Weekly Rewind #2

Going to The Big E Festival

This week, I went to The Big E Festival which takes place in West Springfield, Massachusetts. This festival runs for 17 days straight. This year, it went from September 13th to the 29th. I have always wanted to go but never got around to it. This year, I went for the first time, and this is what I thought!

Parking and Prices

There were lots of different places to park for the festival. We chose to park in a lot that was about a 5 minute walk from the entrance and it cost $10 to park. I am not sure how much the other lots were, but I think it was a good idea to park in a lot a little bit further away because we didn’t get stuck in any traffic getting in and out of the festival.

The admission cost for the festival was $15. All of the food you obviously paid for on top of that as well as rides and games. There were some attractions that did not cost any extra money which I will talk about a little bit later.

Food

There were so many food options at The Big E! It had typical carnival food like fried dough, cotton candy and kettle corn. There were also lots of interesting food options like a giant fried cheese stick, fried vegetables and waffles with ice cream on top. So basically, any food that you could want, you can find here. There were lots of different booths that had different foods. I had a corn dog and also got cotton candy. The prices of the food were pretty much right around what I expected. Most foods, obviously depending on what you got, seemed to range from $6-$12. The food options were definitely a highlight of the festival because there are so many choices.

Things to Do

State Buildings

One thing I thought was really cool was called the Avenue of States. Basically, every New England state had a building and inside was information and different things found in that state. A lot of the buildings contained food that was from that state. I thought this was really cool because I was able to learn a little bit about each state by just walking through. There was no additional cost to walk through these buildings.

Petting Zoo

There was a small petting zoo at the fair that was also no additional charge. There were a lot of different animals in the petting zoo including camels, goats and sheep. There was also food that was 25 cents for a handful that you can feed the animals. There also were animals in this area that you could not touch like different types of birds and lemurs. I thought the petting zoo was a cool touch to the festival and was a popular spot as well.

Rides and Games

There was a section of The Big E that had carnival rides and games. There was a ferris wheel, a small roller coaster and lots of popular carnival games. A lot of the games cost around $5 but some were more expensive or less expensive. For the rides, you could either buy individual tickets or a pack of tickets for a cheaper price. The prices were 1 ticket for $1.50, 20 tickets for $25 or 50 tickets for $60. I didn’t go on any of the rides, but if you do, I would recommend getting 20 tickets because there were a lot of rides and each ride is 2-5 tickets to ride.

Overall, I really liked going to The Big E. There were so many things to see and do. If you go, I would plan on spending close to the whole day there if you want to see everything because it is huge! This was a really fun experience and I hope I can go again next year.

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Signed,

Ashlyn