Dragon Ball Pop-Up Tour 2026 (Miami) | Pixel Sistas Travel Pt. 1

On today’s adventure of Pixel Sistas Travel, we stepped into the world of Dragon Ball for the 40th Anniversary Pop-Up Tour stop in Miami, Florida! 🌴✨

Part 1 is all about the arrival, the vibes, and our first look inside this unforgettable experience. From iconic visuals to nostalgic moments that took us right back to watching Dragon Ball on Toonami, this was more than just an event—it was a full-circle moment.

With FluffyNinja and Sailor Kirby joining the adventure, the energy was unmatched as we explored the exhibits, took in the atmosphere, and connected with fellow fans.

This is just the beginning… 👀🔥

✨ Stay tuned for Part 2 where things get even better!

Thanks for hanging out with us! If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to follow the podcast, leave a review, and share this episode with another gamer or anime fan! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:41

It's your friendly neighborhood Fluffy Ninja here at my lovely Pixel Sister office. Now, it may not look like much right now, but we just moved in, so we're gonna go ahead and head on to the good part, which you came here for. Our trip to Miami to see the Dragon Ball pop-up tour. Now, before I even give you that, let me go ahead and grab some history gems on you for those of you that don't know Dragon Ball. So, to put it in hindsight, Dragon Ball started for me when it was featured on Toonami. That's when I was first exposed to anime in itself and it's all for and how the depths of fighting all the way up to the heartfelt wisdom that they brought to bear. And also one of the ways how I end up learning for myself how what it really truly means to be an otaku, to be someone that knows exactly what it means to be a true fan of the thing that you love. So before we get into the good part, let's go ahead and honor the 40th anniversary with some history. Dragon Ball started as a simple adventure story and it turned into a global powerhouse. Created by Akira Toriyama in 1984. The franchise began as a manga in the weekly shown in genre. Now I remember those magazines because they used to sell them a lot at Barnes and Noble and Books a Million before the actual before they actually start selling anime in the anime section. So to get back on topic, it was inspired by the journey of West of the West and martial arts in the cinema. It follows the journey of the son of Goku evolving from a light-hearted adventure into a high-stakes battle saga. This story expands through major series such as the original Dragon Ball, where Goku actually meets Voma for the first time in humans. Then there's Dragon Ball Z when we meet Frieza and all the others and just like Vegeta. Then we go to Dragon Ball GT, goes into more death, more characters, and more people for you to love. Dragon Ball Super, which has now become a big phenomenon now. And for those of listening pleasure, we now have Dragon Ball, I believe it's either Dragon Ball or Galactic Patrol that's supposed to be set out coming soon later on this year. If not later on this year, I did do an estimate of maybe like close to fall or whatnot. And the anniversary era, also Dragon Ball Dogma. Growing from the Earth Earthbound adventure to the universe of shaking battles that define anime culture. In the United States, Dragon Ball is a very big thing here. And it's also introduced to generations of fans of anime and helping to push the genre into a mainstream. Over time, the franchise expanded from beyond the screen into movies, video games, and trading cards collectibles, becoming one of the most influential animes of the series worldwide. And we also have one of the little goodie bags from the 40th anniversary with our Goku in his lovely form on the back representing the 40th anniversary. So we'll explain what's in this bag in just a second because also in this video you'll get a sneak peek of the new trading card game. So I'm not gonna do any spoilers, so let's continue. Now, 40 years since its original debut, Dragon Ball continues to evolve with a new story and global celebration. One of the biggest highlights is the pop-up tour of the US of 2026. Now, when I heard that this pop-up tour was happening through uh excuse my French YouTube, through hell and high water, I was going to go. Because again, hashtag childhood, we're not about to miss this shit. So um it was a multi city tour that uh went from started in Japan and then all the way from Chicago to Miami and the end of this tour in California. Now, for those of you that weren't able to go to the tour, you're in luck. Me and your Sailor Kirby went to this tour to give you the highlights and the sneak peeks of all the things that you would see. And just like I did in the New York uh travel reel, I'm gonna give you an inside scoop on everything inside, and we even have a special guest that we interview in the midst of our tour. So stay tuned. I don't want you to miss this. Now, as we continue with the to explaining the pop-up tour, let me tell you about the journey to the pop-up tour. Uh so it was a for us since we lived in South Carolina, it was a nine hour and I believe 20, 9 hours and 26 minutes to drive from there to Miami. Now, usually I'm okay with driving all the way down to Orlando, and it's only seven hours because seven hours is meh. But either way, um it was a wonderful drive going down. So when we got down to road, we realized that this was a lot more than just this driving trip to go see the bottle tour. We noticed that we had to see a lot of things along the way. We even had this car that was trying to see. So it was uh let's just say very, very invigorating. Uh so as we were going to we were getting close to even being in Florida, we had to stop by Geor we stop in Georgia to Brunswick to see Bucky. So your first experience with Bucky's, what are we doing? Uh we're hanging out with Bucky. I'm still trying to figure out why why why a beaver is very important, but alright. We need to brush up on the history of Bucky's. Yeah. Now, did we actually brush up on the history of Bucky's? No, we were trying to get to our hotel on time because driving in the dark is just ghetto. I can't do it, absolutely not. And I mean I can do it if I'm working it, but not really. So as we were going ahead and we made our stop at Bucky's, did a restroom break, filled the gas tank up. We dive into actually coming the next day when we finally made it. We made it to the event. So the first thing to expect when you were at the event, at least in Miami, they put us in the back of the building so that way that they can monitor exactly how many people that were coming in, and then how many people were coming out, and how they were gonna do the giveaways. The giveaways in themselves were pretty simple. They put you in a long line, they started at a set time. The first one was at 11:30. We got to the one at 2:30. So for our giveaway, they made sure that they had everybody in line. They also gave us afternoon time to do like some pre-stop weave and shot some uh people in their fit from Dragon Ball, which was really, really cool. And then there was a couple gamers that were like uh chilling in the corner, so we already knew that this was going to be epic from the beginning to end. So they showed us how to play the game, and it also showed us exactly what was going to be entail in the new game for the trading card game. There's also an online platform for it. I will link the website in the caption below. You don't want to miss that. We also met a couple other content creators that were there. Super sad. Now, I know that I threw a lot of stuff on you, so we're gonna take a break and do our artist feature. I hope you enjoy.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

