Renaissance Rendez-vous: Staffer reviews the annual Renaissance Festival

After a long year of sitting through online AP European History and being stuck inside, the idea of a Renaissance festival filled with re-enactors and medieval shops sounded like a great way to put all of that Renaissance era knowledge to use.

This wasn’t my first time visiting, as 13-year-old me and some friends decided to go to the Disney World of Bonner Springs, Kan.. My anxious self walked around, my head hurting from darting side to side just because of how much there is to see. 

The same went for this time around, when I decided to give it another go after leaving as a flustered, muddy mess last time. My mom was sure to warn me to “be careful” after she heard suspicious stories from the Bonner Springs’ Chief of Police.

It was a cloudy, drizzly Sunday. I couldn’t tell if the murky air we had to peer through while walking among Renaissance architecture was dust from the dirt trail or from the many jester-dressed smokers. 

The festival was filled with people dressed in Renaissance peasantry attire. I instantly understood why my mom was adamant in warning my friend and I to “stay together” and to not go anywhere without people around. While there were plenty of families and young kids with dragon face paint running away from their parents, it wasn’t necessarily the most family-friendly event, as adults were already hammered by 3 p.m. and the smell of burnt cigars lingered over our noses. 

But we continued on, passing by Renaissance stand-up comedy acts on every corner and shops selling healing crystals, welded jewelry and fashion. A zipliner even zoomed right above the festival-goers’ heads wearing crowns and knight helmets. 

There were other shops including “restaurants,” which were uniquely decorated food stands that each sold the same menu. One of the main attractions of the festival were the famous turkey legs. Even though they smelled good, it wasn’t enough to tempt my semi-vegetarian self, or to wait in the longest lines I’ve ever seen — which was easily an hour wait.

Scattered amongst the food and merchandise vendors were plenty of games and rides, which were stationed throughout the fair. There were carnival games such as ring toss, swing rides, a pretty low-quality maze and even a camel carrying around kids on its back — all of course were Renaissance-themed. 

I may have just gone in skeptical, but I started to get annoyed with the extreme overpricing of everything. I understand that it’s how these places make a profit, but $5 to throw three tomatoes at someone’s face plus the $23 admission fee was too much out of my hard-earned babysitting money. You’re just paying to spend more money. 

We did stop by some of the free-to-watch comedy and magic acts, which weren’t necessarily funny or magical. The Renaissance humor was crude, and the magic was just the “magician” doing wand tricks with the 3-year-old guest on-stage. The funniest part to me were the giant posters on the backdrop with the acts’ Venmo QR codes, basically shoved in your face.

As we made our way around the wide loop that was the festival, I started to pay more attention to the festival-goers’ costumes. I expected the typical peasant, royalty and knight attire, but there were a surplus of fairies, gnomes and people wearing nothing but simply a harness and shorts, which I don’t associate with this time period at all. 

We ended up stopping by a shop selling crystals. My admiration for anything shiny and sparkly peaked, and I hadn’t expected to see any spiritual-type items there. While I didn’t end up spending any money besides the $23 entrance fee, I did appreciate these types of jewel-filled stores that lined the dirt path.

Over time, the festival has been bent into what people want it to be: a chance to wear whatever cosplay they want — and I mean whatever — and feast on some turkey legs. 

I like the idea of a Renaissance fair to celebrate the art, literature and music that’s strongly intertwined with the time-period, but I just didn’t like this one specifically. It strays away from the artistic works of Leonardo Da Vinci and is more geared toward giving Kansas guys with beer bellies a day to thrive.

I’m glad I gave the festival a second chance. But a third? I’m not so sure.