Pokémon GO Tour: Unova – Los Angeles!

February 21, 2025

After going to my first in-person Pokémon event at Pokémon GO Tour Sinnoh: Los Angeles, I was immediately so excited to return! I wanted to go all out this year and dress up as Red from Pokémon Masters EX just for fun. It seems random for a tour about Unova, but my favorite character is Red, so that's what I went with! This time, we went on the 21st as a one-day event. We plan to return next year for a trip with two days instead!

Last year, I was really out of it. I was in the midst of a dizzy-spell and I didn't get to fully enjoy it or remember it, so the pictures in that blog were mainly from my parents. I didn't get to remember to take pictures. So I knew this year, I wanted to take all my pictures, bring some kandi with me and brighten people's day with more interactions! It's a huge goal of mine this year to get to know other people and interact with them! I was never sociable at events like this because I was an awkward shut-in, but that made me feel lonely and like I was only there to stand around. Nope! Not this time!

Gifts and Merch!

These perler necklaces were what I made to bring to the GO Tour! I specifically made these to give away for anyone who complimented me or simply liked them. I managed to make all of the male protagonists! Initially, I wanted to make all of the female protagonists and then the rivals, but I didn't have enough time as I had a health flare-up, over 10 commissions and college admission meetings to set up. It was a lot! But I managed to give 3 of my boys (Nate, Hilbert, and Lucas) homes and I'm so happy about it! Next year, I know for sure I'm going dressed up as Kalem, since I'm almost 100% sure they're going to make it GO Tour: Kalos, and I'm going to make all of the characters by then! >:D

Everyone I talked to was super nice and sweet, I traded Nate for a cute handmade sticker of Vaporeon with a scarf and Lucas for a "333" kandi bracelet from a fellow Kandi Kid! Even one of the staff taking photos for us was kind and complimented my kandi. I meant to give her a necklace but since there was so many people, I didn't want to take up more time in line :'(

I also pre-ordered a pin before the event when we bought our tickets! At the time, I really didn't like the shirts. I had been trying to stay away from black-colored clothes so I can switch out my wardrobe to Decora. But I gave in and bought two shirts in larges anyway, because I loved the experience so much.

The Event!

It was already 12 PM when we found out that the tasks this year were completely different than last time. Instead of needing to catch 1 of every Pokémon from each habitat, you had to go to each specific PokéStop that had a specific Pokémon it was describing in the task and spin it. We literally had no idea until we were already half-way through the entire park. We probably should have read the task thoroughly beforehand, but why don't they tell us what we are doing on the website beforehand!? The lack of transparency was abysmal :/ We almost completed all of the tasks too, if it wasn't for us losing Tornadus's PokéStop.

I was so excited when I saw the infographic for the Unown's "U", "N", "O", "V", and "A". They were supposed to appear at some point and even had a chance to be shiny. I barely have them as it is, but I didn't see any the entire day. I have really bad luck with chances in-game like this, but I didn't even see one, so maybe I just got unlucky, but they really should've upped the chances more. On the bright side, I managed to get into a bunch of raids for Kyurem!

The Rose Bowl!

The Rose Bowl itself was fine. They cleaned it up decently and sectioned off the rest of the golf course so the regulars could use it. They actually installed many more bathrooms and sinks so that was awesome! The information tents were a huge bonus since there were multiple of them, but the team tents felt kind of lackluster. I only saw 1 tent and they were doing their usual QnA with rewards, but I didn't have the courage to go over there, so I wonder what kind of rewards they were handing out!

The weather this time around was beautiful! You can see in my previous gallery for Sinnoh that it was cloudy and a little bit chilly, this time it was sun out for the entire day. We were only there until 3 PM but that sun was brutal. And I was wearing a black shirt and a vest! I had to flip my hat around because we were waiting in line to take pictures with the Unova starters and I could feel the sun burning my neck off LOL.

We sat down at 1 to eat since we made sure to eat before arriving at the Rose Bowl this time, and the food was dramatically better than last years. They actually had a bunch more vendors set up around the stadium than the regular stadium's stalls, so they had different things like grilled teriyaki chicken, tortas, fruit juice, pulled pork, the whole works. We ate teriyaki chicken last year from the stadium stall and it was NOT good. It was rubbery and the rice tasted off, like plastic. We basically starved our way through the whole day. But this time was super good and we even got a mango and watermelon drink which didn't last more than twenty minutes. They stepped it up!

Also, apparently there was a Pikachu photoshoot that they didn't advertise properly AT ALL. I had to find out from Leek Duck that he was even going to be there? We looked around and there ended up being a little sign that said Pikachu was having meetups at certain times throughout the day but like how and why did they not put those times down in their own website? Luckily my father managed to snag a picture while he was there, since at the time, we were still in line to take pictures. Next time, they should really push that sort of photo opportunity out there. It feels like they wanted it to be a surprise, but I was just kinda iffy about it.

The signs telling you what habitat you were entering were a nice touch, and their structures had so much effort put into them! Especially the garden near the halfway point of the park. I took a picture in front of the garden, which had all of the team logos arranged with bouqets. I took a picture in front of our colors!

Pokemon Caught!

I'm not a lucky person in general when it comes to shinies, so during the GO Tour, I only managed to catch 5 shinies: Lickitung, Minccino, Sawk, Axew, and Tirtouga. Tirtouga is easily my favorite out of those 5, its gorgeous color reminds me of the ocean we saw at the Bahamas!

And the post-event rewards being around 5 Genesects really sealed it for me, adding to my existing collection of 3 Genesects LOL. Not to mention the other legendaries! I already had Coballion and Terrakion, but it was awesome to get doubles and then some!

Gallery