Maryland's 2008 Dundalk Heritage Fair was Somewhat Disappointing

I must admit, I was a bit disappointed with the Dundalk Heritage Fair. The fair in in itself, was nice; the food was pretty good, and the music was good. However, there were many disappointments that I think will keep us from attending next year.

We had searched all week for something to do on the 4th of July. We wanted to attend an event that would keep up busy all day, and provide us fireworks entertainment.
Out of a handful of choices, we chose the Dundalk Heritage Fair. The fair, had it's own website so we would see EXACTLY what was going to be going on, the bands, the entertainment, and so forth. This particular fair was actually going to be running from the 4th, thru the 6th. The website also laid out what was going to be happening on each day.

Clearly, we thought that the 4th of July would have to be the best day--- and they were having FIREWORKS, or so we thought. The only thing missing really, would be certain bands and pig races. Not really anything I'd be of interest in anyway.

There was even a parade planned for 4th of July morning, but we opted to skip that since it was at 8 in the morning, and fireworks woudn't be until 9 pm. That would make a VERY long day for us and our son (he's two). So we skipped the parade, and had planned to go around 1 pm, giving us ample time to get everything done, see all of the vendors, the craft tables, some of the bands, and let our little one go to the carnival that they were also having.

In addition to all of this, the website also claimed that they would have wandering entertainment including a juggler, Magician, Fire Eater and 10 Ft Tall Uncle Sam.

I thought it all sounded awesome!

As planned, we arrived about 1 pm to the fair. Admission to the festival was $5.00 for persons over 12. So, it would only be $10.00 for the three of us. I really don't like when fairs charge admissions (a little entry fee is not a big deal, but $5.00 each is a bit pricey in this day and age). Anyway, we thought with so much to see and do, the $10.00 that we spent would provide us with a WHOLE day of entertainment, and include fireworks! Parking was free, so that was a plus opposed to going to the Inner Harbor (which has a great fireworks display, but not really a lot of entertainment other then bands on one stage).

Upon entering, they hand you a schedule of events (for the course of the 3 days) and a map. When we first got there, we were impressed with the amount of vendors that they had, and there were alot of them! We visited the tables, looked at the crafts and scoped out the good food tents.

We noticed that on the map they claimed to have a petting zoo. I didn't recall the website specifying that-- so I was happy! Oh, my son would have LOVED that. However, the petting zoo wasn't there. Supposively, they would be there on Saturday. The map didn't state what day they were going to be there, so we had walked clear to the other side of the fair to find no petting zoo. I was disappointed. I thought, oh well we can take him over the carnival side of the fair and he will have fun there. We also were looking forward to the wandering entertainment, I knew my son would get a kick out of that!

We proceeded to the carnival. Upon entering we seen a big slide--- which we thought my son would love since he LOVES slides. Well, little did we know that you CAN'T ride the slide with your kid--- and of course he is too small to ride alone. I walked away kind of sad. We then proceed to see how much the ticket prices for rides are. At that specific time, they were having a ride special from 12-5, where it was $15.00 pay one price. Hmmm. They also had a sheet of tickets for $22.00 or each ticket was $1.50 each. Well, we knew that WE (not my son) would not be really riding any rides unless we needed to get on one with him. There was only about 5 kiddy rides. They had a farris wheel, but that would have cost us $9.50 all together for all 3 of us to ride! How ridiculous is that?
I then start lookig at the kiddy rides and see that most of them take 2 tickets. So really, that would be $3.00, if I let him ride atleast one carnival ride. I then notice how UNSAFE these rides look.. I swear, these rides looked like the SAME rides I rode when I was my son's age--which for the record was 27 years ago!
The rides looked VERY old! I'm used to fire house carnivals were things are painted new and shiny, and just LOOK safer. I opted NOT to allow my son on any of those rides--- it was just too unsafe, and not to mention too pricey.

We moved on, still trying to find the wandering entertainment.

At this point, we still had about 1/2 of the festival to walk through, and more vendors to see. Surely, they would be in that location?

We kept walking and find a moon bounce, which I want to say was probably the BEST part of the fair. I got to watch my little guy and my big buy jumping in the moon bounce together. My son, was just too scared and didn't know what was going on to go it alone, so daddy jumped in with him. To jump it was only $1.00 and they didn't charge for daddy! So, that was really nice. There was also NO time limit (from what I could tell) and the two ladies that were running it were very sweet.

