Love Epic Cons? You Can Thank Daniel Radcliffe!
An Interview with Alexis Arnold, Co-Owner Epic Events & Entertainment
It all starts with Daniel Radcliffe.
I’m talking with Alexis Arnold, Co-Owner of Epic Events & Entertainment, early one morning in September. The 32-year-old suppresses a yawn. She’s one week out from her multi-fandom Epic Cons 2 event in Chicago and a few days away from the soft opening of the Olive Oil & Balsamic Tasting Room at JoJo’s OlFactory & Co, a fragrance bar that Arnold purchased earlier this year with her mom. The mother of three is also just one month away from her very first Stranger Things convention, The Upside Down, in Jackson, GA (aka Hawkins), and three months away from I Was Feeling Festive 2, The Vampire Diaries convention in Covington, GA (aka Mystic Falls). To say she’s busy is an understatement.
I’ve just asked Arnold what convention she would’ve died to go to as a teenager, which one she’d love to go to today, and which would be the most epic convention of all to plan.
The almost-yawn blooms into a bright smile, “Easy! Harry Potter! It’s the answer for all three!” she immediately lights up.
We’re tracing our way back, trying to pinpoint the tiny spark that ignited her passion to create a boutique convention experience by the obsessed, for the obsessed.
When Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone debuted in theaters in 2001, Arnold was a 9-year-old at a small school in Peru, Indiana. After watching the debut in the local theater with her fourth-grade class, she was hooked, begging her mom to take her to every midnight showing and book launch throughout grade school. At 14, Arnold got a job at B&K, slinging hot dogs and root beer so she could earn enough money to pay for gas to drive herself to the movie theater and bookstore, dreaming of fizzing whizbees and butterbeer.
The Epic Cons origin story that Arnold typically tells is about nine fangirls attending a One Tree Hill convention solo. They find each other on a Facebook group for fans, meet up at the next convention, and become the kind of lifelong friends who have a group chat that is on a 24-hour cycle.
Without Harry Potter, though, Arnold would not know–firsthand–the fundamental obsessive desires of a Fangirl. Harry Potter showed her precisely how you could fall in love with people who don’t actually exist, becoming invested in their struggles and triumphs, watching them grow and growing alongside them with other fans. Harry Potter showed Arnold what it means to be part of a community that loves something as much as you do. The way I see it, Daniel Radcliffe was the spark. Sophia Bush was the gasoline, and Epic Cons is blowing up in the best way possible, in large part because The Vampire Diaries and Stranger Things conventions take place in the real filming locations of the series’ beloved fictional towns.
“Not many shows are filmed on location anymore,” Arnold laments. “You can go to a convention, meet the actors, do a quick photo op, or a meet & greet in a convention center room.”
What if you could experience meeting your favorite actors in the place where the show you love was filmed? This “what if” is the question that got Arnold and her Co-Owner, Anna Owen, thinking back in 2021.
“We were texting about how cool it would be to go to a The Vampire Diaries convention in the real Mystic Falls, imagining walking down the street and realizing, ‘Oh, this is the path Elena Gilbert walked!’ or, ‘Damon Salvatore stood here!” Arnold recalls, “Then we had this crazy idea. What if we didn’t attend the convention? What if we put it on?!”
While the idea began as a Fangirl daydream, before the night was over, the duo had formed an official business entity, aptly named, Epic. They put on their first The Vampire Diaries Convention, I Was Feeling Epic 13 months later in the real “Mystic Falls” in October 2022.
“We learned so much during that first convention. I mean, there were so many speed bumps. Actually, you can’t even call them speed bumps; they were straight potholes! But all those potholes brought us to where we are now,” Arnold reflects.
“We wanted to create a convention that made you feel like you’re living in an episode,” she explains. And they have! For fans attending one of The Vampire Diaries conventions in Covington, Arnold, Owen, and the Epic Girls (comprised of the friends who met through that One Tree Hill group and conventions) have created the ultimate Fangirl dream convention experience. When you come for the convention, you can walk down the street from your Airbnb and see the character’s houses–from Elena and Caroline’s houses (across the street from one another, incidentally) to the Lockwood mansion and Gram’s house. You can visit the Mystic Falls cemetery, drive over Wickery Bridge, and explore so many real locations from the show.
“The city of Covington and its business owners have done a great job of not only preserving and highlighting ‘Mystic Falls’ from the Welcome Center with tons of real props to the tours offered through both Vampire Stalkers and Main Street Trolleys,” Arnold marvels, “but fleshing out the fictional aspects into reality. Business owner Angi Bezsborn transformed the facade used to represent the show’s Mystic Grill into a real functioning Mystic Grill restaurant,” Arnold explains. “It’s incredible.”
Taking full advantage of the physical locations, Arnold explains to me how Epic Cons makes meet and greets show-related in theme. “Fans can experience a Brother’s Bond Bourbon event at the Mystic Grill with Ian and Paul. They can have a meet & greet with Nina at Elena’s house, or have hot cocoa with Candice at Caroline’s. Those are opportunities we get from hosting in Covington that you just won’t get in other places,” she reflects.
Seeing the amount of friendships that have been created through their conventions is still amazing to Arnold. She tells me about messages she receives thanking her and the team because through a convention, two strangers became best friends.
