I just arrived home after my 14th Fantasy Fest and these are my observations:

The scene and the main themes/costumes were as expected. But the outfits were much tamer this year :(. Dominant themes were:

Sunday - Zombies, Monday - Fetish, Tuesday - Tutu or Plaid, Wednesday - Glow/Neon, Thursday/Friday/Sat was pretty much everything

Planning:

• Zombie bike route had a different route this year. They did not ride all the way to end of Duval which was the heart of the event in the past. This was not well announced and as a result tons of people missed the riders.

• I did not go to The Fantasy Fest market (They moved street vendors from Duval to remote location) but I heard it was very slow up there.

• In previous years, Duval was closed to traffic whole Friday and Saturday. And with vendors, that was creating a festival atmosphere all day. This year they did no shutdown Duval to car traffic until 5 PMish. So until that time people were squeezed in to the sidewalks and most people not even chose to come. So it looked like just a super crowded weekend instead of Fantasy Fest.

• Friday and Saturday, Duval street was cluster fuck with Miami teenager swarms on the street. Of course they have right to be there but as usual for them it is just Halloween Party and they know nothing about Fantasy Fest which kills the Fantasy Fest mood. I can't prove but most of them looked underage, drinking their ass off on the streets. This was generally not different from previous years but I think the crowd was much bigger and you couldn't even walk on some part of the Duval st. especially some bars pumping their music to the streets.

Nudity:

Whoever follows this group will know that, I mentioned before that there was no change on the nudity rules for this year (despite the rumors throughout the year). As we expected enforcement was also not different. The police force focused on safety and did not waste their time on occasional nudities. But I observed that more people were wearing pasties on nipples when they were painted already. Maybe they wanted to do so (which is fine) but maybe they did not know that (per Key West Code of Ordinance Sec. 42-9) if the nipples are painted it is not considered nude and it is legal in Fantasy Zone. Also, for those who knows what I am talking about, the balcony was boringggg this year, lol!

Parties:

• Ricks, Sloppy Joe's, Irish Kevin's, Tiki bar were fun. Capt Tony was less 'active' compared to previous years.
• I did not attend to those super commercialized fetish parties.
• As usual streets were already good enough to party.
• Dante's Thursday party was as usual super crowded. They bumping their cover charge every year ($20) this year.
• Dante's Tuesday party seems getting bigger every year (I think this was their second annual)
• Fat Tuesday was little slow this year, especially the first half of the week. I was even surprised that they didn't have DJ and even bouncers at the entrance until Thursday. (Management wtf?)
• Southernmost - beach Bunny Pool party was also very fun (They started this last year)
• Tattos and Scar did not have any parties and I asked why and the bartender replied because they are local bar now (I don't know if that means that they don't want to get involved with tourist events, lol wtf?)

My personal report:

I was in Key West for the whole month of October and I enjoyed every moment. Rode my bike around the island everyday. Met many new friends.

Fantasy Fest:

• I met 100s of new people and made tons of new friends. I was all around the place walking maybe 20-30K steps everyday.

• 5,000 pics taken (thank you for all these good moments. with people's consent of course. And, I want to add a "fuck you" to the people whom I asked their consent and they refused in an extreme angry tone instead of simple no.). Updates on my Instagram

• I did 3 private photoshots (Fantasy Fest style of course)

• I attended 2 private pool parties (Thanks friends)

• Thank you for the bartenders in Bulls and Whistle, Fat Tuesday, Ricks and Irish Kevin for their special treatments.

• Best happy hour was at the Boat House