Attending a Mermaid Convention: Our Favourite Parts of MerMagic Con 2024

For the ones of you that have never attended a mermaid convention or don’t even know what it is - it is an event specifically for people into the hobby of mermaiding, old and young, that gets hosted to meet, network, learn more about mermaiding and indulge in buying beautiful mermaid stuff. Mermazing, right? ;-)

In our case, we did not only attend as visitors (there are “observer passes” where you literally just watch the mermaids enjoy themselves and where you can walk the bountiful halls of the vendors) but also as participants, as our plan was to add a face to the brand of MerMapp and tell more about our wonderful one-stop-shop for mermaids. So we spent the most amount of time in that sparkly vendor hall where everywhere you looked was one temptation after another: beautiful mermaid jewelry, creative ways of decorating your home with ocean themed art, cool mermaid- and ocean-themed apparel, opportunities for you to take photos with mermaid models, participate in sweepstakes and even the chance to watch a tail doctor at her work.

A “tail doctor” is basically a specialist in repairing silicone tails - as these babies are quite the investment, when something starts tearing or a scale lifting off of the silicone body, of course you won’t just throw it away but you can go to professionals like Charlotte Hardcastle to get the tail fixed. We were lucky enough to be her vendor booth neighbor so we had a first-class view on her work and also on the beauties she treated. Marvellous really.

From our MerMapp booth where we sold MerMapp T-Shirts and pins (which you’ll soon be able to also get along with our premium packages once our free trial runs out - so make sure you try out MerMapp while we're still ramping up!) we also had a great view onto the main stage where the audience would enjoy a varied program of presentations and discussions about the mermaiding world. One of our favourites here was the ocean trivia hosted by Mermaid Brizo, a mermaid that is part of the Circus Siren Pod but also swims up to the mainland to offer Edu-tainment with conservation organizations, including NY/NJ Baykeeper, The Watershed Institute, The Sustainable Princeton Greenfest, and Save Barnegate Bay. Fueled with her passion for the environment, she had organized various prizes from all the participating vendors for the participants of this fun competition where competing went along fin-in-fin with learning about the ocean!

But there was a lot more to learn about on the MerMagic Con - both on Saturday and Sunday from 9am to 5pm, participants had the chance to choose from seventeen different classes that were taught to interested mers! Ranging from DIY silicone tail introductions, to safety tips for mermaiding, to blueprints of how to get your first mermaid gig!

Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to attend any of them - between being at our own booth as well as holding a panel discussion about the mermaid community’s biggest challenges, and how to solve them with tools like MerMapp, we didn't have the time. We had lots of fun at our panel, though, and we had quite the VIP group - Merman Chatravee, Mermaid Brizo, Mermaid Carrie Wata, and Merman Andy helped us by sharing examples from their own experience of having gone through the following issues:

• Feeling lonely in your passion, as it’s not easy to find mers or pods in your area to truly connect with.

• Missing out on events becayse you don’t know whom to follow, and only hear about the big ones once eeeeveryone is talking about them.

• Not daring to share your Mer-Journey, because you're afraid of online trolls.

• Not knowing where to start, and with whom to connect when having questions or when trying to find information.

• It being very hard to get into the mermaid business and getting the visibility without a proper mermaid/ocean job board.

MerMapp is a tool we designed to help solve all of these, and we really appreciated the insight of some major figures in the mer-community! But enough of the self-promotion. Let’s move to our number 2 and number 1 of our favourite things of the MerMagic Con!

In first place: the Gala!

Me and my husband are notorious dancers - so no wonder we were very much looking forward to the Saturday night gala. The fact that there was a red carpet entry made it even more exciting! But we did not expect such a great atmosphere, music, food, free bar and mermazing costumes we got to see during that night! (Had we known about the fintastic food buffet, we would definitely had skipped dinner 🙂) The length to which some of the mers went with their costumes was just breathtaking - from putting themselves through the torture of being in a self-knitted, super cute, angler-fish head-dress, over a full-blown princess gown over to a full-body jelly-fish with glowing head-pieces, it was a literal eye-feast. But even with the most fine dress attire, nobody kept from truly enjoying themselves and truly giving it their all when hearing their favourite songs - whether that be all “dirrty” with “ride my pony” or all musical with “let it go”. A truly memorable night.

In second place: the joined free swim!

The MerMagic Con was lucky enough to be hosted in the “Silver Spring Recreation & Aquatic Centre” which had just opened about a week before the event itself. This meant that we didn’t only have the luxury to have the event in a super new and shiny location but actually also in full-sized competition pool with enough depth to have a good amount of space for mermaid tricks. So on Saturday afternoon, all the mermaids at the convention - which officially were about 400 participants - put on their beautiful tails, crowns and other merAccessories, scootched together real hard to fit all around the pool and then dove together into the pool! I can tell you - the view from the water with all the mermaids swimming around you was just gorgeous!

And a truly memorable event! And to make sure to have it last longer than just that night, my husband and I actually used our MerMapp T-Shirts to collect the signatures of all the mers that we had had such a great time with during this event. So for anyone who wants to have a T-Shirt with their favourite mer-signatures on - we’ll also sell those lovely shirts on the next merConvention we’ll be attending: the Syren Symposium from the 4-7th of April.

So whether you’ve been at the MerMagic Con and have fallen into the after-convention-blues or you didn’t make it at all and are waiting for your chance to connect - no need to despair! Just join us on MerMapp where we help you find mers close to you - be that in the physical world by finding the on our MerLocator or online by joining our Discord Chat. And hey - maybe there’s even an event happening close to you very soon and you can check it out on the MerCalendar.

Whatever it may be - we hope it fills you with sparkle and a smile!

Till the next time!

Yours, Coraluna

CEO & Founder of MerMapp