Los Angeles County Fair: One Family’s Experience

The last time I went to the Los Angeles County Fair, it was 1996 and I was a guest of the fair’s management company, attending with my coworkers. We worked for the company that administered the management’s executive benefits. It was a weekday, hot and sunny, and there was beer. I don’t remember much, but I do remember the milking machine that you stuck your thumb in to see what it felt like to be a cow’s udder. It was quite a heady experience for my 25-year-old self who had several years to go before learning how to breastfeed, which I tried to explain to people who have not done it, male people, as sticking your penis into a stapler, and then stapling it. (At least that is how it feels at first. And for some women, it keeps feeling like that, so they have no choice but to pump or give up altogether, and I do not blame them. That part sucks, pun intended.) But this post is not about breastfeeding! Or penises and staplers!

No, this is about how we took our young, antsy, and high-energy children to a county fair in the hot, hot sun. I was looking forward to it very much, the way you look forward to running a marathon (which I have never done, but for this post, let’s just assume I know what I’m talking about, okay?) in that you know it will be hard and that you will have to suffer greatly, but you will be proud of yourself if you go through with it, and you will have wonderful memories. In my experience, the more I worry and stress out and prepare for something, the better the whole thing goes. So. I worried and stressed out about it and researched the fair on its website and cleaned out the car to make room for two strollers and packed a cooler with drinks and sandwiches and lubed up the kids with sunscreen and brought changes of clothes for everybody (but only two diapers for Brady! WHAT?! Duh!) and made sure we had enough cash and our credit cards because I suspected (rightfully so) that we would be dropping a lot of money on this adventure.

Have I set the stage for you? Are you digging my manic energy and complete commitment to gifting my children with a wonderful day of memory-making and good clean fun? Yes? Okay.

I am happy to report that it all magically worked out very well. The secret was promising Kyle that he could have COTTON CANDY if he was a good boy. He didn’t know what COTTON CANDY was but when I talked about it, I used all caps for emphasis, and I described how it is made and that it tastes like, as his father calls it, Pure Yumminess. In the days leading up to our trip to the fair, I pulled out that promise of COTTON CANDY very many times. In fact, that very morning, he started having a meltdown and when I said he wasn’t been a very good boy, his little face crumpled and he started to wail “No COTTON CANDY now?” It actually broke my heart a little and I knew that short of a full-on revolt this kid would be getting some candy in the form of cotton at the end of the day.

Everything and everyone was ready and in the car by 9:30AM. It took us just over an hour to get out to Pomona, figure out where to park, and then park. Gas: $50. Parking: $10. Pay attention, this will rack up quickly.

We were so glad we brought both strollers because it was a long walk to the fair from the parking lot. Bicyclists dragging rickshaws were available and said they would take the whole family including the strollers but we opted to skip them and also the tram, which would have been useful if we were even farther away. We stopped at the portable toilets before going in – it was the beginning of the day and I snuck into a handicapped version because those are less claustrophobic and less likely to make me touch something yucky.

Our tickets were free thanks to the world of blogging but if we had paid for them they would have been $17 each = $34. Kids under 5 are free. As you walk through the gates (where they check your bag and confiscate any sealed drinks) you are assaulted by the sensory overload of a giant psychedelic carnival. I immediately spotted the perfect COTTON CANDY vendor for the end of the day and made a mental note to hit it on the way out. The information booth was staffed by friendly grandmotherly types who helped me figure out where to go.

Since “county fair” means “farm animals” to me, I directed my family to the Red Barn as our first stop. We had to pass by the huge carnival and a smaller kids’ carnival area and a lot of colorful distractions, including the Hot Dog on a Stick stand that Stewart, the biggest kid of all, could simply NOT pass up, so got him a corn dog and a lemonade ($6). We soldiered on with me wanting to get to the good stuff first and not get distracted by more money-sucking things that would surely come later. We finally made it to the Barn where the kids just loved the petting zoo and made the whole trip worth it just for these pictures:

There was a hand-washing station outside the petting zoo. I let Brady run around a little bit before strapping him back into the stroller, which he absolutely hated and let us all know it by flailing around and growling like the Tasmanian Devil at the top of his lungs. We got lots of sympathetic looks from other parents we passed and at one point I remarked to one mother “He was an exhibit. We stole him.” And I heard her laughing as we walked away.

