Fan Girling: My Experience at the Gilmore Girls Fan Festival in Unionville, Ontario

Back in October, I attended the Gilmore Girls Fan Festival in Unionville, Ontario. If you read this blog regularly,  you may have picked up on my obsession with Gilmore Girls. I’ve seen every episode countless times and I still can’t watch the last 10 minutes of the revival without crying through it.

The pilot episode of the show was filmed in Unionville, Ontario and when it was announced as the location for Gilmore Girls Fan Fest, I bought a ticket as soon as they went on sale.

Gilmore Girls Fan Festival was by far the most fun and unapologetically nerdiest event I’ve ever attended. Below are some highlights:

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Gilmore Girls Fan Festival Unionville highlights

The Gilmore Girls Fan Festival in Unionville was an incredible experience. Fans flew in from around the world to experience the magic of Stars Hollow and meet the cast members. The event was incredibly well executed, with a few minor snafus (more on that later).

I can’t exactly pick a favorite moment from the festival because it all came together so beautifully and I enjoyed every moment. That being said, there were some definite high points I’ll always remember. Here are some highlights from the 2024 Gilmore Girls Fan Festival:

Stars Hollow came to life in Unionville

Fall is really the perfect time to visit Unionville because so many of the show’s episodes are fall-centric. Main Street Unionville was picturesque and reminiscent of Stars Hollow, adorned with twinkle lights and fall foliage.

The event was kicked off with a speech from the town crier, who bore a remarkable resemblance to Taylor Doose, the Town Selectman and nemesis to…everyone.

The organizers really brought Stars Hollow to life, with themed events and troubadours playing live music on the sidewalk. It was a nice touch that made for an even more immersive experience.

Gilmore Girls Fan Festival goodie bags

When I checked in, I was pleasantly surprised that they were handing out goodie bags. I assumed they would be filled with cheap trinkets, but all the items were practical:  A re-usable tote bag, water bottle, Gilmore Girls Fan Festival -shirt, coffee chocolate bar, lip balm, and keychain to name a few.

It was thoughtfully put together and each item came in handy over the weekend.

The sparkly event bracelets were also fun and very Gilmore Girls. Really, all that was missing was a bedazzled hammer (kudos, if you know what I’m talking about).

Performances by the town troubadour (AKA Grant Lee Phillips)

Grant-Lee Phillips really set the tone for the show in his role as the town troubadour. So when I saw him casually standing on a sidewalk, playing music from the show, it was surreal. He really played the part.

In addition to a more formal performance in the main event space, he played the guitar, sang songs from the show and happily took photos with fans out in the middle of the street. He couldn’t have been nicer or more accommodating.

I met Scott Patterson

What made this Gilmore Girls Fan Festival so special was that they finally snagged Scott Patterson, who played Luke Danes. As the male lead, he was one of the most significant characters on the show.

Over a thousand people attended this event and while most meet-and-greets were simple and the actors were pretty accessible all weekend long, Scott Patterson was a different story.

We were told that he would meet fans in smaller groups at the Curling Club. Each of us was given a ticket and told to appear during specific time slots. We were told to be there 15 minutes early.

It was freezing cold that day, but the organizers did provide free coffee outside the Curling Club. The kicker? It was from Scott Patterson’s new company, Scottie P’s Big Mug Coffee.

The meet-and-greet was kind of a disaster. While Scott initially met people inside the Curling Club, he soon wandered outside and began taking selfies randomly. Suddenly the line system became obsolete.

No one checked tickets until the very end. A few people got dismissed because they “lost” their tickets (and event bracelets).

Scott Patterson came around and quickly took photos with every fan in line. He was nice, but the bodyguard was a bit overdone. Of all places to bring a bodyguard, the Gilmore Girls Fan Festival in Canada isn’t one of them.

Meeting Sheila Lawrence

Meeting Sheila Lawrence was one of the highlights of this festival. She is an award-winning writer/producer who has worked on Gilmore Girls, Private Practice, Boston Legal, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. That show has won a ton of well-deserved awards and I highly recommend it to anyone (like Gilmore Girls, it’s not a “chick show” even though it sounds like one).

I got to meet Sheila after a cast panel and she couldn’t have been nicer. Becoming a TV writer was something I toyed with before. She gave me some thoughtful feedback that applies to everything in life: Write daily, hone your craft and if you’re good at what you do, you’ll eventually land on your feet. Hey, it worked for Rory Gilmore…sort of.

