KING RICHARD'S FAIRE
(Posted 2010-10-25 16:20:42 by ArchPaladin)

My wife and I finally made it out to King Richard's Faire [
http://kingrichardsfaire.net/ ] [kingrichardsfaire.net] - something we have
wanted to do for the past two years, but was never able to schedule.  My
wife had previously been, but I myself had not gone.  I admit I wasn't
really sure what to expect.

Probably the best explanation that you could come up with is a cross
between a themed carnival and a bazaar.  From what I could see, the primary
things that one could do there was wander around and shop, or go to the
local performances being put on by the staff and other artisans.  Generally
speaking, you couldn't do the former in any great quantity unless you have
brought a lot of money (ie. most small items were around $40-50, and larger
items would cost $150 easily), and if you went to the latter you would find
varying quality of performances.  We saw a half of a theater performance
that was of dubious quality, and also a male quartet that was very good. 
So I guess your experience there could vary greatly depending on what suits
your fancy.

Notably, there were also other activities that you could participate in
(after paying), such as archery, or throwing knives and stars at wooden
targets.  We shot off a number of arrows, which was a lot of fun and has
encouraged us to pick up archery at some point in the future.

The vendors were very interesting - definitely not the kind of merchandise
that you are likely to find just anywhere.  A fair number of the vendors
were dedicated strictly to helping people get properly quipped for future
Renaissance fairs by selling the equipment needed to make your costume. 
Other places sold weapons (either for use or for theatrics), or custom
journals or leather bags, or oil lamps, or herbal compounds for use in
teas.  A lot of the things we saw are places that we would shop at normally
- I suppose this says something about our own tastes.

We did have one questionable experience with one of the merchants we came
across.  With a lack of a credit card verification thingy (whatever the
machine is called that you swipe your card in), he _walked off with my
wife's card_ over to another stall to swipe the card there.  Now, in
general this kind of thing happens at restaurants, but he did not give the
impression of being an honest merchant.  I walked away with some
suspicions, but nothing has happened yet so there's not much to be worried
over.

Overall I think it was a good experience.  If we go again we would need to
bring more money - it's not really an experience that you can just go and
only watch, but we knew about this in advance.  We also toyed with the idea
of trying to make a living by going from one fair to another with my wife
selling jewelry and myself filling herbal formulas and cupping and bleeding
patients.  I don't really think that will happen, but we haven't crunched
any numbers to find out if it would really be feasible.

Perhaps I'll work that into my business planning.

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