But you all heard it as Digital Guy Studio. I'm a digital illustrator located in the south, and I enjoy sketching ideas on a lovely digital canvas to see in the real world. While I'm not on my lovely pin display or on my iPad Pro, you can see me gimme it out at nighttime time. Mostly either a party, racing, or anything. And I am a huge tick junkie, exploring and checking out new ways to push my creative boundaries. You can check me out on all my social media at Twitter, akax at digital guy underscores to you, Instagram at digital studio, and on Twitch at Digiguestudio for art, TikTok, and more. See you guys there.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Calling all cosplayers, artists, and twitch streamers. We're looking to feature you on our next live stream. If you're interested, please contact us on all our social media or email us on pixelsisterworld at gmail.com. Once we got to our gift bags and they gave us our giveaway gift bags, they gave us this our Dragon Ball pop-up tour 2026 tour bags. Inside this bag, we had a lot of um stuff pertaining to. One in particular that I wanted to point out that we had was the pop-up tour item collection book. This book was supposed to be something that we got to look at all the collectibles that were coming out and that was coming out of Mr. Toriyama's archive. I guess stuff that we've never seen, and then also the different figurines that we ran into. Now, um when we got to that point, and I can show you. I can't show you because this is audio. So it had uh pictures of Dragon Ball Legends, Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball uh Legend. Sorry about that, that's my fault. Dragon Ball 2, Universe, and then Dragon Ball Sparkling Zero, which we had an opportunity to play the game, but that is going forward. The first thing that we encountered before we even got to that point, um, we got the Dragon Ball magazine with the item collectibles inside the bag. We also got a uh pier of the manga. On one side, it has the very first volume one from uh Hero Toriyama's first um first volume for Dragon Ball, and then on the back of it it had on the flip side Dragon Ball Super Volume One. Now if you're a person that has read anime a lot, you know that we read uh was it right to left? Yeah, I believe it's right to left or left to right, you know what I mean? But both sides had the first the first Dragon Ball Volume One and then Dragon Ball Super Volume One made by Viz Media. So in total, we had a lot in this goodie bag. Uh I'm not gonna show pretty much everything, but I will say that uh Bandai had exclusives there where it had Hey guys, sorry for me to get cut off, but what I was going to tell you guys was that uh SH Figure Arts and Bandai made a figurine of Goku's father, Bardock, and they had the staff member pass out uh little sleeves with a QR code on it where you scan it with your phone, and once you did that, you register under the Bandai website or SH Figure Figure Arts website, and once you show the uh staff member that you signed up for it, they would give you the sleeve and uh the QR code takes you to a website where you can uh start either paying for in advance for your figurine so that way when it first comes out, you'll already have already paid and then you can get your figurine ASAP. Just thought that it would be a thought to know. Also, in addition to uh Goku's father that you get at the figurine, you get baby cacarot as an additional bonus by getting the Bardock figurine. There are other figurines that are up for pre-order as well, so I will look up the website and I will put it in the description box below, or you can go on the Dragon Ball official website for the pop-up tour, and you can find out the figurine website there. Uh, we don't know yet. Right now, apparently Goku was punching me in the face. Ah, typical. This is our interviewer, Mr. Revere. He is one of the people that helped us throughout the demo, and he showed us how to play. And here's our interview. What's going on, Pixel Sister fam? It's your friendly neighborhood, fluffy ninja here in Miami, Florida. I believe it's the adventure of all.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Yes, Ventura Mall.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Okay, and we're here for the Dragon Ball Pop-Up Tour. I have a lovely, lovely contestant that would like to tell you all about what we have here. So, can you explain to us what this is card game? Is it like Yu-Gi-Oh? Is it tell us what's going on?

