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Main => The Campaign => Topic started by: Sir William on 2011-05-26, 16:04:50
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Here's a big question for me- what's the food like nowadays? I went back in 2007 and it was lackluster, in a word...but the faire on the whole was very small...it seems larger w/more to offer. I'll need sustenance if I'm going to be wearing 40+ lbs of armor and accoutrements; just let me know if I need to stock up on dried beef. ;)
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The fair has grown vary slowly. It's still quite small, but in the last 4 years they've added some shops, more permanent structures, and I think they said they added a food vendor this year. I think what I saw last week was two main food booths in addition to the ice-cream and drink booth on the corner. Plus there are other small booths at the top of the hill with tasty things as well. And there's always the pub tent if you need to drown your sorrows. :)
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The food is good and they did add a couple of more vendors. There is one in the woods next to the axe throwing booth that serve delicious crepes! Both the sweet filling varieties as well as a sort of beef stew kind of filling. ;)
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Ok, it sounds like I'll be well satisfied...lookin forward to it!
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do you think this varf will ever be like the old one? i miss that faire. i can never ever drive on Rt 3 and not think of the faire in fredericksburg.
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I hope so. It'll take a long time to get there with a slow growth rate, but it's not impossible. But if they do, they'll outgrow the winery grounds. I wonder what they'd do at that point.
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The Va. Ren Faire is what I understand to be a NonProfit Faire so it will take several years and lots of promotion to get it to the Old VARF standards. The size of the current grounds are very limited, and I'm not sure if there is going to be any room for expansion beyond what is currently there, so there seems that there will be a need of a larger location when the Faire grows larger.
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I take it the old one that used to be in Fredericksburg was a really good one? What happened to it?
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The old Varf was a good Faire, from what I understand it was management issues that led to the Faire closing down. I don't want to get into speculation as to what really happened cause I donot know the whole stor just what i have been told. The Old Varf i would say was about 1/2 to 2/3 the size of Mdrf.
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Wow, yes it's a long and sordid story. A lot of what we know is second and third hand anecdotal type stuff. But assuming it's accurate, the company that owned the faire did some pretty evil stuff. It was owned by REC (Renaissance Entertainment Corp).
Here's the story, as we heard it.
REC owned something like 4 other faires, but this was the first one they started from scratch. All of the others they had bought previously. When a faire starts up, usually it takes about 10 years for them to get into the black. With the economy going into a bit of a recession (around the time of the internet bubble burst), and weather-related damage having been done to some of the other faire sites, not to mention weather related attendance drops, they had some financial problems.
So supposedly, what they decided to do was cut VARF loose, even though it was just becoming profitable in half the time that a renfaire typically needs. They did this to financially bolster the other faires that were having the financial problems.
But here's the part that generated all the bad blood. All year long, they were assuring everyone that the faire was going to open as planned. They didn't drop the bombshell until about 2 months before the opening date. Throughout the year, they had been allowing the vendors to do expensive repairs and upgrades to their booths, some on the order of $20,000 or thereabouts. These merchants had to eat that as a loss.
A lot of the merchants won't talk about it, and I suspect there was more to the story.
All of this should be taken with a grain of salt, since it's all "through the grapevine" details.
But yes, we liked it a lot when it was open. It had great ambiance, a nice site, and a pretty good size.
The new VARF attempted to rent the same land. The land was being held by a company that was in chapter-11, and they negotiated in bad-faith, attempting to use/abuse the faire to clean up the land and prepare it for development for them (which chapter-11 of course was preventing them from doing). So the new VARF walked away, and the old site has continued to rot.
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There is a website up with images of the old Varf that were taken quite a while ago but you can see the sadness for yourself if you like.
http://www.abandonedbutnotforgotten.com/virginia_renaissance_faire.htm
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There is a website up with images of the old Varf that were taken quite a while ago but you can see the sadness for yourself if you like.
