VARF - comestibles

[Sir William]

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.  

[Sir Edward]

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.

[Sir Brian]

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. 

[Sir William]

Ok, it sounds like I'll be well satisfied...lookin forward to it!

[Sir Wolf]

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.

[Sir Edward]

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.

[Sir Jason Simonds]

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.

[Sir William]

I take it the old one that used to be in Fredericksburg was a really good one?  What happened to it?

[Sir Jason Simonds]

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.

[Sir Edward]

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.

[Sir Jason Simonds]

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

[Sir Edward]

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.

[Sir Edward]

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.

[Sir Jason Simonds]

Oh how nice it would be to have the money to be able to purchase that land and rebuild.

[Sir Brian]

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!