Is The Super Fair Super ... Or Fair?

By: Mr. Wilson on August 8, 2011
3 comments
The Wilsons went to the so-called Super Fair on Saturday. I apologize for not having photos. I'm horrible about taking my camera places. I'll be upgrading my phone in the next month or so to a model with a very nice camera. Then I'll have no excuses. Today's county fair is way bigger than it was back in my days as a 4-H'er. For the most part that's a good thing. There was no midway when I was a kid, for example. Nor were there concerts or racing pigs or large model railroad displays. Indeed, relative to the Lancaster County Fair of twenty years ago, this fair is pretty impressive. We were pretty disappointed with this year's midway. It has been advertised as having "More rides. More games. More excitement in 2011!" Yet if I'm not mistaken the midway takes up significantly less space than last year's midway. In fact, several weeks back Gateway had a midway of sorts in its parking lot during Lemon Days and it was only marginally smaller than this year's fair midway. Yet demand for rides seemed reasonable as there was a huge, 70 yard long line at the one and only ticket booth on Saturday night. Having only one ticket booth was a tremendous blunder. Our group of twelve took one look at the line and headed for our cars. Entrance to this year's fair costs $2.00, representing the first time there's ever been an entrance fee for the county fair. (Entrance is free if you've grabbed tickets from Casey's or Russ's. We had free tickets.) Considering the new fee we assumed there would be many new features this year. If there were, we missed them. The 4-H exhibits were the same; the vendor exhibition hall was the same; the outdoor activities were about the same. I think there might be more bands playing this year, but that's not something that benefits our family very much. In the end, as it pertains to our family's situation the new $2 entrance fee (had we paid it) only got us a smaller midway. Meh. If it sounds like I'm picking on the fair pretty hard, well, I am and I'm not. We still had fun as we do every year. My beef is that the whole "Super Fair" designation is a misnomer right now. It's a very arrogant title and one that requires a lot of oomph to back up. Right now the product just don't match the claims. Perhaps it'll get there some day. On a side note, the fair's website is horrid. It's ugly, it's disorganized, and the content is often inaccurate. (Honest admission: this website sucks too. Cobbler's kids, shoes, etc.) Here's an example: what time do Bush Hawg and Gallagher perform? I don't know what they paid for that website, but it was too much. If anybody involved with the fair wants to talk about the website and how to make it awesome for next year, give me a call.

Comments

See what your friends and neighbors have to say about this.

George
August 8, 2011 at 2:26PM

I have to agree with your assessment.  On their tv commercial they show a midway with a Ferris wheel 4 times.  4 times they advertised “We have a Ferris Wheel!”  How many ferris wheels were there at the “Super” fair?  None.

We remarked about the 1 ticket booth as well.  We bought 20 tickets and barely could find a way to use them all.  $20 for an armband was kind of silly.

I will say that we really enjoyed the 4H animals.  They advertised a Flea Market, but couldn’t find it.  We got our funnel cake and had a really nice guy drive us up to the front of the building in his golf cart.

But it’s no “super” fair.  It was actually kind of underwhelming.

Mr. Wilson
August 10, 2011 at 7:38PM

Hilariously, they actually closed the midway yesterday evening to move those in. That means folks who went last night were in even worse shape than we were—they didn’t get any midway at all!

I would love to know the story behind all this. Would’ve been nice for the LJS to actually report on that.

Share your thoughts with the community.

Commenting is no longer permitted on this post.