SPEAKER_02 16:51

Um, so what we have here today is basically a demo demonstrating how to play the game. Um, I am a North American judge for both Dragon Ball Masters and Fujit World. Um, basically, is we're doing this to kind of grow the game as a community. The game itself is very collectible. And at this event, we're doing a demonstration of both a Goku deck and the Vegeta deck that were also available as starter decks to kind of show the people how the game flows.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Okay, so when we play the game, so how do we start off here?

SPEAKER_02 17:27

So, in a normal game, what we do is obviously we both lay down our leaders down first in our decks. Um, what we do is we start, we draw, we start by drawing six cards. We draw six cards. Oh, okay. Okay. I mean, I can do the demonstrations. Um, once we draw six cards in a in uh in a tournament, we have the choice to mulligan the cards after we decide who goes first, obviously. Okay, and then what happens is uh we either mulligan by shuffling the cards in our deck. Now, once we mulligan, obviously we only get one mulligan per game, but I'm not going to do that for the example, and then once we do that, what we take is we grab uh four uh eight cards on from the top of our deck, and we put them in our life area. And obviously, whenever whoever goes first or second gets a multitude of options, such as you're going second in this case for the demo, you would get an energy marker. Energy marker acts as an extra energy or mana, much akin to uh magic, but a little bit of a combination of the game of One Piece.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

And before we continue, can you introduce yourself? Oh, because we know we know that you are a very important person, but explain one more time.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

My name is uh Ewan Rivera. I am local here to Orlando, Florida. Um, I am a North American Dragon Ball judge for both Dragon Ball Masters and Fiji Balls.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Okay, so let's continue with this tutorial. Where do we go from here? So So like I got my cards in my hand.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

