kicked off the event by visiting a Japanese market in Arlington Heights, Illinois, called Mitsuwa. I’ve been there before, but this was their first visit. We picked up some Sake’ (this is probably a good time to mention that my kids are all over the age of 21), some Japanese imported snacks, and sushi for dinner. Before leaving, we enjoyed beverages in their food court from a place called Releaf. The kids loved Mitsuwa, and both agreed this should be our new G-FEST tradition – especially since they also had a bookstore with a Godzilla section.
Jason and I met back up in the hotel lobby around 4 pm that Saturday, eager to get out some fresh air. We took a 30-minute drive from the New Jersey Horror Con in Iselin to the city of Red Bank. Our destination was Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash, the comic book shop owned by the actor/filmmaker/writer Kevin Smith and featured in the AMC reality show “Comic Book Men” from 2012 to 2018. I’d visited them about ten years earlier and remember one of the guys from the show, Ming Chen, manning the register as I bought my youngest son, Luke, a Godzilla. It was a really cool place for a comic nerd like me.
Terror from Beyond the Dave 