Start with the practicals
Confirm your ferry, accommodation, tickets, venue details, and return plan before leaving the mainland. Save anything essential offline.
Plan your visit
Experience Catalina
Your festival experience begins before the first screening. From the ferry crossing to the harbor arrival, from daytime walks to evening events, Catalina is part of the story.
Arrival
The crossing is part of the mood.
Catalina is not a place you simply drive into. You cross water, watch the mainland fall away, and arrive by harbor. That shift is part of what makes the festival feel different.
Before travelling, check your ferry route, departure port, return time, luggage needs, accommodation details, and ticket confirmations. Schedules, availability, prices, and boarding rules should always be checked with the official ferry provider before you travel.
The journey
From mainland rhythm to island time.
The festival weekend works best when guests understand the journey as part of the experience: prepare on the mainland, arrive slowly, move lightly, and leave room for discovery.
Let the weekend begin
The water crossing gives the festival its first cinematic moment: the coast behind you, the island ahead, and the pace already changing.
Arrive with orientation
Once you arrive in Avalon, locate your venue, check walking time, note your evening plan, and keep your phone charged for tickets and updates.
First hour on island
Arrive, breathe, orient.
After stepping off the ferry, give yourself time to enter the festival properly. Avalon is compact, walkable, visual, and atmospheric. The first hour should help you move from travel mode into festival mode.
Collect your bearings, check the harbor, confirm your first screening or event, and look at the venue map before the day becomes busy.
Check your tickets
Locate your first venue
Save the map
Charge your phone
Confirm return ferry
Venue map
Keep on-island navigation practical.
Use the venue map before you arrive and again once you step off the ferry. During festival weekend, a simple map can matter more than a beautiful page.
Save this page, screenshot the map, download it before travelling, and check walking routes before your first event. Mobile signal and Wi-Fi can vary depending on location, crowding, venue, and network.
Dress code
Polished, camera-ready, and comfortably elevated.
Catalina Film Festival is a celebratory, camera-ready event. Dress with the setting in mind: refined enough for festival moments, practical enough for walking around Avalon, and layered enough for cooler evenings by the harbor.
Smart casual / business casual
For daytime screenings, panels, filmmaker conversations, and networking moments, choose a polished but comfortable look: tailored separates, blazers, dresses, smart shirts, refined casual pieces, and footwear suitable for walking.
Cocktail to formal
Friday and Saturday evening events call for a more elevated look. Cocktail dresses, evening gowns, elegant pantsuits, dressy separates, dark suits, ties, bow ties, and dress shoes are all appropriate.
Formal / black-tie encouraged
The Red Carpet and Awards Ceremony are signature festival moments. Aim for a confident, polished, photo-ready outfit that feels celebratory and intentional.
Pack in style
Look ready for the camera, but plan for the island.
Catalina style should balance elegance and movement. You may be walking between venues, waiting near the harbor, attending screenings, joining receptions, or moving from daytime events into evening moments.
Bring layers for cooler evenings, choose shoes you can walk in, and avoid outfits that feel too casual for a festival setting. Athleisure, beachwear, and sandals are not appropriate for festival events.
Smart casual by day
Cocktail to formal by evening
Black-tie encouraged for awards
Comfortable dress shoes
Layers for cooler nights
No athleisure or beachwear
Printable guest card
Prepare before you arrive.
Fill this out before leaving the mainland or your hotel. Once the essential fields are completed, the download buttons will unlock.
Before you go
Prepare once. Enjoy more.
A little planning makes the island feel effortless. Save key information before travelling so the weekend can feel relaxed, not improvised.
Confirm your crossing
Check your departure port, ferry time, boarding instructions, return trip, parking, luggage needs, and travel buffer.
Save your essentials
Keep tickets, passes, confirmation emails, venue details, programme notes, contact information, and the map available offline.
Pack for movement
Bring comfortable shoes, a charged phone, portable battery, light layers, sun protection, and anything you need for a full day outdoors and indoors.
Island rhythm
Build a day around cinema, light, and place.
Catalina is part festival, part retreat, part meeting ground. Give the day a rhythm: morning arrival, afternoon discovery, evening screenings, and harbor air after dark.
Wake into the harbor
Start slowly. Coffee, water, walking routes, and the first view of Avalon set the emotional register for the day.
Move between stories
Build space between screenings. Let the island, conversations, meals, and short walks become part of the programme.
Stay after the credits
The night experience matters: screenings, gatherings, filmmaker conversations, and the harbor after dark carry the festival beyond the screen.
After dark
The festival does not end when the screening ends.
Leave time for the parts of a festival that cannot be scheduled perfectly: a conversation outside a venue, a filmmaker introduction, a walk along the water, a late dinner, or a quiet moment after a film stays with you.
If you are returning to the mainland the same evening, check your final ferry details in advance. If you are staying overnight, plan your return route from the venue before the event begins.
Practical notes
Small details make the weekend easier.
Use this page as a calm checklist before arrival. The goal is not to over-plan the island, but to remove friction from the essentials.
Know your route
Avalon is the main arrival point for most festival visitors. Check ferry, taxi, shuttle, walking, and hotel transfer options before you travel.
Getting hereSave key info offline
Signal and Wi-Fi can vary. Screenshot tickets, maps, ferry confirmations, hotel details, and any urgent contact information.
Offline guidanceAsk early
If you need accessibility information for venues, seating, travel, forms, or festival events, contact the team before arrival where possible.
AccessibilityThe frame
Catalina is not just where the festival happens.
It is the frame around the films: the crossing, the harbor, the walk to the venue, the conversations after screenings, and the feeling of returning to the water when the night is over.