Hello everyone!

Australia, New Zealand, and Asia games are shipping soon! Details below, but first:

Aetherworks Emails

If you live in Australia or New Zealand, Aetherworks will send you an email in the next few days (possibly already) confirming your address and allowing you to update it if necessary.

We're told that these orders may start being packed and shipped as soon as next week. Aetherworks also lists games that they are currently fulfilling on their Facebook page here, so we encourage you to check there if you want to closely follow the shipping status. We think you will also get an email from the carrier with a tracking link when your parcel ships.

Delivery Estimates

Here are our estimates of when games will start arriving:

•  Australia and New Zealand - Possibly starting next week (?)
•  China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Taiwan - Early October
•  Rest of Asia - varies by country: October-November
•  US/Canada - October or first half of November
•  Europe - 2nd half of October

Australia and New Zealand Fulfillment

Games for backers in Australia and New Zealand arrived this week at Aetherworks (our regional fulfillment partner in Sydney, Australia). There were no issues in customs. 

Packout photos

Aetherworks (and the rest of our fulfillment partners) will send us photos of how they are packing the games for shipment, so we will share those "packout" photos in a future update.

Asia fulfillment

Asia fulfillment will start in the next 2 weeks! We've sent over the final backer data to VFI Asia (our fulfillment partner in Asia) and they now have everything they need and will start fulfilling.

We'll let you know when VFI starts shipping orders, but delivery times will vary significantly by country. Orders to China and Malaysia are fulfilled directly by VFI but orders for other countries need to travel to a country hub first before they're mailed to you. Once VFI starts shipping, you should be able to check your country's shipping status at http://vfi.asia/hubs/

Canada Fulfillment

There was an issue with our original Canadian fulfillment partner, so we have a new fulfillment plan. Our US fulfillment partner Quartermaster Logistics will pre-pack orders at their warehouse in Florida. Those orders will be freighted to a FedEx hub in Canada, duties paid, and then the orders will be shipped via FedEx to backers (you shouldn't need to pay duties at the door).  Assuming this method works as planned, we think backers in Canada will receive games a little sooner than if we worked with a Canadian fulfillment provider, as most of the ones we talked to already had a deep backlog of projects to fulfill next month.

If you provided a non-FedExable Canadian mailing address (like a PO Box), we sent you an email today to get a compatible address.

North America-bound ship and Panama Canal

The ship headed to North America, YM Utopia, transited the Panama Canal yesterday and is now in the Atlantic Ocean!

We think this is super cool and wanted to share some of what we learned about this part of Utopia's voyage and the Panama Canal in general.

The Panama Canal is a 82 km (51 mi) man-made shortcut that allows ships to hop from the Pacific to the Atlantic (and vice versa) across the narrowest part of the Americas. Before the canal opened in 1914, ships had to go all the way around the tip of South America.

Although the canal connects directly to two oceans, the canal surface sits at 85 ft above sea level, which means ships have to go through "locks" (water elevators) to enter the canal.

The original locks built in 1914 could only fit ships 274m long x 32m wide. Our US-bound ship, Utopia, is 333m x 43m; too big for the original locks, but small enough to fit through the “new” locks (opened in 2016). These new locks can fit ships as big as 366m x 49m.

The ship carrying games headed to Europe, APL Vanda, is one of the largest container ships in the world, and at 397.6m x 51m cannot fit through the Panama Canal. (For comparison, the largest container ship in the world, MSC Gülsün, is 399.9m x 61.5m. We weren't able to find any specific information on why 400m seems to be the current maximum length for container ships.)

There is a live webcam at the Panama Canal docs, but unfortunately we weren’t able to catch any images of Utopia making yesterday’s transit. We did find a YouTube video of Utopia going through some of the new locks in 2017. Here are some screengrabs from that 2017 video:

You can continue to follow Utopia's journey to Jacksonville, Florida at https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:754231/mmsi:636013690/imo:9337456/vessel:YM_UTOPIA

Europe-bound ship and Suez Canal

The APL Vanda, the ship headed to Europe, just entered the Suez Canal today!

The Suez Canal a 193 km (120 mi) waterway shortcut between the Atlantic and Indian oceans. It’s in Egypt, and it connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea. Vanda will take about 16 hours to transit the canal. Unlike the Panama, the Suez Canal is at sea level and has no locks and therefore can fit most large container ships. The shortcut saves weeks of travel versus having to round the tip of Africa.

Here’s a beautiful timelapse we found on Youtube that shows a container ship transiting the Suez Canal in 2016. Timelapse starts around the 2m 10 s mark.

You can follow Vanda's journey to Le Havre, France at https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:733469/mmsi:566954000/vessel:APLVANDA/_:56c958658e63a824c3a56517888d09b9

Upcoming Conventions

SHUX’19 - Vancouver, Canada, Oct 4 - 6, 2019

We won’t have a booth at this convention, just attending, but if you’re also going and want to play a game of Fantastic Factories with us, shoot us an email at team@fantasticfactories.com! (We can’t do any game pickup at this convention. The games won’t be here yet!)

PAX Unplugged - Philadelphia, USA, Dec 6 - 8, 2019

We’ll have a booth at PAX Unplugged this year! We'll be at booth #3830. Stop by, say hi, and play some One Turn Puzzles! We’ll also be giving short demos of the game at the booth. (US fulfillment will be already finished by the time this convention happens)

That's all for now! We'll keep you updated as shipping starts in different regions and as we learn more about Asia and Australia/New Zealand fulfillment progress.

If you have any questions or comments, just send us an email at team@fantasticfactories.com

Thanks again for all of your support!

Joseph and Justin