Yeah, you've drawn six, and now you take the top cards of your deck and you go to eight lives. So what I'll show you.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 19:10

So you're gonna go one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. You're gonna lay them down here in your life area as such, in a way that you know both players can determine which card is which. Okay. Once you have done that, now um, since I'll be going first, since I'm this is more or less what we're doing for the demo. Okay, I draw one card. Every turn, first player turn always draws first. I'm going to pick a card from my hand, and then I'm going to put it in my energy, like so. Now, since I'm going first, I can not attack you. Okay. Once I've done all that I can, which pretty much all I'm going to do is tap one mana to play a battle card. Battle card is any card that has a black border around it, and it has a specific character name, like for example, our one of our older Dragon Ball characters, Tian Shinhan. Um, he has a battle card, he has no text. There are cards that have text and effects on them, but for now, he's just a vanilla card, and I'm just going to play on my turn. Now, once that has happened, I cannot do anything since this is my first turn. I'm going to go ahead and pass to you.

unknown 20:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

So I remember in this one we play first.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

Yes, you draw a card.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

And then we Ahries! Okay. I think I would put down this. Because I remember on the demo we we did put this down first.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

Yes. So when you do, okay, always put the part like this. Okay. Because remember, we both have to know what we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Understood.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

Yeah. There's no secrets here. Everything's secret in your hand, your life, and your death. Okay. That's all secrets. To me, I cannot know that. But to you, that's all you. Okay. Now, once you have charged, you can now, you being the second player, you can attack me.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:05

You can attack me.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

And it's anything from one to two, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:08

You can play anything from one mana or two mana because you have an energy mark.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

Okay. So I will go into here.

SPEAKER_02 21:16

Yep. So what happens when you play Gilton, you're gonna declare that you're playing, and then you're gonna pay the cost.

unknown 21:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

So once you pay the cost and the card hits the board successfully, you're going to uh basically do the effect of the card, which says on play, you're going to draw one card. So you draw one card.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

Yep. So once so once you draw the card, that pretty much enables you to do whatever else goes on. Oh, so now you can attack me as much as you want for however many cards you have. So you're going to choose to attack with me with the Vegeta. Yep, that's where you turn it sideways.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

Now Vegeta has an Attack you're gonna once you swing, you're going to declare that you're attacking a card, just like you're gonna say, I'm going to swing my Vegeta to my Goku. Now, Vegeta has an effect when attacking, you draw one card. So draw one card.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:17

Now, once that has occurred, basically, your card has the same power as my card. And in this game, in order for me to take a life, you have to meet my attack power or exceed it. In this case, Vegeta has 15,000 attack power, 15,000 attack power to my Goku. I could choose to defend it or take the hit. And in this case, in my turn, and you would want to increase, you wouldn't want to increase the combo power, you would just leave it at 15. So you would attack my Goku, and I would just take the hit. Once I take the hit, I pick up one card for my life and then add it to my hit.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:54

And that's more or less the flow of the game. So you basically do that continuously until all my life is gone.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

Okay, can you tell me something about this card? It popped up and it looks all shiny and nice.

SPEAKER_02 23:08

Oh, so that's an extra card. This is an extra card that you use throughout combat. It's Vegeta's Final Flash. So it has a permanent, which is basically an effect that is active at all times.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

Um, so seven or fewer more cards in your hand, reduce the cost of this card by one. So essentially, instead of you paying two for it, you pay one. Now, this card has an activate main, which says discard one card from your hand, choose it to one card of one of your cards, battle cards with the cost of five or less, and place it at the bottom of the owner's deck. So basically, when you activate this card, you would again in fashion, you would discard one card from your hand. You discard one card from your hand. So when you discard a card, you basically choose any card and put it in your drop area.

unknown 23:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

And then you would target my only battle card, which is Tien, and then you would get rid of it. Essentially, I just lost steam from my next turn. I just you just pretty much killed my floor.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Okay, so I have some questions for you.

