Saturday, 07 May 2016

We made our biannual visit to the Georgia Renaissance Festival held in Fairburn, GA.  The festival opens on weekends mid-April and runs through early June each year.  (More information here.)  We always intend to go every year, but for some reason we only seem to make it every other year.  Our last visit was in 2014.

This time each of our kids wanted to bring a friend, so we had a big group of 8.  None of the friends had ever been to the Renaissance Festival before, so it was a fun first time for each of them.

Entering the park, you are greeted by these ugly ladies drumming up interest in their show.  They have truly awful hairstyles, blacked-out teeth, dirty clothes, etc.

The kids all scattered the minute we got inside the gate.  Adam and I ran into Josie and her friend Delaney just about five minutes later.  Delaney had already purchased a flower garland/headband and Josie was torn mightily between wanting to have one also, and wanting to save her money.

A little further in, we found a camel ride.  This is their first year offering camels and I was desperate to ride one (never having ridden a camel before, I figured I needed to take advantage of any chance that presented itself) so I talked Holden and his friend Jordan into riding with me.  They agreed, but only if I would pay the fee.

TOTALLY WORTH IT!!!!

The boys were trying really hard to be cool and nonchalant about the whole thing, but finally the sheer awesomeness of the experience couldn’t keep the smiles from breaking through.

The boys parted ways with us after the camel ride.  Adam and I headed over to The Peacock Tea Room located near the back of the park.  I think it’s the only sit-down restaurant in the park.  (If they have another one, we didn’t see it. There are a couple of beer halls but I’m not sure if they serve full meals or just bar snacks.  We didn’t go in.)

While we were waiting for our food, King Henry VIII showed up with his entourage and was seated nearby.  The entire waitstaff stayed in character and yelled “Huzzah!” whenever King Henry did anything, and he got served before anyone else.

It must be good to be the king.

The ugly wenches managed to attract a huge crowd.  Here is one of them leading a poor festival-goer to his embarrassing doom.  Nobody is safe at the festival!

The next time we ran into Josie and Delaney, Josie had caved in to temptation and purchased a flower garland for herself, and Delaney had added some latex elf ears.  These two were having a blast, but had run out of money.  Each group of kids had a phone and we got periodic calls to meet them at various locations whenever they ran out of cash.  At one point, Adam was handing out $20s to all 6 kids at the same time and a lady walking by stuck her hand out good-naturedly and said, “You’re handing out free money???”

Josie and Delaney deep in conversation about really important topics.

Stilt walkers.

Little kids learning how to work a traditional Maypole.

Holden and Jordan had my old, dying phone which did a terrible job.  Adam and I couldn’t get a call to go through from Adam’s phone and all our texts were coming back as undelivered, so Josie gave it a try from her phone.  No dice.  (Note the marshmallow and chocolate-on-a-stick treat.)

As a result, Holden and Jordan spent a good part of the day with empty pockets. They couldn’t find us to replenish their funds. (All of this money came from their own savings, we just acted as the ATM. They blew through quite a bit of their own money today.) Luckily there are plenty of free things to see and do. They weren’t bored, just hungry.

The wheel of torture and punishment, alongside the stocks.

King Henry doing a public appearance and taking questions from the peasants and commoners.

Visitors go all out with their costumes.

A rare Isabella and Dylan sighting (blue plaid shirts).  Those two disappeared into the park and we hardly saw them.

We did find Josie and Delaney again, this time having fun on the barrel ride.  It seemed like we ran into these two every time we turned around.

It tossed them around hard enough that Delaney’s elf ears started to come off.  Here she is sticking one of them back on (middle, blue shirt).

We arranged for all 6 kids to meet us at the jousting tournament at 2:30.  The day started out nice and cool, but by the afternoon it was boiling hot in the sun.  We’d seen the jousting exhibition in years past so we decided to stand up on the grass in the shade.

Dylan’s big splurge of the day was this Mad Hatter hat.

Once the jousting started, we realized they’ve dramatically changed the show and were doing all new stuff.  We ended up standing in the sun anyway, but it was well worth it … they put on a truly excellent and impressive show.

They began with an exhibition of horsemanship, doing circus-like stunts to display their athleticism, balance, strength, stamina, and precision control over the horses. Here they are balancing on two galloping horses, one foot on each horse.

Next was the joust, complete with real armor.  The two knights got into a fight after one accused the other of poor sportsmanship during the joust and it devolved into a sword fight on foot.  (Unfortunately we don’t have any photos of the joust.)

The green knight lost — he got mortally stabbed and was left scrabbling around in the dust.

While he was down, the black-and-silver knight went to retrieve his dagger from the chariot.  He then slit the green knight’s throat (complete with spurting blood packet) and the crowd went absolutely nuts.  It was such a fun show!  The rivalry between the warring knight factions was going to be settled once and for all — at the 5:30 p.m. joust.  Come back at 5:30 everyone!!  We had to leave since we’d promised all the kids’ friends’ parents we’d be back home by dinnertime.  Next year maybe we’ll build in time to stay for the last joust.  It was the best show at the entire event.

Even Deadpool showed up.

Holden did well enough in the strong man game to win a free axe throw.

The Insulting Jester getting tomatoes thrown at his face.

Along with the regular festival foods (hamburgers, ice cream bars, hot dogs, etc.) they also sell old-timey foods like fried mushrooms, spinach pie, and giant roasted turkey legs.

On our way out of the park. Isabella and Dylan way in front, Holden and Jordan in the middle (alongside me) and Josie and Delaney bringing up the rear.  I think we all had a really fun, special day.