For the past several years the family has been guests of King Richard at King Richard’s Faire in Carver, MA. This Renaissance Faire has been been operating for 37 seasons so far. I’ve heard from many people who have attended over the years. It is time to get back and visit the Realm once again. As I stated, we have been guests of King Richard many years, and this means that we are provided tickets to enter the Faire free of charge. We still have to purchase our food and there are always souvenirs that the kids take home.

When we arrived we missed the opening welcome with the cast. We were a couple of minutes late. We were, however, greeted by a few citizens of the realm. One was a drummer that we had met many times in the past. Hi name is Dave Schneider, and he is there every year. Five years ago when we were wheeling Andrew around the Faire in the stroller he helped soothe the savage little beast (he wasn’t really a beast but he was quite upset at being put into the stroller). He let Andrew play the drums a bit and that made him happy. I will always remember that. It helped calm me as well.

Once inside the gates we ran right into our friend Piers the Purveyor of Pickles. He’s one of our longtime friends. He was a King for a while but is back as the Pickle Man. We chatted for a bit and I did a Facebook Live video with him and also talked with some more people in the Realm including Princess Snow.

While I did the Facebook Live video Allison and Andrew went exploring. Eva and I took a couple of photos with The Vodca Sisters. Well, I took photos of Eva with them. These two are dancers who do a fantastic show on the Dancer’s stage closest to where you get the food and can sit at the tables to eat lunch. They were very nice and we, unfortunately, did not get to see their performance during the day. there really is so much to do there that you can’t catch all the shows in one day.

While we made the video Andrew found a place to relax.

The first performance that we went to was the new acrobat, Kevin Armor who has the Up in Arms show. This is a new performer and he was really good. I may be biased because he picked Andrew to come and help him. I recorded the whole performance because, let’s face it, Andrew is going to add laughter to any situation. I was not disappointed. Kevin had Andrew throw him pins for juggling and well, we are a video game family, not a sports one. While Andrew can throw things he just does not have the accuracy needed to toss these up to a performer. Something that Kevin learned quickly.

The performance was a fun one and you can hear me laughing like crazy on the video. Kevin was very good with Andrew and as you can see in the video, gave him $5 for helping him out. I had him give it right back to Kevin as part of his tips. Performers do get paid to be there but they also work for tips and so it is important to bring some $5’s and singles with you to tip each performance.

After Kevin’s performance we had some time before we could see the next show that we wanted to see. So, we took a look at the things for sale. We came across a gaming tent and learned how to play Nine Men Morris. This is a game where you get nine stones and attempt to get 3 in a row. The other player tries to block you and if you get three in a row you can take one of your opponent’s stones. Andrew and I split the cost of a set of our own to play. He really enjoyed it.

One of our favorite acts was Mis-Adventures. This duo does comedy and sword fighting. Lots of stage fighting with all sorts of things like swords, staffs and even frying pans. thank you, Tangled. We really enjoy seeing this team every year. The show is always changing and the action is excellent.

We wandered a bit more and while we were wandering Allison and Andrew found a lost sheep. It was one of Bo Peep’s lost sheep. However, Bo was at home and her sister, Jo Peep was on the lookout for the missing sheep. We then were on the lookout for Jo Peep to return the lost sheep. But, before that we stopped to get a pickle from Piers.

We got our pickle and some fries and headed to the King’s Stage to see the main show. This year’s original show was called Between Two Villains. I loved that they made parody songs from The Greatest Showman. They were fantastic! It was one of the best opening numbers for the show I’ve ever seen.

After the stage show it was time for lunch. We usually put aside $100 to feed all of us for the day. This includes getting some waters a couple times and a snack at the end of the day. We actually hit that exact number this year. We had to get waters a couple of times because it was such a hot day.

It has been a few years since I got a Turkey leg but this year I went for it. This is a smoked turkey leg and it is pink because of the smoking process, it is also a leg that tastes a lot like ham because of all the salt. It was a huge let this year. I shared it with everyone.

Only Eva wanted some of the leg, though.

When we were finishing up our meal the kids spotted Jo Peep and ran off to return the little lost sheep. They got a huge kick out of the story and each received a little bell on a ribbon as a reward.

We caught a few more shows including one of our favorites from last year, Snorkel the Stunt Pig, This is a cute little show with some acrobatics, juggling and stunts from a pig. After that show we caught a new act called 3 Pints Shy who played Irish music and were excellent and funny. We had to cut that performance short because we wanted to catch the second act of the musical. After the show we caught up with the woman who has become our good friend over these past several years, Julie. She provides us the tickets and we appreciate being invited each year. She took this great family photo of us.

In the photo Andrew is trying to play his new Ocarina. This was something that I steered him towards instead of some fake ears. I knew that he’d get more enjoyment out of the Ocarina than the ears. Eva picked up a beautiful leather journal as her souvenir. Julie also got a photo of us with Hey-O the court jester.

It was a fantastic day and we really enjoyed all the fun. The Faire runs until October 21st. You can follow them on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. You may even win tickets from those sites but you can also buy tickets right from their website at https://kingrichardsfaire.net/.