Los Angeles County Fair

I was talking with my niece last night and she was all excited that she was going to the Royal Melbourne Show next week. I told her that I was going to the Los Angeles Show the next day, which was today. Yes, I know it's really a County Fair, but my niece is Australian, and essentially the Royal Melbourne Show and the L.A. County Fair are the same thing, just in different countries.

Xinh came around early this morning and we convinced Liz that she wasn't staying at home. My knees have been killing me all week, and there was no way I was going to let Liz stay home while I went and walked all over the Fair grounds.

We got out to the Fair fairly (ha!) early, but not as early as last year where we had to line up and wait for the ticket booths to open. Like last year we also paid for VIP parking, $15 for a parking spot within 30 seconds walk of the entrance/exit, totally worth it.

The first ride JE wanted to go on was the giant slide, which had the name Euroslide.com on top of the launch platform, but there appears to be no valid website for www.euroslide.com ;)

We bought $40 worth of tickets to use for the rides, but the giant slide was not our first stop. Our first stop was the Lazer Tag game. It was pretty fun, considering it was just JE versus me :D As soon as Liz & Xinh upload their photos from today you'll be able to see how much fun we had :)

We walked through the Midway, played a few games, won a few prizes, before we got to the giant slide. JE & I went on it three times, chewing through over half of our tickets. We also had a turn on the Bumper Cars. Now I get it, I almost typed Dodgem Cars then, that's what Australians call them. See, I was dodging all of the other cars, whereas the Americans who call them Bumper Cars were bumping and ramming everyone else. So Liz told me to ram a car or two, so I did, and I think I almost gave JE whiplash. I blamed Liz for that ;)

Then Liz decides she wants to go on the Ghost Train/Haunted House so Xinh stayed with Amber while the three of us went on that ride. Bad idea, Liz. JE was ok with the first thing popping out at us, because the doors behind hadn't closed fully so it was still light. Then the doors closed, the lights went out, and the second "scarey thing" jumped up screaming, which really scared JE and he grabbed hold of me. I put my hands over his eyes but when we got outside he got upset with me, with me! for covering his eyes! I explained to him that the rest of the ride was very scary, just like the first bit. He accepted that, especially when he saw the three-story fun house, so I took him in that. Moving floors, very fast conveyor belts with holes at the end, a very long slide from the third floor down to the ground, it was a lot of fun, albeit slightly dangerous, or so I thought. The conveyors stopped and started at random, and they moved very quickly, I'd hate to be on one of them when it started up, especially given the deep depressions in the floor at the end of the belt, which you need to jump over or risk stepping in and potentially tripping up or falling over. I had to ride down the slide with JE, because it was somehow too big. This is the kid who went on the Euroslide (.com) three times, but he was scared to go down this enclosed, spiralling slide.

The "farm" was mentioned and JE decided that was where he wanted to go. We made it to the "farm", actually the animal barn where all of the show animals are on display. Of course we lost Liz and JE in there, so Xinh and I made our way outside. I had Liz's phone in my bag and when Xinh went to get a drink I saw Liz, so I ran up to her and passed Xinh getting a drink, but I didn't realize Xinh was right there. I figured I had the phone, Xinh had her phone, I'd found Liz and JE, best that I stick with them and we could call Xinh and tell her where we were, especially as I didn't go back to the seats out in the sun where we'd been just before but found us a table with chairs inside a small shed where they were setting up for a show or something. I started feeding Amber (who was very hungry by this time) and then Xinh called, or we called her, either way we managed to locate each other again.

After Amber had been fed we decided we needed to be fed too, so we found a BBQ Shack and got some real people food there. JE didn't want the Hot Dog we got him, he wanted a roast corn on the cob. To his credit, once we got one for him, he ate the whole thing. Amber had fallen asleep by now and Xinh wanted to ride the tram back to the exit, but the trams don't allow strollers on board unless they're folded up. Kind of hard to fold up a stroller if there's a sleeping baby inside ;) The two girls and JE rode the tram around the perimeter of the Fairground, and changed trams half way around, then caught a Trolley Car for the last leg. I made a beeline straight through the Fairgrounds for the exit, and got there before them...several minutes before them. In fact I got there before them by such a large margin that I actually called them twice (I took Liz's phone with me) to see where they were.

On my walk back back to the exit I was looking for the perfect person to be a nice guy to, and I finally found them. A father spending the day with his daughter received the last 8 ride tickets we had. It wasn't much, just a ride or two for them, but we were leaving and had no use for them, I figured someone else could use them and have some fun. I realize there are people in this world who would say "Screw them. These are our tickets. We paid for them. Why should we give them away to someone we don't even know, just because we're leaving the Fair and won't use them." I'm not that kind of person.

As we left the parking lot we passed all these cars full of people coming in. I understand that the Fair runs late into the night, but we were leaving at the hottest part of the day, and these people are just getting to the Fair AND it's totally crowded by the time we were leaving, and it was only going to get worse with all of these people coming in. By comparison, when we get there early in the morning the grounds are very empty, we can have an enjoyable time without having to deal with huge crowds. There's still crowds of course, just not as brutal as when we were leaving.

So, that was our day at the 2005 Los Angeles County Fair.