Let us dust off our robes and flourish our wands for a fresh beginning. :)

We had such a grand time at our event in March and we would LOVE to continue to  bring wizard-y magic to NW Arkansas! Just days ago, it was brought to our attention that Warner Brothers feels our naming of the event as well as a few other aspects were a little TOO close to their intellectual property for their comfort, regardless of it being something that we do not profit from but rather try to enrich our community through choosing a good cause to donate to.

​It is of no consequence however -- We have decided to take this opportunity to make something all our own that we can celebrate together while paying homage to the stories we love so much and develop relationships with each other in our community. DiaCON's spirit will continue as 'WIZARD WAY OF THE OZARKS'.

​We do hope that you will continue to keep the magic going with us despite this change, and we can all move forward to make it bigger and better than before while continuing to do the most good in our community as we know good wizards and witches would.

​Most Sincerely,
​Wizard Way of the Ozarks Head Elves

It's with great happiness that we write that DiaCON Alley of the Ozarks 2018 was a resounding SUCCESS! We are so pleased with how things turned out and most importantly we are hearing from YOU how much you enjoyed it, which makes us all feel warm and fuzzy inside. There are definitely things that we could improve upon but as a whole we are so happy we were able to provide a fun experience and a place to make friends that will last a life time! Also I feel like it's worth mentioning that HUFFLEPUFF won the 2018 DiaCON House Cup (woo!)

​We have one set of photos our photographers took and we're hoping to get the other set very soon from our other photographer so we can put galleries up for you to peruse. Also, we will be making our nonprofit donations to the NWA Children's Shelter and Raptor Rehab of Central Arkansas in the coming week, we will document that on facebook as well!

​We already have ideas bubbling in our cauldrons for fun things to come so if you'd like to stay updated on that, please subscribe to the Ozark Owl Post in the top right hand corner!

​We also are collecting applications for a variety of reasons (volunteers, merchants, entertainment, & panel ideas) for future events so you can join our little House Elf family too!

​We're holding our wands up, ready for the next adventure!!


Love,
​The DiaCON Alley Head House Elves

​

Whew! Time Flew!

When we began planning this event, we could have barely dreamed of what it would become. We are SO excited and we hope that you are too - wands in hand!! We have a few notes for attendees to be aware of mixed in with some frequently asked questions:

1. Payment methods -- during the event, when you are purchasing an item or service not included in your ticket, it is up to the individual vendors whether they accept cash or credit. *MOST* of them will accept credit/debit cards, however we do recommend you keep a small amount of cash on you just in case.

2. PARKING -- You are welcome to use the Fayetteville Town Center Parking deck, as well as parking spaces around the square (metered parking here is free on the weekends -- numbered spaces closer to Block / Dickson Street are free until 2pm and require payment after that) and there are also a few surrounding city parking lots (behind the old court house, behind bank of Fayetteville, etc). There will be close to 2000 attendees, so keep that in mind when you choose what time to show up and what parking may be available. Here's a parking map of the city to help you out:​https://www.fayetteville-ar.gov/DocumentCenter/View/2327 

3. We are not responsible for lost or stolen items, however we will do our best to work with the Town Center to help you find them should something happen. Please leave valuable things at home or somewhere secure instead.

4. We will have ADA Liasons, one for each shift during the day, to assist those that have special needs and try to help accommodate them. Find a volunteer or Head House Elf during the day of if you need something specific and we will be happy to get them for you.

5. Sign ups for costume contests, bertie botts bean challenge, SPELLing bee, trivia, and common room games are done at the front at the sign up / registration table and are on a FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED basis. You are welcome to watch without having to sign up, and we have staggerd sign up times (available on our website) to try to be as fair as possible, but just be aware that these spots will fill up quickly.

6. We understand there will be people coming in costumes WHICH IS GREAT and we definitely encourage that -- BUT explosives (pretend confringo only!), knives, guns, or other weapons or likeness of weapons (outside of wands) even if they are just pretend and part of your costume ARE NOT ALLOWED. We appreciate your compliance!

Finally, have fun! We are so proud of Fayetteville and how they've come around to support us and we can't wait to benefit the NWA Children's Shelter!

Most Sincerely,
Head House Elves of DiaCON Alley of the Ozarks

 Greetings! 

​The birth of this event started with a regular nerdling reaching out to her group of friends and acquaintances that wanted to throw a cool party for our town (for adults and kiddos alike) where 'cool' meant nerding out about one of our favorite things in the universe - Harry Potter.  There's only 6 of us on the core planning team (though we have had close to 50 people sign up to be volunteers to help make this happen! Wow -- THANK YOU!) - we're composed of teachers, parents, accountants, techies, nonprofit-ers, artists, just ordinary people with slightly fantastical dreaming wanting to believe there's magic in the world around us. We decided that we wanted to try to do this out of our own pockets and if it went well, maybe next year we'd have time to look for outside help. We're not wealthy benefactors, but we had big dreams about bringing the community together and supporting a local nonprofit in the process. We don't see this as a job (we have full time jobs outside of this, although it'd be pretty cool being a professional event wizard) and we're not looking to make money from it -- our goal is to provide this simply because we think Fayetteville is the perfect home for it.

