Ottawa Farms — Attraction in Bloomingdale

Oh my where should I start? First off my review is for the strawberry festival. if anything else they do there is ran the same way as this event then avoid this place at all costs. first off, they charge you $5 a head admission - and that $5 gets you absolutely nothing. everything else inside this event costs more money. wait - even worse it costs "tickets!" meaning you can't even spend your own money you have to buy ticket booth from some random stand inside there. All the vendors looked to be ran by low life individuals. The food booths looked very dirty and no one was eating there which was enough of a sign to me to know to not even think about it. And, unless you want to spend $18 on a rack of ribs forget even considering it. We wanted to go and try the homemade strawberry ice cream. Walked up and asked for a scoop and they wouldn't give it to us because they only took - you guessed it - tickets! The feed station for the animals was not even animals that the family farm owned. They were abused animals that apparently are ran from some vendor that goes from fairground to fairground and starves these poor animals so they can charge an absorbent amount of money yes $8 for a dixie cup of food and then an additional $1 PER PERSON just to go into the place. There were fees (ticket based) for everything including the very unsafe looking slides, corn crib whatever the hell that is, a poorly maintained train, and that sort of thing. The guy (low life type described above and no relation to the family farm) giving camel rides had toddlers up on the camel and was playing on his phone the entire time he was walking the came around in a circle. Real safe for your toddlers folks! I can't believe (no wait I can) that this family lets this event happen in this way. Apparently money means more to them then their reputation and the quality of the event. We stayed for 20 minutes and realized what a nickel and dime - money grubbing - disgusting event this was and then left. Oh yeah - and they call it a strawberry festival right? But, nothing in the event had anything to do with strawberries! It was just gross food, annoying vendors trying to peddle chinese-made knives and other junk, and sickly looking animals that you have to pay extra to feed. Won't be back EVER again. I was most upset about my two girls who had talked about picking strawberries all week long. Well let me tell you I took a look in the fields and there were no strawberries to be seen that were even close to be ready for picking. Wow I could go on and on about how disgusted I was with this place. But, I just want to finish with one statement Anyone thinking about going to this place - don't make the same...

I was super excited to bring my mom to this place, overall we enjoyed the corn maze and thought it was worth the money. However, that was the ONLY thing enjoyable about this experience. We got there right as they opened and found a parking spot right in front next to the ticket booth. I was waiting outside the car for my mom to get herself together, when an older woman asked us if we were handicapped. We replied no then she proceeded to tell us we were in handicap parking and we had to move. There were NO signs saying anything about that, but we just moved the car. When we get up to buy tickets they tell us they do not accept cards. It did not say anywhere on their website that they only accepted cash, so they directed us to the general store where they had an ATM. We get to the general store and the ATM isn’t working. Someone had to ring us up at the counter but Their card machine wasn’t working. They had to try a second card machine and couldn’t get that one to work either. After 15 minutes it finally was a success, but we didn’t receive a wristband. We just let it go and headed onto the tractor to go to the corn maze. The tractor driver I guess went the wrong way or parked poorly because when we got out we walked to a guy who was giving out maps to the corn maze at a little booth. He proceeds to say, “that’s what we get for hiring democrats”. At this point we were just in shock. I don’t care what your views are, but I do not need to hear them being spewed in a public family farm environment. Definitely will NOT be coming back and was extremely disappointed with the staff and overall treatment...

I went to the Strawberry festival for the second year in a row with my family and we were a little disappointed this year. The strawberry fields hardly had any red strawberries to pick, after looking around for a good ten minutes, we brought back the empty basket and decided to do other activities.

Getting onsite is a tad expensive, it'll cost 5$ per head (my kids were free ages 4 & 5months) but paying an entrance fee doesn't really get you anything. Once you get in, you still need to pay for absolutely everything. You also need to purchase tickets for activities and some of the activities aren't worth the amount of tickets that are asked. Some of the activity operators would tell us 3-4 tickets for the activity or 5$....the tickets are worth a dollar, so essentially it would be more expensive to pay cash. Also don't buy too many tickets because they won't buy them back afterwards.

The mini train for kids however, is amazing! It's my sons favorite and he also enjoyed the giant slide. The little piglets were fun to see, we enjoyed the music and the strawberry ice cream is absolutely delicious!! Overall, check it out. We had a fun family afternoon outside and spent a few hours here despite the...