We finally have details about the upcoming Disney Lorcana Challe𝔍nge European Championship, and𒆙 it’s not quite what people were expecting.
The event, held at Disneyland Paris from December 7-9, will feature a showdown amongst all the E𝐆U Disney Lorcana Challenge qualifiers from this year, plus a crop of last-chance qualifiers from the event itself, all competing for a chance to play at the Disney Lorcana World Championship in 2025. If you’re thinking about attending the event in Paris to play side events, spectate the matches, or compete in the Last Chance Qualifier, you may want to check out the specifics to see if it’s actually worth making the trip.
For those lucky enough to ge🏅t a Last Chance Qualifiers (LCQ) ticket, you’ll be playing a 32-player, single-elimination pod, with only the winner of each pod advancing into the big weekend event. While technically an easier road to qualifying for the championship compared to those that qualified at the DLC, considering you only need a single 5-0 run in a pool of only 32 players to qualify, the single-elimination nature of the event means that a single bad matchup is all it takes to end y🎶our run.
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Luckꦺily, if you get knocked out in the first two rounds, you’ll get to play in a side event as a consolation. This isn’t all that different from the way other LCQs work in other trading card games, though some, like Pokemon, have moved away from LCQs completely.
Attendees Won't Have Much Time To Attend
Where things get weird is when it comes to the attendee badges. In the DLCs leading up to the EU Championship, attendee badges have been a way for non-competitors to get access to the tournament to participate in side events, watch the competition, shop at vendors, and be part of all the festivities. Attendee badges will be available at the European Championship as well, but attendees will only be permitted to enter the event during a randomly assigned f🌠our-hour time slot on either Saturday or Sunday.
According to the , the slot structure was “created to grant as many Disney Fans the opportunity to come by and enjoy the experience.” Evidently, the organizers are trying to work aroun❀d some spatial constraints, and this is the solution they’ve devised to ensure as many people attend the event as possible. But if you’re thinking about travelling to Paris from somewhere else for the event, you may have a hard time justifying the trip for the sake of a random four-hour time slot.
If you’ve been to a DLC before, this experience will be fundamentally different. There will be no opportunities to grind side events for prize tickets, and you can’t sit around and watch matches all day. You can’t even hang out with your friends there, because who knows if you and your friends will get the same time slot? Most attendees want to be there to watch the last few matches o🐠n Sunday afternoon to see the biggest players duke it out for the top prizes, but unless you’re assigned the Sunday afternoon slot, ꦯyou won’t be allowed in.
The Beginning Of Disney Lorcana Quest
Instead of playing side events, spectating, and socializing, attendees will get to participate in the Disney Lorcana Quest experience - the first of its kind since the non-competitive-focused Quest experience was announced at D23 Expo.
Attendees will be given a pin, a promo card, two play vouchers that can be used for a single round of Pack Rush or Advanced Constructed (each player gets two packs, one prize pack for the winner), and a Quest Passport. You’ll use the passport to collect stamps at different to-be-announced activities scattered throughou🌜t the event to obtain an additional, also unannounced, rewaᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚrd. I suspect this will be a fun, but brief scavenger hunt-style activity built around photo ops and family participation.
The attendee experience can be boiled down to showing up at your assigned time, playing a couple of rounds of Pack Rush or Constructed, doing a short activity book, maybe watching a few matches or two on the main stage, and then getting out. If you’re local to Paꦜris it could be a fun half-day trip, but if you have to travel several hours from another country, it might be hard to justify going all the way there for such little time at the event.
Note: LCQ players also get an attendee badge. Playing on Friday and attending a random slot on Saturday or Sunday (assu🌳ming you don’t qualify) does sound more worthwhile.
Some people will be satisfied showing up for a few hours, taking in the atmosphere, and then leaving. Attendees will get a coupon for 20 percent off at the official Disney Stores in the Disneyland Pa🐻ris resort, expecting that some will want to add a visit to Disneyland to this abbreviated Lorcana weekend.
There’s certainly a lot of crossover appeal there, but that doesn’t mean Lorcana players are necessarily interested in a theme park, especially those hoping to engage with t♛he game at the highest-level competition to date. Trust me, nobody loves Disney parks more than me, but these experiences are not interchangeable, or even necessarily transferable.
Is This What The North America Championship Will Look Like?
The big concern is whether or not the NA Championships, taking place at Disneyland in Anaheim early next year, will have the same structure. For locals like myself it’s no big deal to drive over a few hours, but anyone travelling from out of state, evꦺen those who would be interested in playing in the LCQ, might be turned off if a similar time slot system is in place. It remains to be seen, but hopefully attendees will be allowed to stay for the entirety of the event.
The Disneyland Paris resort has the exhibition space to accommodate thousands of Lorcana fans, so it's disappointing to see that it either isn’t available or isn’t being used for such an important event. Whatever the reasons may be, the effect is that it dimini𒊎shes the role of the community that surrounds the competitive side of the game in a big way, at the biggest event to date.
The players at the European Championship deserve a roaring crowd of spectators cheering them on, and the game deserves to be in the biggest venue on the pr🔴operty with as many players and fans attending as possible. I’m still expecting that the World Championship will give us that experience next year, but this feels like a strange step backward for competitive Lorcana at a moment that should be its most exciting yet.
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