Pokémon Gofest Chicago 2026: Day 3
Well Day 3 of Chicago GoFest was upon me. And this was the height of my excitement as I had my park experience. There were plans to meet up with my friends from Orlando that I hadn’t found yet at this point. And I was even going to complete all my objectives for the day. Naturally my plans went in an unexpected direction, but I’ll be telling you all about that soon. Let’s see what my Day 3 experience was like.
I wanted to return to Lincoln Park again and as I was much closer to it than the last few days, I only took a combination of the CTA Blue Line and Brown Lines towards it. And I realized on my way there that the walk towards the park has several unique street crossings due to Chicago trying to get several streets to get through a small area due to the park and nearby Lake Michigan. The weather was perfect, at least initially. But that wouldn’t last. The clouds above hinted at what was to come.
Back to Lincoln Park
I realized quickly that I didn’t want to actually do raids yet. Not when I would be doing plenty of those when I was in Grant Park. Still, there were abundant spawns to catch. And with plenty of stops to spin, I did not regret returning to Lincoln Park. The one thing that did start setting my plans on fire was that my friends left the park before I arrived. And given how much there was to do, and in their case, they didn’t know the area, communication wasn’t so great.
Anyway, I got to take some pictures of the park. Notably different pictures than the ones the day before. Day 3 was focused on finding shiny Pokémon at least when I wouldn’t be at Grant Park later, and I went insane as I kept failing to find many of them. Anyone who I spoke to will tell you about the lone dude who couldn’t stop talking about his lack of Rotom-Wash and Dhelmise Shiny encounters. And there are worse things to be remembered for.
As the morning grew warmer, I headed towards Grant Park for my park experience. And then learned that I had made a terrible mistake. In my haste to make sure I had a ticket, I hadn’t selected the morning event. No, my dummy mind had selected the afternoon adventure. And now I had tons of hours to kill that couldn’t involve my dead battery. So what did I do you ask? Read below to find out.
Killing Time
I wandered the area around Grant Park a bit frustrated. Since I had planned a very different day than what I was getting, it would have been easy to grow upset. But then it hit me that I had a rare opportunity. So often even on vacation I’m rushing around with no chance to breath. Society tends to force us into such thinking since when we are resting we are not spending, but this isn’t a political blog post so I’ll stop that conversation. Well, wanna guess what I did next to kill some time?
I took the trains around of course. And I alternated between playing Pokémon Go and taking plenty of pictures. Since I had tons of hours to kill. Four of them in fact, I traveled all over the northern parts of Chicago. And even a few of the suburbs. I took the CTA Brown Line, Red Line, and even Yellow Line. That last one is basically a fancy shuttle between Skokie, Illinois and Chicago. Still, my family lived there for a long time and so I was feeling nostalgic.
One of the benefits of taking the CTA is that the train goes slow enough that its possible to spin stops and catch Pokémon. The train does not stay in one place long enough for raids or to take over gyms. But that was fine given that I wasn’t trying to do those things. What I was trying to avoid was Cubs fans because there was a baseball game. A shame I got trapped on an extremely crowded train on the way back.
Grant Park
Anyway the real fun started in the afternoon. I didn’t get a chance to take any pictures of the venue. After all, I was hyper focused on completing all the tasks. The best I could do was take screenshots of what the venue looked like in Pokémon Go. Keep in mind that those Pokestop and gym placements changed during the event. I have never seen the game pull that before and I hope to take part in more events that have an evolving story in real time.
As you can see in the above images there are colored zones. I found different Pokémon in each area and got different quests from spinning the stops. The story focused quest also required me to move around the different zones and catch things in each area. I ran into some issues as my phone overheated and wasn’t properly tracking my movement for a while. But overall, I regret nothing about paying for and attending the park event.
At the very end of the event, I traveled to my assigned section which you can see in the above image with the star in the yellow area. And I teamed up with a group of about 5000 phones, or about 3700 actual people and took down a super raid boss Mewtwo. Then I caught it. Best of all, I got to do so a second time. And both battles used mechanics I had never known was in Pokémon Go before. If only I had a newer phone. Next time I attend GoFest I think I might upgrade so that the experience is much more stable.
Post Day 3
I didn’t get a chance to take any pictures on the way home. After all, the plans going off the rails messed up many of my plans. Specifically spending time with my family outside of GoFest. Several train rides later and I made it back to the northern suburbs. You don’t need to worry about any of that since it isn’t part of my Gofest experience. But remember that I had to travel down south again for day 4.
Don’t forget to read Day 0, Day 1, Day 2, and Day 4. There was plenty of adventure to be had.