Story time with Liz Torres

Any panel with Liz Torres was a treat. She was the embodiment of Miss Patty, with her hilarious stories about Old Hollywood. She’d worked with all kinds of legendary actors, including Elizabeth Taylor, so her stories were the most entertaining.

Her delivery was deadpan as she told us how she got a full-ride scholarship to NYU drama school after performing a monologue from Julius Caesar with her thick Bronx accent.

She talked about her years as a struggling actress and how, when she finally made it, she celebrated by going to Walmart and buying name-brand cleaning products.

Of her time on Gilmore Girls, she said: “It was the best time of my life. For six years, I could pay my bills and buy anything I wanted.”

I skipped the Liz Torres and Emily Kuroda meet-and-greet at the train station because the lines were insanely long and barely moving.

The next morning, I got into the hotel elevator, forgot to hit “Ground” and ended up on the 5th floor. The door opened and who got in? Liz Torres and Emily Kuroda!

Treats at the Old Firehall Confectionary

The Old Firehall Confectionery was very reminiscent of Taylor Doose’s Old Fashioned Soda Shoppe. All you needed was a bearded guy in a striped suit, a dozen German tourists and a creepy window looking into Luke’s Diner to recreate episode 401 of the show.

The Old Firehall Confectionery had the most delicious hot chocolate and an incredible white chocolate raspberry cheesecake.

At one point, I went back there twice in one day because of the cheesecake – it was that good.

They offered festival attendees 10% off, which was an added incentive – not that I needed one.

Finding Luke’s Diner in Main Street Unionville

Those who read my Unionville post will remember that I had trouble finding the location of Luke’s Diner on Main Street. I did figure it out afterward.

On the first day of the fan festival, I was walking past 156 Main Street, where Luke’s Diner was filmed in the pilot episode of Gilmore Girls. Two girls were taking turns snapping photos of each other, so I offered to take one of them together.

They mentioned something about Luke’s Diner and I asked, “Are you sure this is it?” One of them pulled out her phone and said, “Yes. According to this blog post, it is.” She handed me the phone and it was my 3-year-old blog post on Unionville.

So in case you’re wondering where Luke’s Diner was filmed in Unionville, it’s 156 Main Street.

Lorelai’s car outside Luke’s Diner

During my last visit to Unionville, I mentioned how it started snowing as I walked down Main Street – a very Gilmore Girls moment. Well on this visit (the 19th anniversary of the pilot episode air date), I had another Gilmore moment; there was a car parked outside of the filming location of Luke’s Diner that looked exactly like Lorelai’s.

Granted it was a different color, but it was just one of those things that felt like life imitating art.

Scott Patterson hates the Gilmore Girls revival

Leading up to the 2016 Gilmore Girls revival, I probably read every single cast interview, watched endless YouTube videos, and absorbed it all. What I didn’t see much of was Scott Patterson’s perspective. As one of the main characters, he played a big role in the revival.

So I was surprised when, during a cast panel, he admitted that he hadn’t even watched the revival until a week earlier, during a flight to Germany.

“What did you think?” the moderator asked.

“I thought it was f***ing boring.”

That was pretty shocking. He went on to trash the revival and claim he didn’t like how Rory’s life turned out and how little story they got to tell. He’s right, but I also don’t expect to see Scott Patterson on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel any time soon…

Positive vibes

The whole event was positive and upbeat all around. At one point, a young woman with a speech impediment walked up to the mic at a cast panel featuring Olivia Hack (Tanna Schrick) and Shelly Cole (Madeline). She shared how she was mercilessly bullied in school for eight years and that the show gave her a sense of community and made her feel less alone.

She broke down crying and not only did the two actresses leave their seats to comfort her, but the crowd clapped in encouragement.

Gilmore Girls Fan Festival Unionville: The Bad

The Gilmore Girls Fan Festival exceeded my expectations in most ways, but there were a few negative aspects. Here are a few things I hope the organizers do differently next time:

The cast panels got repetitive

While the cast panels were informative and interesting, they became very repetitive after a while. Basically, the same 5-7 people appeared in various configurations to discuss specific topics. It devolved into the same people answering the same questions and giving the same answers over and over again.

At one point, there was a panel consisting of cast members from the pilot episode. Emily Kuroda and Liz Torres were the only people there, along with an extra whose scene didn’t even make it into the episode.

It was beyond awkward when the moderator asked Emily and Liz about their most memorable scenes. These women were on the show for seven seasons and shared heartfelt stories about the experience.

