Sterling Renaissance Festival offers family fun
It’s family fun and games — and a little bit of bawdy humor — at Sterling Renaissance Festival
You’d think it’s the rare kid who’ll get excited about a bunch of actors dressed up in Elizabethan costumes, pretending they live in Shakespeare’s time as they stroll through an outdoor fair while musicians perform period music on period instruments.
But the Sterling Renaissance Festival is so much more than that. It’s part spectacle, part music festival, part craft show and part midway — though all the rides are powered by human muscle and the games involve daggers, arrows and crossbows.
We’ve taken our two boys there for four years running, and we’ve never heard complaints. Not when there’s so much to do: getting caught in dead ends at “Ye Maze,” gawking at the sword swallower, sliding down the Goose Neck Slip, cheering for mounted knights at the joust, crawling like a spider up the Ladder of Truth, begging to have a coin stamped by the water-powered minting machine.
Judging by my elder son, who just turned 13, teenagers may grumpily age out of the festival’s offerings. But a word of caution about their younger siblings: The Elizabethan era was a bawdy one, and sexual innuendo enlivens a number of performances. Double entendres go over the heads of young kids, and teens will take them in stride. But be prepared for embarrassing questions from your tweens.
Here are a few more tips about navigating the festival:
Pack it in. You’re heading into rural Cayuga County, and once past Wolcott you’re not going to see many convenience stores. Pack in whatever you think you’ll need — water bottles, snacks, sunscreen, diapers, strollers — and something to carry it all in. It can be a bit of a walk from your car, parked out in a grassy field, to the festival gates. (Disclaimer: Officially, no outside food or drink is permitted into the festival grounds.). In a pinch, though, you can purchase necessities, such as disposable rain ponchos, at the gift shop.
Tip: Those snacks come in handy when you’re trying to entertain restless children while trapped in a half-hour line for tickets. If you buy tickets online before you leave home, you can head straight for the admissions line.
Budget wisely. The price of admission includes all the musical and stage performances, and with more than a dozen venues scattered around the grounds, that’s a pretty good value. But you may want to rent a costume of your own, or have your hair braided, or buy a leather bag, wooden sword, chain-mail bracelet or some of the other crafts on display.
You’ll need to ante up for meals and treats from one of the many food vendors. With kids along, you’ll no doubt be shelling out some extra for the games and rides. There are two ATMs if you need to replenish your cash supply, and the artisans usually take “the Queen’s Visa” and its cousins.
Tip: A buck here and three bucks there add up pretty quickly when the kids are clamoring to play. One way to avoid hassles is to pick a dollar figure per child — then double it — and let each youngster spend that amount as desired. When it’s gone, it’s gone. Unless you’re just an old softie.
Wear comfortable shoes. It says so, right on the festival Web site, and it’s no joke. The festival manages to cram a surprising amount of activity into fairly compact areas, but since the grounds cover 35 acres, there’s inevitably a lot of walking. And since the grounds drop down a short hillside, there’s also a lot of going up and down. For those pushing strollers, a sloping walkway runs between the upper and lower levels. There are also stairs flanked with craft and food booths, just as shops lined London Bridge in Shakespeare’s time.
Tip: Happily, most of the grounds are nicely shaded — a real boon on a hot day.
Decide on a plan of action. Spontaneous sorts will prefer to simply wander around. We’ve found all too often that we keep missing some show we really wanted to see, or we come across a really fun game (specifically, the crossbow booth where you can fire five pingpong balls for $1) when we’ve spent all our money and it’s time to go home. So study the events schedule and map and rough out a timetable.
Planning also helps to minimize trips back and forth across the grounds. For instance, you can time a trip down the slide so that you’re delivered to the joust grounds just before show time; and the joust takes place only twice a day.
Tip: One other advantage of mapping out a schedule is that you can claim preferred seats by getting to a show early. That’s a definite plus if you want a good view at the hot-glass demonstration; and in summer’s heat it’s easier to enjoy the performance of Don Juan in Heck if you’re sitting in the shade.
— Elizabeth Forbes is a freelance writer.
If you go
Sterling Renaissance Festival, a fair-style version of an Elizabethan village, operates weekends only through Aug. 16 at 15385 Farden Road in Sterling, Cayuga County. It’s about a 90-minute drive from downtown Rochester.
Hours: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
Admission: $24.95, or $14.95 for children ages 6 to 12; free for children ages 5 and younger.
For information: (800) 879-4446 or www.sterlingfestival.com.