http://www.abandonedbutnotforgotten.com/virginia_renaissance_faire.htm
Yeah, those photos were taken somewhere around 2002 or thereabouts. I'm tempted to go over there and take a look for myself (and snap some pictures), if I can remember how to get to it. :)
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Yeah, those photos were taken somewhere around 2002 or thereabouts. I'm tempted to go over there and take a look for myself (and snap some pictures), if I can remember how to get to it. :)
Found it on google maps. You can still see the jousting field on the right side, and the ship/stage on the lake.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=fredericksburg,+va&daddr=Unknown+road&hl=en&geocode=FdB1SAIdxAti-ykl4Oq668G2iTGhkaYhCkWmfw%3BFaLIRwIdPidj-w&mra=ls&sll=38.259758,-77.38717&sspn=0.003193,0.004624&ie=UTF8&ll=38.25996,-77.386048&spn=0.003193,0.004624&t=h&z=18 (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=fredericksburg,+va&daddr=Unknown+road&hl=en&geocode=FdB1SAIdxAti-ykl4Oq668G2iTGhkaYhCkWmfw%3BFaLIRwIdPidj-w&mra=ls&sll=38.259758,-77.38717&sspn=0.003193,0.004624&ie=UTF8&ll=38.25996,-77.386048&spn=0.003193,0.004624&t=h&z=18)
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Oh how nice it would be to have the money to be able to purchase that land and rebuild.
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Truly! Of course I would have to have a castle built within the grounds to live in year round!
hey if you're going to wish you might as well wish big! ;D
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You know I was thinking the same thing. Mayhaps have the Castle Build right behind the Joust Field.
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even if it was something simple like the keep at the NJRF
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NJRF is a Faire I have yet to go to, Mayhaps I will make it up that way one of these years.
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NJRF is a Faire I have yet to go to, Mayhaps I will make it up that way one of these years.
I think Sir Wolf meant NJRK. Unless it has grown up a bit in the last 10 years, it's not worth the drive from down here.
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Well, unless I'm mistaken, it looked like there was a stone keep already on the premises of the old Faire! Just looking at the structures still standing and the outlying fields...they put a lot of work into that. It is a real shame that it went that route...and now I see that the current VARF is a far-cry from the old...but being extant, it has potential.
Wow...that must've been a really cool Faire...I mean just from what I've seen, JEEZLY CROW, it was sturdy and had the right look about it.
Who owns that land now? I'm assuming that if one were to buy it, all of the structures come with it, right?
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Not sure as to the current property owners, but I am sure it would be a large sum of money to buy the property. I doubt they really care about the building on the property, otherwise they might have pursued finding a company to take over the Faire and get it going again.
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Yep, it includes the structures, such as they are with 12 years of rot. Last I saw, they were asking $1.5 million for the property. Some of the merchants came in and removed their buildings when the faire closed, the rest remained with the property.
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I wonder how you can find information on the property and what the current price is for it.
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I wonder how you can find information on the property and what the current price is for it.
There used to be a real estate listing on the web somewhere. I wonder if it still exists. (nothing found with a 5-minute search yet)
I did find some more pictures, with the entrance gate, some of the signs, etc:
http://abandonedplaces.livejournal.com/2130535.html (http://abandonedplaces.livejournal.com/2130535.html)
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How big is the lot in total?
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You know, I'm not sure. It probably has to be at least 50 acres. Maybe more like 80? I don't know.
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That's not a bad price for all that space considering the location. Well...if I hit it big, I'll buy it and we'll be back in full swing! You heard it here first.
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Here's a listing with an areal photo of the faire site:
http://www.loopnet.com/xNet/LoopLink/Profile/Profile.aspx?LID=15651178&STID=fredericksburgedc (http://www.loopnet.com/xNet/LoopLink/Profile/Profile.aspx?LID=15651178&STID=fredericksburgedc)
And another:
http://www.best-location.com/ (http://www.best-location.com/)
It looks like it's broken into two lots, totaling 162 acres for $8.6 Million. That's a huge jump from the $1.5M they were originally asking 10 years ago.
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10 years, economic upsweep burst, economic downturn still...yea, that's a lot of cheddar...but hey, what's $8.6M when you have over $100M, right? Besides...with that much land I could move my whole family there and still have room enough to avoid eachother when it gets too testy. LOL
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Hey if your family is big enough you could always claim to be your own sovereignty that way you won’t have to worry about paying state and federal taxes. You could then declare war on the USA and quickly capitulate so the USA will rebuild your ‘nation’ for you! ;D
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Ah yes, I'll have my own 'Petoria' eh?
LOL @ that capitulation
Taking a page from the Taliban book? That's hilarious! Damn shame that's exactly how it pans out. Who's the sucker in that one, right?
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I think I might take a saturday off some time and take a little look. Alas, I never got to attend while it was running. I had tried to track it down via google, but didn't know I was looking on the wrong side of the road. :-D
This also feeds back into the "you really should purchase a firearm some day" thought I keep having.