Something strange seems to be going on with Furrydelphia and/or their hotel this year, because I’ve noticed some odd announcements about the hotel on their social media over the past couple of weeks.
Before I really dig into this, let me give you a point of reference: FD has had a consistent room block at the same Sheraton in Philadelphia for the last four years. People who supersponsor get early access to the room block for a few days, after which it opens to the general public. Usually, it sells out a day or so after it opens, and occasionally, they manage to negotiate a small extension to that block. The Sheraton is the only hotel that's part of FD. There’s no overflow or alternate options, meaning the number of available rooms should be the same each year.
In mid-April, supersponsors got first dibs on the block as usual. Nothing too weird about that.

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April 30, 7 p.m. EST: the room block opens to the general public. Despite stating in their last post that the room block usually doesn’t fill that quickly, they post a little over three hours later that the entire block is sold out.


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June 4: They announce more rooms have been added to the block. There was no follow-up announcement indicating whether that block sold out.

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July 11: Another announcement goes up saying yet another room block has opened. This is especially surprising considering FD is just over a month away (August 22–24), and it’s rare to see a furry convention’s hotel block still not sold out this close to the event.

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To most people, this might not seem
that strange. However, as mentioned earlier, this is the same hotel with a fixed number of rooms, and FD already has an established relationship with them. So it’s odd that the hotel wouldn’t have accounted for all this upfront. I have a few theories about what might be going on:
- The hotel intentionally gave FD a smaller room block than in previous years. It’s unclear why they’d do that if there’s no issue with the convention being hosted there.
- The original block did sell out, but they overestimated how much interest the extension would get.
- People are outright canceling their rooms, and FD is trying to make up the difference, though the reason for why people are cancelling them is unclear.
At best, this seems like a case of poor coordination or communication. At worst, it suggests there may be something going on behind the scenes, either with the hotel or FD itself. Time will tell, but if my extremely specific furry convention autism is anything to go by, this is still a pattern worth noting.