We tried to get some good old-fashioned Texas BBQ (corn! turkey legs! pork!) but the line was way too long for me and my agenda which included watching the 1:00 parade, so after a few failed attempts to find shorter food lines we actually pulled up stakes and ventured out to the parade route. Serendipity provided us with a Pink’s Hot Dog stand right on “Broadway” which is where the parade was going to pass, so I ordered my very first Pink’s hot dog, something I would never do in Los Angeles where Pink’s actually exists because there is no parking and the line is always around the block. Three hot dogs, one order of fries, two large soft drinks and a bottle of water = $30. The famous hot dogs? Meh. Tasty and hit the spot, but definitely not something to circle the block for.

After lunch we walked around a miniature train exhibit. Kyle thought it was very cool, and he avoided falling into the miniature river; I cannot say the same about the 7-year-old boy in front of us, who tested and tested and tested the limits of his balance and his mother’s patience and he tripped and stumbled into the 6-inch-deep water, soaking his sneakers and socks. The mother, in a gesture of frustration recognizable to mothers of boys everywhere, went to yell at him but nothing came out of her mouth. She grabbed him by the arm and led him off. I was at once grateful that it wasn’t my kid and quite sure that someday it would be.

Rare evidence that I exist. Stewart carried the camera for once.

When we came out of the railroad, we didn’t have a plan, so we let the kids lead us. Usually that gets us into a lot of trouble but this was the fair! It’s a day for the kids! Plus, we were tired already. The first thing Kyle saw outside the railroad exhibit was this totally awesome water bumper car ride ($2.50):

As we waited in line we watched as a gaggle of men dressed like Elvis collected outside a tent. It turns out this tent was “backstage” at the Karaoke feature, which was having a special contest titled “Creme de la King.” Sadly, the show was not going to start for another 45 minutes, and there was no way we could wait around for it to begin, not while there were bridges out there for little boys to cross, over and over and over again:

Many of the pictures we took of Brady that day were of his back, because he was on the move. He spent most of his time strapped down in the stroller so we wouldn’t lose him, so when he was free he was not going to stand still.

Outside the Karaoke tent there was a stand selling special microphones that convert any DVD player into a karaoke machine. Stew and Kyle were looking at them and I marched over, took them out of their hands, and flatly declared that we were not going to buy this piece of crap that would surely break upon its first use. Believe it or not, Stewart practically begged me to buy it for the kids because he thought they would love it. I shelled out the $5 but demanded that the sales girl take one from a sealed box under her tarp because at the very least I wanted one that wasn’t out in the sun all day. Like it was a puppy or something. This morning when I was in the shower I heard the children’s voices as if they were reverberating from inside my head and at first I thought I was having a stroke or a psychic experience, but when I came out of the room I saw that Stewart had hooked up the Karaoke Microphone and the kids were yelling/singing/fighting into the mic and it was only 7:45AM. Later today we hooked it up to some music that Kyle knows and discovered that he can totally rock out. American Idol 2021, here we come.

Tickets for rides were purchased as a gift card with a scannable code and the least amount of tickets one could buy was 10 for $5. The Ferris wheel was 6 tickets per person, to give you an idea of how much rides were. Since we had some left over from the water bumper cars, we had Kyle go on one more ride, and we picked the bucking dune buggies at the suggestion of a mom from the line at the first ride.

I couldn’t hear him, but I could swear he was yelling “Yee-haw!”

Luckily there was a special indoor pavilion (blessedly out of the sun and with some fans running) filled with activities for little kids. Kyle and Brady both took their sweet time in the faux backyard playing with styrofoam blocks:

There were also little rooms with train tables and Legos and little plastic building thingies and kid-sized tables and chairs and arts & crafts and reading and etc and etc and etc! We could have spent the entire day in there. But by then the adults were melting, and we had used up both of Brady’s spare diapers. Sure, we could have purchased some from the fair’s amenities booth but who knows what that would have cost?

So, hauling out the COTTON CANDY concept one last time, we coaxed the children into their strollers and headed out of the fairgrounds. At the COTTON CANDY booth, I convinced the clerk to have the “chef” spin a new stick of COTTON CANDY for Kyle vs. just giving us a pre-made bag. Stewart held Kyle up to the window and he got to watch the giant fluff being formed in the machine. “Is that for me?!” he said with wonder.

It was $4.75. I got a soft-serve ice-cream cone, my favorite, which cost $4. That brings our grand total up to $98.75 (not including gas but including the hypothetical cost of tickets) which, if we were a family of four going to the movies, we might approach. For a full day of good times, that’s not so bad, I guess, but I can’t say I recommend such a pricey outing for families who are looking for low-cost activities.

For all the hype and preparation, though, this day was worth it. A few times, I asked Kyle was his favorite part of the fair was. The first time he said “the car spinny thing” and a little bit of digging revealed that he meant the water bumper cars. The second time he said COTTON CANDY. Everything is better with spun sugar.