Anyone else disappointed after going to the 2023 Bay Area Renaissance Festival?

Yeah its like a themed flea market with a few buskers as well as some carnies taking advantage to set up rides. We've been to two dozen of these throughout the country and this one is near the bottom though not the worst. Some shows were good but man before we left the website really set us up for a fall.

Exclusive seating and brunch for the joust?? Sounds awesome maybe we'll get that next time... except when we got there we found out it was a regular picnic table with a sign taped to it... you know... so that the people watching the joust right next to it who paid nothing don't accidentally sit at it and eat your white grapes and Colby jack cubes.

Pub crawl?? Man that sounded good too... until we get there and the "pubs" are beer tents. I'm guessing they just give you 3 coupons when you scan at the entrance, but hey, maybe they hired a tweak to walk you to each of them! At that point it doesn't matter. I'll give 5 bucks for hired escort to the dude who showed up with full armor and weapon made entirely out of Yuengling boxes. He nailed Florida and Pennsylvania at the same time, lol

Hair braiding! Ah I was hoping this would be here for my daughters! Oh... except her waiting list is a pen and steno pad where she just kind of guesses when you should come back, give or take an hour, and if someone behind you is there, and you're not, she warns you she'll take them so .. we ended up spending an hour doing nothing with my family sitting on a plastic mushroom. She did a good job at least.

The "leprechaun" magician was, well, I hope he was a kids magician because not a single trick he did costs more than 18 dollars on Amazon. Also before his final trick, which was the same as the other tricks, he takes his hat off and drops his "leprechaun" accent, and tells the kids up front he's from Alabama. Then he goes into a huge semipolitical and sort of anti-mask covid rant for easily 15 minutes, long enough for my kids to surrender and just start playing in the dirt with sticks. Then he finally does his big finish and... it's just one more trick and he totally got us all to sit there like that and listen to his shit.

/r/tampa Thread