Tennessee Valley Fair — Attraction in Knoxville

Don't bother coming if it's the last day. I have fond childhood memories of coming here in the past, and after years away wanted to recreate some of them. Arriving about 5:00 P.M. on the last Sunday, everything was already in various stages of being torn down. The animal barns were half empty and people were already towing away their tractors from tractor hill.

We forked over the $35 a person for ride wristbands (I remember the days they were $20!) and tried to get some rides in. The new carnival operation company has implemented a skip-the-line system that has wreaked havoc on operations. The entire midway turned into one giant mess of queue lines. Maybe I'm spoiled on actual theme parks like Carowinds and Dollywood, but the ride operators here have no regard for safety. They don't physically check restraints at all before sending riders on their merry way. The rides we managed to get on were fun, but I worried constantly about how safe they were. Food was stupidly overpriced; I tried some fries and they were rubbery and positively dripping in grease with no flavor whatsoever.

We wasted over twenty minutes in line waiting for one of the larger rides, only for the employee to shut it down and disappear without saying a word to the crowd of people in the queue. We all stood around confused, as it was still 40 minutes until closing. Turns out he just decided he was done for the night. The midway hours were posted to close at midnight, but almost everything was shut down by 11:30 P.M., and some attractions were even being deconstructed as we walked around look for something to ride. Forklift trucks and heavy equipment descended on the area as throngs of confused fairgoers started making their way to the parking areas. This entire situation felt very chaotic and dangerous, and I will never be back to the Tennessee Valley Fair if they keep Kissell Entertainment as the...

Worst experience ever! Got there early to beat the heat! It was Seniors Day & we are soooo happy it was free that day! No food venders we’re open w/exception of 1 BBQ vender & 3 Funnel cake venders! We got there at10:00 am when it was supposed to be open! 99 percent of the food venders were closed most venders had food laying out with plastic over it, so we avoided the food services all together! Only thing we could get were Funnel cakes & they are ridiculously high priced for fried dough & powdered sugar! $10.00 is way to much for what you get! Plus it was dripping with grease & the dough was barely cooked! We had a difficult time walking around because I use a wheel chair & the electric cables were covered by some sort of rubber bumps which made things worse to get around safely! We thought for sure the venders would be open soon but we’re we ever disappointed! Not even the rides were open & we left at 12:30pm! It was full of nasty children & parents! They thought they could just walk over me in a wheel chair even though we were as close to the edge of the road as we could, these people wanted us to move for them, while all the time the parents laughed! We have been to this fair before & it was never ever like this! The few hours that we were there a loud man hawking Covid vaccine shots in a huge tent! It’s a fair for heaven sakes not to listen to some snake oil product! No sign of a nurse or a doctor to give these injections! We won’t...

Beware of the game tent that has you to throw the ring to hit the glass bottle! My husband and the game attendants watched me win and hit the bottle with the ring out of the $10 bucket. The old white skinny male attendant wearing the baseball hat saw that I won and instead of giving me a prize he took the ring off the bottle and brought it to another attendant who my husband watched break the ring and then came to me and said “sorry it’s part of the game.” The attendant tried to lie and say I threw a cracked ring after he literally broke it right where my husband could see him do it. They refused to give me the prize and instead wanted us to keep playing to give them more money.

The second game we played was shoot a duck and win a prize. My husband payed $20 to play and successfully shot the duck! The attendant told him before he payed that if he shot the duck he could get the Elmo doll for our toddler son as a prize. Once my husband won he instead gave him a grimlin toy despite my husband asking several times for the Elmo.

We are an interracial family so maybe these game attendants are hateful toward certain groups of people or are bitter. Unfortunately the law enforcement is there to protect the scammers in the tents rather than the actual people who are spending their money!!

We definitely won’t be coming back and getting scammed/wasting our money at the TN Valley Fair. It’s no fun at all and it’s set up that...