Now that all is said and done, did the Lancaster County "Super Fair" live up to its (pretty lame) name? We don't have final attendance numbers just yet so that measure is out. But even if we did have those numbers, so what? They just tell us how many people bought into the hype. The more interesting data are visitor satisfactions levels and the number of visitors, vendors, and advertisers that return next year.
Members of the Wilson family went to the fair on two separate occasions, on Wednesday late morning / early afternoon (Robbie and The Missus) and on Sunday afternoon (all of us). Both times we encountered an annoying truth: the schedule of events is more a rough guide than an accurate accounting of what would go on at any particular time. The problem was less severe on Wednesday. Many parts of the fair were still being put together, but there was plenty for a group of youngsters to do. Robbie and his friend Parker were particularly enthralled by the model railroad exhibit, for example.
Sunday, on the other hand, was a joke. Despite the schedule's (PDF) assurances that many activities were ongoing from "9 a.m. - 9 p.m.", they were not. Most of the fair was a veritable ghost town for much of Sunday. Based on my experiences with past county fairs I guessed that might be the case, but with the schedule making promises I made the mistake of believing it. Shame on the fair organizers for the deception.
And what about the vaunted midway? It wasn't terrible for little kids, but there wasn't much in the way of rides for the older crowd. It was smaller than the State Fair's midway, yes, but it wasn't a bad size. Robbie found plenty to do, and overall he had a blast. There were a couple rides suitable for folks older than age 8, but not many. And there were, of course, the usual midway games.
Two safety notes deserve to be brought to light. First, why were rides -- the ferris wheel in particular -- still being operated in the presence of lightning on Sunday? Talk about a liability nightmare! One good zap and Lancaster Manor would be the least of Lancaster County's financial concerns. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Second, the operator of the motorcycle ride was going around issuing a dire warning not to touch the headlights of the motorcycles because they were "extremely hot". How hot? How about hot enough to have given the operator a large, severe burn on his forearm? He continued to operate the ride, of course, despite the clear safety problem. Apparently shutting down the ride for five minutes in order to remove the overheating lightbulbs didn't occur to him.
So was the "Super Fair" super? Yes, in that it was super lame on Sunday and super dangerous on the midway. I wish I had gone on Friday or Saturday so I could have a better perspective. Hopefully some of you can give some insight into what the fair was like on those days.
Comments
See what your friends and neighbors have to say about this.
I went on Saturday and wasn’t all that impressed. I’m hoping that next year’s fair will have more to offer when it’s the only game in town.
We went on Sunday and we were Super Disappointed. We got there around 2:00 telling our 3 year-old that we were going to go see cows & horses. We were shocked to see almost everyone had gone home. Luckily the petting zoo was still there or we would have had one upset child. The model train think would have been cool had they not been taking it down why we were there. If you are going to advertise and promote it going through Sunday, it needs to actually be that way. Even the exhibitors had packed up and left. We braved the rain to come see, but the people there didn’t feel it was worth it. I was not impressed. We will be attending the Saline or Seward county fair next year.
Share your thoughts with the community.
Commenting is no longer permitted on this post.