Ren Faire 2019

During the football game at Ridley last night, Grace texted me to say that some of her friends were going to the Renaissance Faire out toward Harrisburg the next day (today), and did I want to go? Being the needed mode of transportation, I said sure. Julia was interested in going as well, but Amp was busy with costumes for the play, so the three of us decided to drive out and meet up with her friends (and the parents that were taking the other group).

We had been to the Ren Faire once, quite a long time ago, but when I went through old blog entries to find exactly when that was, I was surprised. Turns out it was mid-September 2010. Grace would have been 6 and Julia would have been 12. Wow. We enjoyed it and had discussed going back at some point, but for whatever reason it never bubbled up to the "let's go" stage. But now it had.

It was much as I remembered it. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure if much of anything changed at all in 9 years. Ridiculous traffic getting off the Turnpike exit and to the venue, but efficient people keeping cars moving and into the fields that you park on. Lots of people in costume. "Period" merchandise to buy at generally steep prices. A wide variety of food options, none of them healthy. All sorts of venues of all different sizes for performers of all kinds.

We found the other group quickly, and spent some time as a larger group of a dozen or so before Grace and her friends wandered off, leaving me and Julia with the other parents. Which was fine. We watched several street performers before settling in to watch Circus Stella, a husband and wife team doing a circus acrobatics show. They were entertaining, and ended their show with some trained dogs doing tricks, which is always fun.

Circus Stella

We did some more wandering and some eating, and then settled in to watch Aaron Bonk do whip tricks and juggle swords and other sharp objects, adding fire for more fun. This was probably the most enjoyable part of the day, as he was extremely talented (holding several Guiness Book of World Records titles) and very funny. It drizzled a bit during this show, but that was the only tiny blemish on  an otherwise fun 4 or 5 hours.

Aaron Bonk - Whips, Fire and Swords

Grace had an interesting lunch: a Meat Sundae. This looked like an ice cream cone, but was made up of some sort of pastry/bread/roll cone, filled with a few tater tots on the bottom, then some sliced beef with gravy, then a scoop of mashed potatoes on the top. She pronounced it good.

Grace with a Meat Sundae

For comparison to the 15 year old Grace shown above, I found a picture of the 6 year old Grace from our last Ren Faire trip. It seems like just yesterday and at the same time a million years ago. Weird...

Grace at Ren Faire 2010 - Age 6

Julia had a good time with me and Grace had a good teenager time mostly without me. Hanging out with the other parents was fun, and we all agreed we should try to remember to go back again next year. With Mom next time...

Ren Faire - Part 4, To the Death!!!

Showing up at 6pm to a packed house, we were treated to quite a show. The good guys and the bad guys, seeing as how this was a battle "TO THE DEATH!", came prepared in full gear. Armor, shields, helmets and caparisoned horses. This is what made me want to paint these guys for my medieval armies - when I paint knights, this is the kind of look I am going for.

The good guys in full battle attire. To be picky, this was supposed to be the renaissance but the armor and especially the helmets were more late 13th through 14th century types, but I would have to be an awful geek to point that out. Right? So I won't point it out.


...and the bad guys. Frankly, the bad guys looked better, but we were still sitting on the "root for the good guys" side. The elder of the two good guys even tried to pick Grace out of the front row to bestow a favor on him during the preliminaries, but Grace got shy. [Bummer, because the "favor" she would have been given was almost identical to the real flower wreath on her head in a prior post. (Why accept something for free when you can make dad buy one for $20 an hour later).]


After a bunch of verbal jousting and hurling of insults, the knights got down to business. It was unbelievably cool to watch these horses charge back and forth at each other at a near-gallop. They had stage prop lances which shattered in a million pieces when the struck an opponent's shield. For the big battle "TO THE DEATH!" we actually had the Queen of England in attendance, which would be important later...

Once all the lances had been turned into kindling, the knights conveniently knocked each other off their horses and continued the battle on foot with swords and flails. The bad guys continued to cheat, throwing sand in the eyes of the good guys and using other such dastardly tricks. Good guy on left, bad guy on right.

When the bad guys (who had been pretending to be Scottish in honor of Scottish weekend) had the good guys seemingly on the ropes, they revealed that they were actually working for the King of Spain and charged the Queen's grandstand along with a bunch of yellow and red clad foot soldiers who had snuck up through the audience. There were explosions and smoke at this point, which freaked out Julia and had her bolting for the exit. So I saw, or half-saw, the final bit while chasing a 12-year old up the aisle.

The good guys rallied, just about everyone died, and the battle came to its gory conclusion when the elder good guy cut the throat of the main bad guy, shooting spurts of blood all over the place. Grace wasn't crazy about the big finale, and I have to admit the violent little scene and overly huge gout of blood was more than I was expecting. I thought it was fine but wish I knew what the kids were about to see.

By the time the battle was over it was near 7pm, and the kids were tired. We had about and hour and a half ride to get home, so we packed up and headed out.