SPEAKER_02 24:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:15

So um, my first question is how did you even get into this? Isn't this a child's game? Is this like are you too old to be doing this? Like, these are questions that have been asked to me when I took enjoying things.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

Yeah, too. This, like everything, is a hobby.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

Um, it's family friendly from ages of all range. I'm 33 years old, and I've loved Dragon Ball since I was a child. So obviously, you know, Goku, Vegeta, you know, characters that I've been fighting, you know, for time and time again, rivals from the first Dragon Ball show to Dragon Ball Z, GT, Dyma, Super, even uh Dragon Ball Zenaverses in Japan. Okay. Um, I started collecting uh the card game in 2017. That was when I was fresh out of the military. I needed a hobby and I saw that this was the perfect one to pick up. Anybody, I've seen people uh collect this card from basically people who are like 10 years old to people who are older or twice as old as me.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Okay, so here's another question: what's the deal with the training cards that you get in your um tote bag?

SPEAKER_02 25:27

Are they like special cards like these or they're so they are promotional cards that you receive at events like this, and in this case, you receive a energy marker for just being part of the event. There's uh you get that free tote bag, so it's mine if I take it right here. And this tote bag, they got Super Saiyan 4 Goku in the front, and also this event is mainly commemorating the 40th anniversary of Dragon Ball, and in doing so, they're promoting the revival of the anime, and as well as all the other games, and pretty much anything that's been keeping the the brand alive as a whole, you know. And honestly, I think Akiroicho Yama Sensei would be very proud that to know that his his character, his manga is still thriving even after his you know passing. However, um the stuff that you get here is not always exclusive to this, but it's a lot of goodies and incentive for people to enjoy. I mean, I've seen people just line up and since the dawn of yesterday to just get stuff to buy stuff, just to have a chance to have a piece of history because right now this event and future events for the rest of the year are pretty much commemorative and something that if you're a true Dragon Ball fan, you would want to take part in.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

And I know you talked about um here since a um it was very emotional for me when I found out that he passed because I was like, wait, you're the one to start real anime, what's going on? So, for me, what do you think Galactic Patrol is gonna be like since it was announced?

SPEAKER_02 27:10

Galactic Patrol, I think it's gonna be the thing that people have been waiting for a long time since they're basically adapting the anime to the manga.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

Oh, praise God! Oh praise God!

SPEAKER_02 27:24

So we're definitely we're definitely gonna see things like Ultra Ego Vegeta, Ultra Instinct Goku, Gohan going toe-to-toe with Goku in his beast form, and our uh notorious villain Frieza coming back with an upgrade.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

I I'm waiting on that. So I was wondering if Frieza was dead, dead, or just like on the side.

SPEAKER_02 27:49

Frieza Frieza is coming back stronger than ever, and we get to see both new and all faces, but I'm just happy that Dragon Ball is so strong, even at its 40th anniversary.

SPEAKER_01 28:01

Oh, yeah. I I think that's one of those um oldies that never gets oh, that just evolves, you know. But we thank you so much for taking your time up. I know you got other people you have to do with the demo, and we appreciate your time. Yeah, our PS2 fam. This wraps up day one of the event. We will see you tomorrow for the second half. So, Mr. Revere gave us a good insight on not only Dragon Ball as a whole, but what it's evolving into. With the trading card game, you were able to get a let me roll it out because I have it right here. Whatever things in the world that he was in, that they offered. And then when you finish the building it, you can take it home and it'll be yours. So that was one of the many things that they offered at the event. So this was a great start for the first day for our Dragon Ball pop up tour. I really was excited. Um, even though I didn't get a chance to cover everything that was in the first video, the second video is coming soon. So you don't want to miss it. Bye for now.