When they asked the extra the same question, her response was, “I was only in one scene and it never aired.” It just felt like they were trying to fill a seat.

Yanic Truesdale, who appeared as Michele on almost every episode, lives in Toronto. His perspective on that particular panel would have been more insightful as an original cast member. But I understand these things aren’t easy to organize and not every cast member wants to spend the weekend with a bunch of fans for a show they did a decade ago.

The trouble with meet-and-greets

Sometimes they had multiple meet-and-greets in different areas at the same time. Because lines were always long, it wasn’t possible to meet more than one cast member at a time. I wish they had spaced these things out or even replaced some of the repetitive panels with meet-and-greets instead.

That being said, I will say that the cast did a terrific job of mingling and wandering Main Street all weekend long. So even if you didn’t get a chance to meet Liz Torres at the train station, you may have still run into her at the pub or General Store.

The shuttle schedule was unclear

Most people attending the event, including the cast, were staying at the Marriott Markham, which was just 10 minutes from Main Street Unionville.

The event organizers had advertised a free shuttle service between the hotel and Main Street, but there was zero information about the shuttle schedule. The hotel staff didn’t know about it and no other guests or festival attendees I spoke with had any information.

WiFi sucked

Main Street Unionville had a public wifi network with the worst signal. I used my own network as much as I could and when that slowed down, I went to Starbucks for wifi.

This isn’t anyone’s fault but just a minor inconvenience.

The food in Main Street Unionville was mediocre

While the desserts at The Old Firehall Confectionary were phenomenal, the rest of the food establishments on Main Street Unionville left something to be desired. I had lunch at La Grotta one day, which was just so.

The next day, I went to Blacksmiths Bistro, where the staff recommended the cioppino-style pasta. It tasted watered down and way too spicy.

Overall, the food choices weren’t great, but I guess that’s to be expected from an area catering primarily to tourists.

Ticket prices were outrageous

Did I enjoy the Gilmore Girls Fan Festival in Unionville? Yes. Would I go back? Probably. But at $250 per person, the ticket prices were higher than Comic-Con.

Unlike Comic-Con, autograph signings at the Gillmore Girls Fan Festival are free, but ticket prices were still pretty high for an event of this caliber.

Was the Gilmore Girls Fan Festival worth it?

Overall, I had a great time attending the Gilmore Girls Fan Festival in Unionville and would absolutely recommend it to any Gilmore Girls fanatic. I had low expectations when seeing activities like “Knit-a-thon” on the schedule, but it was fun.

Gilmore Girls has been off the air for over a decade and the Netflix revival from 2016 faced more fan backlash than the Game of Thrones finale. So it was nice to recreate the magic of the show in a charming little town, reminisce and completely nerd out with other people who loved it as much as I did.

It was a lot of fun to see the few men dressed in flannel shirts and baseball caps (an ode to Luke Danes), moms and daughters attending together and grown women getting excited about meeting “Robert Grimaldi” and getting star-struck over extras and secondary characters.

Overall, Gilmore Girls Fan Festival was the show in a nutshell: Fun, quaint, happy and filled with interesting characters.

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Upcoming Gilmore Girls Fan Festival dates

If you want to attend a Gilmore Girls Fan Festival, there are several upcoming events you can attend. The Fan Fest Society has one event scheduled in Guilford, CT for fall 2024 and a cruise for 2025. That’s right, you get to meet Gilmore Girls cast members and nerd out with fellow fans at sea.

The Gilmore Girls Fan Festival cruise takes place abroad the Celebrity Silhouette ship and tickets start at nearly $1,000 for an inside stateroom. That’s incredibly steep for a 3-night cruise, but in general ticket prices for these events tend to be high.

If you’d rather attend the Gilmore Girls Fan Festival in Guilford this fall, tickets cost $405. Dubbed “The Firelight Event,” it promises a festive weekend filled with cast meet-ups, themed activities and other fun stuff.

When I attended the Gilmore Girls Fan Festival in Unionville five years ago, I paid $250 for my ticket. I thought that was steep, but now it’s nearly double the price. Still, I greatly enjoyed my experience and if you’re a fan, it might be worth trying out.

If you do attend the Gilmore Girls Fan Festival this year, I’d appreciate it if you list my blog as your referral source. I don’t get anything out of it, but if I end up attending and they have a tally of referrals from my site, I’ll get invited to the Ambassador reception to meet cast members and brag about my achievement. But again, there’s no incentive unless I actually attend (which I’m still not sure I will).