It was a really nice day. We saw several good little shows, a fantastic joust production, loads of nice costumes, and had some good food and drink. The weather was perfect; the temperature was great for wandering around without being too hot or too cool. The costume part isn't really my thing, but I understand and appreciate it. I am positive that there are people that have the Season Pass and come here a lot, dressed in various costumes and hanging out with their like-minded friends. More power to them, as they collectively create the flavor of the whole spectacle. I would imagine that only a fraction of the people in costume are actually employed by the Ren Faire, and without all the others it certainly would not be the same experience for people like me and my family who just want to go and gawk at the sights. There was more to do than we were able to in a 6 or 7 hour period, so I would not be averse to going again at some point and trying to do some of the other things we missed. And I positively wouldn't mind seeing the joust again.

Ren Faire - Part 3, The Joust

The centerpiece event of the whole place was the Joust. At several times throughout the day, a pair of "good guys" and a pair of "bad guys" would have a preliminary joust where they would take turns charging at rings hanging on hooks, rings being tossed into the air, and other feats of skill.

Here we have the good guys. We sat on the "good guys" side and were a part of their designated rooting section. The good guys behaved honorably (not shocking).

I have to admit really getting a kick out of these guys in their period outfits, riding beautiful horses. I think I am going to paint a knight in each of these four color schemes just for fun. I also think I am developing a bit of a horse thing... horses are cool!

On the other side, we had the bad guys. Sir Thomas and Sir Malcolm if I remember correctly (although I am actually writing this in mid-October...so I probably don't). The bad guys, predictably enough, cheated every time the good guys weren't looking, much to the enjoyment of their rooting section.

The pageantry of the jousting ring was quite impressive, with a "queen's grandstand" in the back serving as a wonderful backdrop to the whole thing.

At one point towards the end of the prelimaries, one of the bad guys insults the honor of one of the good guys, challenges are issued, and the crowd is told to come back at 6pm for a joust "TO THE DEATH!" They really liked screaming that part over and over again.

Ren Faire - Part 2

Of the many little shows that we saw throughout the afternoon, Paolo Garbanzo, world renowned (?!) juggler, was probably my favorite. The show only lasted about 20 minutes, which seemed to be typical of many of the shows, and was a nice mix of fire juggling with audience participation (which the kids loved) and ribald humor (which went way over the heads but I thought was funny). He was a very talented juggler, and was very funny as well.

Isaac Fawlkes, magician, as another nice act. He did the usual assortment of making things appear and disappear, but some of his tricks were pretty slick, and once again the kids loved it.

Here are me and the girls having successfully made our way through the maze, and watching from the balcony as others stumble around lost. Being six feet tall helped in places or we might have gotten stuck more than we did.

As it was Scottish weekend, they were taking volunteers from the crowd for caber tossing, the wikipedia entry for which can be found here. This was fun to watch (for a short period of time), and consisted of men flipping pieces of telephone pole around the jousting ring. It looked intriguing trying to get it to flip just right, but as I watched all I could think was "bulging disc"and "hernia." No guts, no glory (or...since I didn't want to see my own guts, I wasn't going for the glory).

There was also of course lots of music...

...and fancy things for Grace, my fancy girl.

Up next...the Joust!

Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire - Part 1

We had a Saturday free to do something together as a family, and while Amp was looking around for somewhere to go or something to do, she stumbled upon the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire. The Ren Faire is located on the grounds of Mount Hope Winery (or vice versa, I'm not quite sure which). It is open weekends for much of the year, and is located out between Lancaster and Hershey, just off the Turnpike. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, and honestly had visions of a total freak show dancing in my head. But I figured it would be worth a visit, and I thought the kids would like the pageantry of it, so off we went.

My first impression on arriving in the parking lot and walking into the place (after a fairly steep admission) was... "wow, this is big." I didn't really have a strong preconceived notion in mind, but was surprised at the size and sophistication of it. It was the size of a little town, with buildings, outdoor stages, pavilions and a full sized jousting stadium. Much more on the jousting later...

There was undoubtedly a touch of Freak Show to the proceedings, but I realize that is being very narrow minded and unkind. I am sure that most people would consider my hobbies odd as well. To an outsider, my two primary hobbies at this point are using an expensive GPS to track down tupperware in the woods, and painting and fighting battles with little metal toy soldiers. So I suppose in that sense, the Ren Faire is perfectly normal.

It is certainly not every day that you get to living statues and mermaids side by side with people dressed as medieval peasants, wizards and fairies. And vikings and crusaders. Knights and damsels. Rogues and serving wenches. And pirates, of course. A lot of people spend a lot of money on costumes and period paraphenalia, but once again, what I spend my money on would seem odd to most others.

It was a beautiful late summer day, and the place was packed. In addition to lots and lots of ways to spend money on every imaginable kind of food, beverage and souvenir, there were little street shows and larger productions going on all around us all the time. There really was a lot to do: details to follow in the next post.