Oh my, have I ever written a negative faire review before? I don’t think so, but here we go, Lords and Ladies.
The Massachusetts Renaissance Faire was not what we were looking for this year. I don’t know if it was the heat causing last minute cancellations or if the faire tried to book it’s acts and vendors too late, but there was a severe lack of…faire. Held at the spacious Cummington Fair Grounds, this annual festival has always been on the small side, sometimes feeling moreso when spread out over the large venue. But this year the lack of vendors, professional acts, and things to do was impossible to ignore.
At $20 a ticket, which is more expensive than other faires in the area, you’d hope to at least fine some consistent entertainment within. Well, to start the day their schedule didn’t seem to match what was happening on the four stages. Two stages, in fact, promised acts which never happened. Perhaps not many people noticed because those stages had no vendors around them and no activities to draw people towards them. Did the performers decided it wasn’t worth performing in 90 degree heat when no one was walking by the stage? Or were they sick and had to cancel last minute?
The heat was made more severe by the profound lack of food and drink. A faire should offer libations to it’s patrons, but they only had two generic carnival-style junk-food trucks. Not the usual unique and experience-driven fair food that’s typically present. There was one small ice-cream vendor but no additional drink or treat carts! The fair-run food stand didn’t open until after 12pm, at which point many patrons had already settled for hot onion rings on a hot day, and when they did open they were slow to keep up with the line that had formed. The drink (alcohol) stand was supposed to open at the same time, but we overheard staff talking about an issue with supplies sitting in a warehouse 45 minutes away. We don’t know if the alcohol stand ever opened….
Fortunately the hair-braider was there so Jake could get his hair done. That ate up a little bit of time but otherwise we were really lacking for things to do. Seeing all the vendors only took about 20 minutes. I think we spent a longer time in the parking-lot chatting with a disappointed father who had driven two hours and gotten a hotel with his daughter to enjoy a weekend at the faire, than we did on any one fair activity….