“It’s this really beautiful full-circle moment for our team when we get those messages. I mean, that’s how we met,” she marvels. “I love that we’re able to do that for other people.”
It’s not just the fans who benefit from a location-based convention. “Cast members get really nostalgic being back in the filming location,” she explains. For talent, being back in Covington for conventions is not only an opportunity to connect with fans but also an opportunity to reconnect with people they spent years of their lives with, remembering forgotten details of a bygone era. “They call it summer camp,” Arnold laughs, “and they’re always excited to come back because they know they can take their time and engage with fans. It’s very intimate.”
At Epic Cons’ most recent The Vampire Diaries convention in Covington–A June Wedding–Ian Somerhalder, who played Damon Salvatore, commented with astonishment during one of his panels about the city’s growth since the show wrapped, “Dude, this is insane how much this place is thriving,” he marveled.
Anecdotally, you can feel the growth by the sheer number of places in town where you can get a blood bag and the amount of Vampire-themed coffee beverages or cocktails you can enjoy. You have your pick of shops where you can buy the daylight ring of your choice or a shirt that boasts who you’d want to be bitten by or sired to. Visitors can build a stay around conventions, tours, special events, show-themed escape rooms, and immersive photo shoots. The city even has four iconic stars on its sidewalks and four show-focused murals in and around the square. The fact that Covington saw over 100,000 visitors in 2023, up from 14,833 visitors in 2010, leaves no room for doubt–by embracing its history as Mystic Falls, Covington continues to thrive.
While fans visit the town year-round, the conventions bring in extra tourists and extra tourist dollars.
“When we had our debriefing after our last convention,” Arnold says, “the city shared with us that businesses have enjoyed better sales during our convention weekends than they have during the holiday shopping season.”
Epic Events & Entertainment has one more The Vampire Diaries-themed convention slated for Covington in 2024, I Was Feeling Festive 2, and two more announced for 2025. The plan is to have two conventions a year in Mystic Falls.
Recognizing the potential to create another location-based experience for fans, Arnold and her team will be putting on their first Stranger Things Convention in October 2024 in Jackson, GA, known to fans as Hawkins.
“Businesses in Covington were hesitant to work with us at first, which–valid–we were new and had no experience under our belts!” Arnold explains, “Having seen the way tourism due to filming has boosted Covington’s economy, Businesses and the City of Jackson have been proactive in reaching out to us and wanting to be involved.”
While Covington’s tourism-focused businesses blossomed after The Vampire Diaries was well past filming, Jackson (aka Hawkins) is getting a head start with themed escape rooms, Stranger Tours (which is moving to a new, bigger ‘Hawkins Headquarters’ location), and stars with QR codes that inform visitors about key Stranger Things scenes in real locations.
“For all that to be going on while the show is still filming is fantastic,” Arnold says. “They are so excited and I’m hoping that us doing this convention helps boost tourism for them. If you haven’t been, it’s the cutest town. I could shop in the boutiques downtown all day. They have a frozen yogurt shop and my kids put entirely too many toppings on!”
One thing The Vampire Diaries and Stranger Things have in common, according to Arnold, is a generational fandom. With The Vampire Diaries, Arnold notes that there are a lot of multi-generational families of women–with grandma, mom, and daughter/granddaughter–traveling to conventions together. You’ll have a grandma and mom who watched the show in real-time, and the younger generation maybe streamed it, she explains.
“With Stranger Things, we’re seeing those generations of women, but also young families with school-aged children,” Arnold reflects, “I really love that there is a family component to these fandoms and conventions, where families are not only bonding over a show, but having these amazing shared experiences.”
Shared experiences with family–both small and large–are important to Arnold personally. When I ask her how she balances family and entrepreneurship, it’s almost as if the question doesn’t compute. She explains to me how she gets her kids involved in everything. As Arnold talks, I start to understand that she views family and entrepreneurship as an “and,” not an “or.” She’s in business with her mother and her best friends, and her children are helpers wherever and whenever they can. By placing family and work together on a single scale, Arnold ensures that they don't require balancing.
“Getting my kids involved instills a work ethic, and it erases that divide between family and work. They come to conventions in Chicago and help!” Arnold tells me how Kynzlie, her 10-year-old, helped with registration packets. Korynn, her 7-year-old, was a runner. If someone needed something, she’d run to get it. Kolson, who’s turning five in September, is just there for the vibes–for now!
“Agents will call, and it’s school pick-up time, so they’ll say hi to the kids!” I think about how most adults would “shush” their kids so the agents wouldn’t know the kids were in the car, and how this openness is not only good for the kids, but for her as well. The agents get to see Arnold through the professionalism of a businesswoman, and the compassion of a mother.
“I think you can be like a badass entrepreneur, have an amazing career, and also be an amazing mom. They don’t have to be separate. You can be both simultaneously,” Arnold says.
It’s not all work and no play, though. The family recently took a trip to England, where they visited filming locations from the Harry Potter universe and did the Warner Bros. The Making of Harry Potter tour.
“Korynn likes everything spooky; she’s my little witchy girl. We’re about to start the 8th Harry Potter movie tonight, and she’s ready to start reading the books. It’s generational. I’m so excited for her, and for me, too. She gets to experience Hogwarts for the first time, and I get to experience it again with her. I’m a Harry Potter Fan Girl raising a little Harry Potter Fan Girl.”
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