After jumping, we looked at the rest of what was left of the fair and decided to try to find some lunch. The food prices were too be expected since this was a fair. I ordered a pit-beef sandwhich for $5.50 from Minnick's. It was awesome! I don't know why, but pit beef sandwhiches always run in the ball park of $5 bucks, but they are normally super good and worth it! My sandwhich was indeed very yummy and very meaty! I even shared.

My significant other, got a hamburger-- -which did look like a hockey puck. He paid $2.00 for that. He also ordered french fries, which was very good. He wished he got a pit beef sandwhich though.

While eating our lunch, we talked to this couple who had been at the fair MANY times before and I was asking her about the wandering entertainment. She proceeded to tell me that it wouldn't be there until the next day. HUH?! I was so mad and disappointed.
One of the reasons I chose this event over other events was because of the amount of activities and entertainment they were having on the 4th! Not for the 5th! We hadn't really DONE anything at this point, but keep getting disappointed.
I felt like complaining about it and asking for money back or something! I was already mad that half of the things on the map wasn't there (which didn't say what day they WERE coming!) The website for the fair specified that the wanderers and other things would be there all days!
Had I known that there wasn't going to be too much there on Friday, maybe I would have chose to come on Saturday instead!

The website also stated NO outside food or beverages. Half of the people had coolers CRAMMED with food and drinks! What the heck?! Luckily, we had smuggled a diet coke in with us so that we didn't have to pay $2.00 every time we were thirsty. BUT we are on a diet, and we could have packed our own lunch with our low carb bread, I could have brought my yogurt and fruit to snack on instead of eating fair junk food! I was a bit irritated, to say the least.

Then, to make matters worst--- the website advised that you could see the fireworks from the fair grounds. Wrong. You actually, physically had to get in your car and drive to a different field (NOT walking distance away--- it was probably 5 miles from the fair grounds). Thank goodness we had asked where the best place to sit was to see the fireworks, because we would have felt VERY stupid at 9 pm!

We had pretty much ran out of things to do, so we thought we could go into the beer garden and drink a couple of beers each. The guard at the beer tent would not let us bring our baby in. It wasn't like we were going to give him beer! We wouldn't EVER take him into a bar-- but this was an outside event, the 4th of July and it would have been nice for all 3 of us to go in and watch karaoke that was happening inside of the tent. NO one could judge me for this because if you were going to drink at your house on the 4th and you have kids-- obviously, you would be doing so in front of your child. We weren't planning on spending ample time in there, just enough to make get a beer or two each. I didn't see any harm in that. However, they would not let our son in EVEN thought he was an infant. I told my man to go ahead in and get a couple of beers and I would take the baby to story time (they had a pirates story exhibit). I also took a few bucks with me to get ice cream for him to kill some time as well. While walking back to the pirate story time, I came across a FREE book vendor. That was probably the best part for ME (second to seeing my guys jump in the moon bounce). I was able to get 9 free books! I spent a good while there. Story time was already over, so I coudln't take my son to see it. I guess they only had a few shows in the early afternoon. I walked back to the beer garden to find my significant other and he was ready to come out of there, after just two small cups of beer.

After all of this, it started to rain.

Finding out that the fireworks were actually in a different location is actually what made us leave the fair early. Granted, it did start to rain hard, but had the fireworks been there, obviously we would have stayed at the fair until then.

We ended up killing an hour in a shopping center because it was only 6:30 and fireworks weren't until 9:00 pm! Once we were done at the shopping center, we ended up going to a fast food place to get some food. Then it was about 7:45 so we went to the field to get ready for the rest of the evening.
Again, had we brought a cooler to the festival (LIKE EVERYONE ELSE!) we would have had our snacks, diet foods and everything else for a picnic at the field.

All and all, we were a bit disappointed in the false advertising made on the fair's website, and on the handouts that they give you upon entering. I feel somewhat cheated.

I don't think that we will go back next year. For one, the fireworks are in a complete different location (which is FREE admission). The whole point of paying $10 for my family to get into the grounds was because I thought it included everything we wanted to do-- had entertainment and was ending in fireworks. The Dundalk Hertiage festival claims to be the largest 4th of July celebration in Maryland, but clearly the Inner Harbor is bigger.