​We initially thought it would be a small event - we thought "Hey, it'd be cool if we had about 200 people show up." We haven't boosted posts, we haven't really done much marketing at all, because interest has gathered faster than we could say 'Expelliarmus!'. We had no idea. NOW it's like someone cast geminio - the event on Facebook currently has over close to 600 saying they would like to come and close to 5,000 interested! That is more than we ever anticipated!

Since we've had such an overwhelming response, we are realizing our venue will be smaller than the amount of people we can allow in that would like to participate (duly noted for next time!) and will be limited in how many tickets we can offer for sale while still keeping everyone comfortable space wise in the venue with everything going on.

We want to let you know what the admission pays for so you'll know what to your expectations should be for our day of fun!

​Tickets will be $12 for general admission, $9 for kids ages 5 - 12, and kids under 4 will be free. Note: Brown Paper Tickets does charge a service fee of 99 cents plus 3.5% of the ticket price which comes out to about $1.50 for a general ticket), but tax is already included in the $12 price.

What your ticket to DiaCON Alley of the Ozarks will include:

- Entry to the town center for the entirety of the event (you can come and go). We do hope you'll come enjoy the event in costume but it's not required.

​- Photo opportunities with props, backdrops, and costumed characters all throughout.

- First 100 people to enter will receive a tote with a few little goodies.

​- Access to shop amongst the 37 vendors included in our own version of a wizarding shopping alley. Examples of the types of vendors: 6 themed sweets and drink vendors (yes to butterbeer and pumpkin juice!), some wizardy inspired artisans (jewelry, bath products, wands, plushies, knit goods, art, and more!), some merchants with HP items, a professor of divination (I bet she knows Professor Trelawny!), face painting vendor, fake tattoo vendor (get your dark mark!), and a professional photo booth.

​- Free entry into a costume contest (if you choose to sign up and participate!) and Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans challenge, maybe even a wizarding SPELLing bee.

​- Access to "The Common Room" - tables will be set up for a game area where we will have some themed table top games available to play.

​- Activities such as a sorting hat area (where you will be sorted and get your own house bracelet), an event wide magical scavenger hunt, table top quidditch, and more.

​- Our "Room of Requirement" - panels happening every hour or so- we will have Raptor Rehab here (owls!), the U of A Quidditch Team, the Mad Scientist (wizard?) Potions Science Show, Harry Potter Trivia, Advanced Potions Class (21+ only please!), and a few more we're nailing down as well as things on stage such as our two Costume Contests. Schedule will be released a couple weeks before the event.

​- House Point Raffles throughout the day - vendors and volunteers will be handing out "house points" based on what house you're in! You will return any won points to the  house point area that will enter you in raffles for awesome items donated to us by our vendors as well as a few additional items we will have (more about prizes later!). The house that wins the 'house cup' at the end of the day will enter them into a raffle to win something special!

Your ticket is also going to do good on top of all of the above things you will experience-- A large percentage of the profits from this event will go to the Northwest Arkansas Children's Shelter (they will have representatives there as well, doing their own activity). If this event goes well, as we think and hope it will, anything left over will be contributed toward making next time even bigger and better.

​Thank you for hanging in there with us, thank you for your support. We're looking forward to sharing this day with you and hope that you'll have a wonderful time if you're able to come. We're working our hardest and know what we see in the Mirror of Erised :)

- DiaCON Alley of the Ozarks Head House Elves
​
“Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.”
– Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
​

One night, a bunch of Harry Potter nerds got together and said to themselves "WHY isn't there a Harry Potter fan convention in NW Arkansas?". It just didn't seem right. In fact, it just seemed down right ridiculous. Why, we have witches, witchards, and wizards here amongst the muggles just like anywhere else in the jurisdiction of the Magical Congress of the United States of America!

We are going to do our best to make this happen. You might be saying "Yes.. but Accio DETAILS!" and some of us in Dumbledore's Army over here are working hard on it!  The ideas are flowing as plentiful as butter beer and pumpkin juice. Do you have a magical ability you can bring to this Con? Can you conjure tasty treats or do you have an uncanny, but magical ability to create gear or decor that a Hogwarts alum might be interested in? Perhaps you have a knack for a talent, or know a famous witch or wizard you might be keen on inviting... if you answered "Aye" to any of these questions then we want YOU!  We are working on pulling this website together and making our vendor/volunteer forms available online, as well as more detailed information about the event itself available to y'all ASAP.