Cumberland County Fair — Local services in Fayetteville

My son and I went to the fair this evening thinking it was going to be the same fair that I went to as a kid… WRONG.

Was told yesterday when I called yesterday the lady said that tonight it would be military, all veterans and first responders for in free. Get up to the counter and it’s only retirees… and then the kids price stated when I called was $5 for kids.. well my son got charged for an adult because it’s 3 years old and under.

As we walk in the very weirdly designed layout of the inside portion of the fair… I’m greeted by a lady from the Democratic Party of Cumberland county harassing me if I was registered to vote…and then the petting animals had hay bales as a barrier so you could only get within about 5 feet of the gate and couldn’t touch them. We continue to walk towards the outside and we are absolutely HARASSED by door to door salesman from every single display booth.. from gutters, to T-shirts, anything.

We finally make it outside.. the fair was absolutely DEAD on a Friday night. The carnival employees on EVERY RIDE were either sleeping or on their cell phones. When I was a kid a big part of the rides was the interaction between the guests and the carnival employees.

I will say the actual carnival games were GREAT! And reasonably priced. That is the only good part in this.

I also expected the food to be outrageously priced because it’s fair food but… my son got a cheeseburger that was dryer than a Popeyes biscuit and I got a cheesesteak and we SHARED a French fry and got two drinks… $44!!!!!! And the people were VERY rude and didn’t seem the least bit happy that we were giving them business!! (They were set up parallel with the Ferris wheel, the first food venue as you turn right towards the game isle)

Lastly my son wanted to do the Ferris Wheel… well for about a 2 minute ride it was $15.00!!

Lastly the fair was extremely small from what I’m used to and the venue was DIRTY… trash EVERYWHERE. I absolutely will not be back any more upcoming years at the fair. This experience...

My family and I had a great time. I will say this is the best fair we've been to in Cumberland County since we've lived here. The company they chose to go with is fantastic. The only issue I encountered was the lack of accommodation for small children, babies, their caregivers and nursing mothers. As we all know, it's pretty hot outside still and it would have been nice to have a family type room in the building, or a mobile unit with A/C, that had changing stations and chairs for mothers and caregivers to feed their babies. I am not comfortable with nursing in public so my options were to go all the way back to my car, or to nurse in the restroom which is obviously far from ideal and really shouldn't still be an issue in 2021. If there was such an area as this, there was no signage or information indicating where it...

I read the reviews before heading out today. The negative reviews caused me to have a lower standard so I was pleasantly surprised. It seems like someone on staff at the fair may have read the reviews and improved on every one of the points. For example- there was a complaint about not having somewhere comfortable to breastfeed, and now there are locations prominently displayed for this. For another complaint of cords on the ground, I noticed there were rubber mats covering them, making it easy to roll over.. There was another complaint of high prices but the food was very reasonably priced given inflation. Surroundings were clean and the clean restrooms definitely justified the admission price. Don’t depend on google reviews too much to a make a decision. We had a...