Faire circuit recommendations?

[Steev]

Hey all.  I KNOW this topic exists somewhere else but I couldn't find it so here goes:

Next year we're going to pull the kids from school and go cross-country following faires.  We're located in MD so probably we'd either have to start in Spring with VARF,  or travel to FLA in late winter and drift west or north as the season progresses.

Could anyone suggest a good loop to follow?  I already have in mind some hot spots that might (or might not) fit in- Scarby, KCRF, MNRF, and we don't want to miss our home faire, MDRF...

Thoughts?

[Lady Rebecca]

No real thoughts, but I'm kind of really jealous. It sounds amazing!

Definitely check out Sterling, though - it's my favorite faire. I also highly recommend the OK Ren Faire in Muskogee in May.

[Lady L]

I have a shop at MNRF, so I hear all kinds of comments by people that stop in, as well as other shopkeepers. I admit I am biased, but many patrons say MNRF is the BEST. It is one of the largest and longest running faires in the USA. I have been to a few smaller faires, but not too far, so I can't really compare.

[Dracconia]

For a small town faire to hit right before Scarby, Four Winds in Troup Texas.

IT's small but it is a GREAT place for family!

[Rani Zemirah]

I'm not clear on your plans, here.  Are you planning to vend at Faire, because that's vastly different than visiting, and recommendations would be much different, also. 

[Lady Renee Buchanan]

If you plan to visit MN, then you should definitely tie it in with a trip to Bristol in Kenosha, WI.  So many MN people come to visit Bristol and love it.  Bristol runs from the second week in July and closing weekend is Labor Day.  MN begins a week or 2 before Labor Day (the MN people could tell you exactly) and goes through the beginning of October, so there is an overlap of a couple of weeks, and you should be able to do both faires. 

And, if you go in the late summer, you probably won't have to take the kids out of school.

[Steev]

I'm not clear on your plans, here.  Are you planning to vend at Faire, because that's vastly different than visiting, and recommendations would be much different, also. 

Point taken.  Visiting, not vending. 

[Master James]

There are so many out there its hard to say you should see this one or that one.  Every faire is worth seeing at least once if not more and believe me, it would take you a couple of years to see them all!

[Anna Iram]

http://www.renaissancefestival.com/festivals/map.php

Yeah, there are so many faires and so many loops to take. Here's a great tool to help with you planning.

[VIII]

Hey Steev, you might want to check with some of the shopkeepers or acts at your faire (LOVE MDRF, stole my wife from there) and ask what their circuit is like.  They usually have it worked out to a science of departures and arrivals and who overlaps what Faire.

Congratulations, it's an adventure of a lifetime!

[Valiss]

You could do the whole trip in California. They have 2 major faires that run 6-8 weeks and then somewhere around 25-30 smaller faires that run for a weekend.  If you went from faire to faire you could probably do a faire per weekend for almost the entire season.

[Lady_Glorianna]

Steev

More or less along the east coast, the two main FL are Feb-Mar (Ft Lauderdale-FLARF) & Mar-Apr (Tampa-BARF)
Gergia is around May
SC has no faire
NC has two main faires one in April, the other is Oct-Nov
PARF runs concurrent with MDRF
NY has two main, Sterling (Jul-Aug) and NYRF (late Jul-Aug)

Ron and I visted all of these with the exception of two (GA & NYRF) simply because we could not swing the time off and some were visited multiple times. PM me for more details if you like.

As suggested you can check on the map and the get on the forum for those you would like to visit for more details.

[Master James]

Steev

More or less along the east coast, the two main FL are Feb-Mar (Ft Lauderdale-FLARF) & Mar-Apr (Tampa-BARF)
Gergia is around May
SC has no faire
NC has two main faires one in April, the other is Oct-Nov
PARF runs concurrent with MDRF
NY has two main, Sterling (Jul-Aug) and NYRF (late Jul-Aug)

Ron and I visted all of these with the exception of two (GA & NYRF) simply because we could not swing the time off and some were visited multiple times. PM me for more details if you like.

As suggested you can check on the map and the get on the forum for those you would like to visit for more details.

Just to add to what Glorianna said:

VARF runs mid-May to mid-June
Pittsburgh runs concurrent with MDRF but ends much sooner.

[Steev]

Yep, there's a lot.  I've been using the RenFest map and also the Google Earth map that was posted on the home page by (?David Baldock?).  Some of the info is out of date and many faires haven't posted 2010 dates but here's my *just for fun* itinerary.  Note that some of the MAJOR faires are not on this list tho I'd love to hit them, mostly because one of my aims is to have a more-or-less geographically and chronologically linear path through the faires.  Also note that there is one break in my schedule where I couldn't find a good jumping point from VARF...

mid-January: Kiwanis in Ft. Myers, FL
late January- early February: Hoggetown, FL
mid-to-late-February: BARF, FLRF
early March: Gulf Coast RF, AL
mid-to-late March: 4 Winds, TX
early-to-mid April: Scarby, TX
mid-to-late April: GARF
early May: NCRF Rocky Mount
mid-May: TNRF
mid-May to mid June: full season VARF!
early July- weekend trip to Sterling (Thanks fer the suggestion, Will P.!), possibly loop to Southern CT RF on the return trip...
*Break (whew!) close to home in MD...*
late July: Eastern Shore MD Renstock (our home-grown event)
late July to early August: Souvigny, France
early August: PARF
mid-to-late August: MDRF
early September: OHRF
mid-to-late September: KCRF
early October: Pittsburgh and OH RF (again), possibly PARF (again)
mid-to-late October- home for MDRF until closing day.

So I know it's not perfect, f'rinstance no northern or west coast faires, but wouldn't it be a ride?  I think we'll do an abbreviated version but I'd love to hear more thoughts!

[dbaldock]

Hello Steev,

I'm the one who created the Google Earth Placemark File, but I haven't updated it in quite a while.  Glad it was helpful to you in its current state.

Creating it originally wasn't too hard (just a bit time consuming - lots of web and map searches!), but maintaining it has caused me to rethink how it's done.  Mainly, the difficulty is that it requires manually editing (or copying/pasting) each entry separately in Google Earth for events that span multiple months ... as well as editing the Location entry.

I've been doing a bit of research on dumping all the info into something like a MySQL database, and then using SQL queries to retrieve & format the data to create a .KMZ file with the requested Faire/Festival Placemarks.  That way, the database could be hosted on a web server and a web page with a set of drop-down boxes & radio buttons could be used to select what you're interested in, and then the .KMZ file would be created and downloaded to your PC to be opened in Google Earth --- or possibly your web browser could open the file on Google Maps.


Take Care,
David Baldock