Washington State Fair — Attraction in Puyallup

We decided to check it out because our students were given a free admission ticket at school.

Parking: Was absurd! Gouging prices from $20 to $60. I was ready to skip it and just drive the hour back home when we found a spot for $20, and the couple (who's lawn we parked on) was really nice.

We paid weekend prices: $20/adult; our party consisted of 2 adults and 2 kids (the kids' admission complementary)... buying tickets online only saves $1, and you'd still have to print it or show the admission barcode from your phone... or you can pay $4 more dollars than the price at the gate ($5 will call fee) to buy them online and have them at will call, so we just bought our tickets at the gate.

Admission: Grants you the pleasure of standing in more lines after standing in line to get in and feeling like you are trapped in herds of people if you try to walk through the fair grounds. My kids were so exhausted trying to get through people that they became disinterested in looking at any of the "free" exhibits when we finally reached any of them.

Tickets: The number of tickets sold and posted ticket prices seem to be intentionally weird to encourage the purchase of more tickets... example, the ferris wheel, like many of the other rides around it, cost 13 tickets per rider with no single/individual riders allowed; if you have 4 in your party, that is 52 tickets, the minimum number of tickets that we were able to buy without having the privilege of waiting in another line to buy tickets was the 60 ticket bundle for $36 ($0.60 per ticket, $7.80 per person per ride for any of the 13 ticket rides). The ferris wheel was the primary thing my kids said they wanted to do, so we did. We walked around to see if there was anything we could use our remaining 8 tickets on, and we found the minimum of 9 tickets at one of the prize games (1 dart = 9 tickets). The minimum for any of the other ride features 10 tickets for a toddler size child to ride and 11 tickets for rides that matched our family's height (we did not see anything for the kids, that they wanted to try, and could without accompaniment; meaning all 4 of us would have to ride, and we would have to purchase another "batch" of tickets to do so).

Food: Signs posted around for meals: a burger, fries, and a drink were over $17 (in my head, I rounded up to $18x4). Roughly $70 seemed too high for something I could make myself for way less and without allergen risks (additional note, the per meal cost at this rate is more than the "Ultimate Fair Experience Package" covers, topping at $60 for 4 people)... still stuck on the something I could make myself point; for less than $45, I could make bacon cheese burgers with "all the fixin's," fries, drinks, and another fair-like side like corn on the cob for 4 people.

So... we spent $96 for the four of us to ride the ferris wheel for a minute (a generously long time estimate).

I will not say it was a complete waste of time. We have gained the knowledge of 'What this experience can offer us' by having gone. The price for the amount of fun we were able to have was not a good value.

We will not be doing...

August 29, 2025 The Puyallup Fair is now dead to me. For the last 47 years, less the covid year, we have attended the Puyallup Fair. It has grown and grown and become more commercial and less fair/farm/animal related each year. But this year, there was a HUGE change. Hamburger Myers, the best Onion Burger at the Fair, who has been at the Fair since 1922, was gone. That was the first stop for at least the last 40 years I have been attending. I headed straight there when we arrived this morning. It was gone. Hmm, maybe it moved. Nope. It is gone. My heart actually raced. The signage is gone, replaced with some other vendor. I checked the Fair website. Not there except supposedly for the Spring Fair, but that may be from this last year. Don't know if they will be back next Spring or not. I will check before I decide to go. My 2 or 3 extra side trips the wife didn't know about each year....... done. Now there are other burger stands at the fair I have been to so as disappointed as I was, I headed to Sales Burgers. A cheeseburger (not a double, just a single) basket, you know, with fries and a drink.... $25.36. And a Krusty Pup for $10.... a friggin corn dog? Nope. Not gonna do that. Earthquake? Nah, not really a fan. We were able to find the one remaining Cow Chip Cookies stand and bought those. Then we headed for some scones. Those are also good but their mobile truck is available year around in different areas so they aren't that special anymore. $30 for a Bakers Dozen. We wandered half way through the exhibits and it was CRAP. Rows of plastic fake jewelry shit, a beauty supply vendor, spas, massage chairs, beds, and flagpoles. The same old shit with new, even worse shit to fill the voids. Vendors hawking drawings for their product that nobody wants in the first place. And sheds. The big thing this year is pre-built fancy sheds. Absolutely nothing of interest. No chainsaw carvings. No Kubota tractors to ogle at. An hour and a half of wandering and nothing worth a shit. Gone are my days of getting there at 11am when the gates opened and staying until they closed at midnight, all the while eating / grazing from one spot to the next. Now if you only want to go for the rides, that may be different. But that isn't my cup of tea. The Puyallup Fair is dead. Sure it has gotten bigger and newer and shinier. The old barns torn down for shiny, sterile, buildings that house the plastic shit for sale. It is no longer worth attending. The "soul" of the Fair has died, replaced with CRAP. The old, "You can do it at a trot, you can do it at a gallop, you can do it real slow so your heart won't palpitate, just don't be late, do the Puyallup".... Gone, Dead. I...

We went on a Saturday – the second to last day of the fair, so it was incredibly busy. There were lines to everything. There were lines to the bathroom. There were lines to the ticket booth. There were lines to the food vendors, and the lines to the rides were about half an hour at least (even the kid rides). I got some great photos of the Ferris/gondola wheel while we waited in an hour-long line for it. The lines were really confusing. There weren’t cordoned-off areas for people to line up, so lines just kind of went off into the distance and twisted around in some random fashion – blocking foot traffic. I should think that especially during the time of Covid, you should probably have your line set up so that people know where they're supposed to go. There was one time that we stood in a line for 15 minutes only to find out that it was for some Slushie vendor, and not the Haunted Mansion. We had to start at the ride that we wanted to go on, and then try and trace the line back and find the end, but even that was difficult & the lines were so long.

For some reason they weren’t allowing the bracelets for ride passes on that day. We were forced to buy tickets for everything, and so I ended up spending about $130 for tickets for one child and myself to ride rides for that day.

There were several beer gardens, although I didn’t visit any of them. There wasn’t puke everywhere, as a matter of fact I can’t remember seeing any puke at all – major plus! When we went to a county fair in August there was a lot of puke just… around.

I liked the item vendors that they had, but I would have wanted to see more trinket shops in general. The little kid games were cool. There were a couple where you could win a prize no matter what, and we got a pretty big prize from one of those! A few of them also allowed you to trade in your smaller prizes for a bigger prize, which was cool.

Overall it was a good experience, and we will probably be back next year, but it was so crowded that it was difficult to even see the whole fairgrounds. It took a long time to cut through the random lines and people, especially with a stroller and little kiddos. The food was also good, and it wasn't ridiculously expensive. If there had been less lines for the food, I would have...