The Kansas City Renaissance Festival — Attraction in Bonner Springs

I really love that this brings so many small businesses together. I love all the costumes and positive attitudes of the performers, business owners, and other workers.

The owners need to invest a little back into this place. There's so much more that could be done to increase profits of the Festival for the Renaissance Festival owners and the business owners, as well as make it so the Festival is more enjoyable for the guests.

Let's start with the pathways being gentler and more even, but still full of the nature we love about them. This will keep people there longer as I know tons of people who leave early because their feet hurt. Clovers 🍀, succulents 🌱 that are for pathways, and more flowerbeds would be easy to put in and require little to no extra maintenance because they actually improve the soil and make the pathways cushioned and more beautiful 🥰.

The buildings need to be updated/fixed. If you do this right you can create Air BNB's on the tops of all the shops on theme and rent them out. This could bring in extra revenue all year round due to the Ampitheatre being right there and people could stay there for concerts. You could then hire a decent Management company for this to regulate upkeep and scheduling.

There's also a really pretty archway that if you were to plant crawling roses and wild strawberries they would crawl up them and create such a beautiful space for photos as there's some beautiful pillars there already.

These changes would also bring in people from a wealthier class of society. Part of the issue now is that it is gross, dirty, uncomfortable and lacking modern amenities. Having everything be cash is alright. I would just advertise it more. Also advertising the Festival in more far reaching ways could be really beneficial. Strategy is a great marketing company with a very wonderful goal and philosophy. No, I don't work there.

You want to create an atmosphere of a green house. Honestly, long term creating a giant greenhouse that is temperature controlled means you could have a beautiful green, bright, space to the outside that is nice all year round. If you use solar panel glass panes it would absorb the energy and then you could use that for the buildings (bathrooms!!).

Hire a professional cleaning company on contract.

Yes, this means admission prices should go up. We can continue the cans deal and also have special half price deals throughout the year to help continue to make this available to everyone.

The exhibits and experiences I have so many ideas for. This is already longer than I meant it to be. I would just really love to see this place create such a positive environment. It could not only be the ❤️ of KC, but also the ❤️ of the US. Especially since Kansas is so centralized. Once the airport gets finished (I believe that is in 2024) it will be more accessible and cheaper to fly here and you could bring in people from all over the world for this one of a kind experience!

Good Luck and Best Wishes!

Katie Usiak Entrepreneur...

After years of wanting to go to a Renaissance Festival. Y family started attending the KCRF about 15 years ago. It was great to step back in time and immerse in something similar to the culture of medieval/Renaissance Europe. (The occasional Dr Who and Star Trek crews time travelers were whimsical but not distracting) there was a lot of friendly staff that were dressed and acted correctly for the era and interacted well with patrons, gently correcting miss information and giving good accurate information about the era and the activities of the day. Most of the vendors sold hand crafted items that could be appropriate for the Renaissance era. We quickly got to the point where we were attending most Saturdays and had period appropriate costumes and we revelled in the experience. Well, our society has changed alot in the last 15 years. The KCRF seems to now just be a place for those who's attitudes, costumes, and life choices are not period (or family) appropriate they seem to just come so they can flaunt themselves (this is ironic because most of what I saw at the KCRF recently would have be meet with the tossing of rotten fruit and throwing of stones in medieval times). Then there are the masses of people who come with the main purpose of getting smash drunk. There was very little staff and even the ticket takers at the gates did not interact with us. As a matter of fact, no staff interacted with us at all while we were there. Lines for alcohol where extremely long, and the wait for shows was ridiculous. Almost none of the many craft vendors we used to patronize were there and 90% of the "crafts" for sale were mass produced junk, that was NOT era appropriate. We've also attended the Nashville Renaissance Festival, that is managed by the county's Parks and Rec dept so there is no alcohol. It is much more family friendly and more time period appropriate with more staff interaction and activities for patrons, the waits for things (other than food) are not ridiculous, but it still has its share of people with attitudes and costumes that are not period...

We've been going to the KC ren fest for YEARS. (Since the nineties). Each fall, I take my kids. We decided this year was the very last. Many factors helped me reach this decision. The main one being: there are not enough food & drink vendors to accommodate the large crowds. They doubled the parking this year, but they used the same amount of vendors. Lines were over an hour for a bottle of water. All of the soda & water was hot, nothing kept on ice. The only thing cold was alcohol. You can't get food, the lines were outrageous. I know that there are tens of thousands of dollars of uncaptured revenue due to the shoddy planning by their food & beverage team. All of the food & drink vendors are located on the east side of the fairgrounds. They need to have small pop up areas selling drinks to help keep the patrons safe during high temperatures. We saw several people being taken out by medics due to overheating. All of this could be avoided with proper event planning. If they were to somehow cap how many people could come in the gate, you could mitigate the crowd better. It was not an enjoyable experience, and I'm sad to say there were hundreds of people leaving upset about the same issues. I recommend a complete overhaul of the food & bev team, additional stalls to be built, IT on grounds to help fix the credit card machines when they go offline (happened three times while we were in line, staff had nobody to assist,), additional vendors added to the western part of the grounds. Also, at each food booth there should be one person taking orders & processing payments, and a separate person handing out food. The lines took forever because the booths were horribly understaffed. If the venue cannot find help, they need to rethink their event structure. The ren fest is going to see declining numbers unless these issues are addressed. We will miss the festival, but will be happy to take our $$$ to an event that can properly host for the size of crowds...