What would you want from ANY festival?

[DancingDogDairy]

I like the idea of more demonstrations. My daughters will be demonstrating drop spinning and weaving at TRF this year. Their plan is to actually teach  these skills to patrons who are interested in learning.

They will also be doing two goat milking demonstrations each day. It would be really interesting to evolve this idea into a model of a tiny working homestead with a family just carrying on doing what they would have been doing on any typical day.

[robert of armstrong]

I agree with a lot of what has been said.  $2 for water, when the cost of a case of 24 is $5 or less seems a bit of a large margin.  Variety in food is key.  Large stalls or Handicapped privies help with those of us in armor and carrying weapons as well as the ladies (ever not be able to close a portable privey door because your sword or the handle of the axe on your belt is in the way?)

I have to drive minimum four hours to get to the closest Faire and pay for a hotel for the weekend, so it has to be worth it.  For me, visiting a Faire should feel like walking away from the "real" world and into a village from the past. Preferably a village in the woods, with large, mature trees for shade, as well as feel.

Permanent buildings are a must.  Sorry to the smaller/travelling Faires, but tents just don't give the right feel.  Great Lakes has a combination of buildings and a few tents, and kind of feels like an expanding village, where more people are coming to stay and building as they go, which is cool too.  The buildings should not be uniform in their construction, as they wouldn't have been back then.  The appearance of kind of put together with what the land and area would have provided is best.  REALLY don't want to see inked lumber mill identification stamps on the faces of  2 x 4s or other lumber used in village construction.  In fact non uniform lumber looks better in this case anyway..

Ambiance is important.  All the characters of a village should be there.  Maryland has a drunk and a beggar, or used to, who would follow you around and try to get your lunch, if you let them play with you, and several Sheriffs.  Michigan has Nobb the Troll who hangs out on his bridge and sings and interacts with everyone.  Large casts with pop-up interactions in the lanes are awesome, and we playtrons can add to that. Perhaps inspected playtrons garbs can result in discounted admission?

-A little (roughly) fenced in area with goats and sheep and pigs for "sale" to simulate a supply of meat for the village?
-A donkey pulled cart with produce (even simulated) walking through the grounds every now and then?
-An apothecary hut or building with a garden of herbs outside it?  Pennsylvania has/had a great one.

But is more than just what you see:
-If the Faire doesn't have a blacksmith, how about hiding a speaker hooked up to an MP3 player that plays a loop of the sound of a hammer hitting an anvil every now and then to simulate one?
-I love the smell of a bubbling cauldron of stew, or at least something that smells like stew, suspended over a fire, especially if it is part of permanent (cast) "traveller's" encampment at the edge of the village
-My dad made 4 or 5 little doors (about 3 inches by 6 inches) and corresponding window frames and attached them to several trees around our family cottage, about ten feet off the ground.  Now my 3 year old daughter believes our cottage is in a fairy forest, it is adorable

I guess that as I walk away from my mundane car, I want 2011 reality to fall away and to stroll into the existence that I wish had, and keep that feeling all day.