The Big E

We had a phenomenal time at The Big E in Massachusetts. B and I had been years ago, but this is the first time we've brought the boys.

It was about an hour drive, I guess. We got there early enough to get a decent parking spot. We checked out the daily schedule they actually make you pay for, so that we could plan our day. Once we had an idea of the times of the shows we wanted to see, we headed off to see how much tickets for rides cost, and how many tickets each ride would need. We gave the boys each $20 to use how they liked for both The Big E and the Durham Fair, so they needed to plan carefully. Luckily Grandma will help out with the Durham Fair, so the boys decided quite a bit of their $20 would be spent here. They decided that the rides were way over priced though. E did not feel $4 was worth it for a ferris wheel ride, so I went on with R. He wanted to have a look at the park and see it from that viewpoint.We did a few more rides. I tried really hard to talk E into going on a cool roller coaster with me. He had gone on one at Quassy during the summer (I can't find that I blogged about that) and so I hoped to convince him to try another. Not this time though.

We went to see the "Live Shark Experience" but it was just a guy in a giant tank with a few little sharks. So we headed off to "The Avenue of the States". From The Big E website: "Walking through the life-size replicas of each state's original capitol you can learn about the people, products and attractions each New England state has to offer." Basically it was stuff to buy from each state. B and I enjoyed the lobster roll sandwiches we got in Maine, and I especially enjoyed the Cherry Garcia ice-cream bar I got from the Ben and Jerry's stand in Vermont.

We also saw an incredible circus while we were there. By itself it was worth the price of admission to the fair. I knew it was going to be a great performance when they announced the Ringmistress. I'm including a photo of The Fusco Brothers (twins!) juggling fire.

The circus also featured the Gagik Hand Balancing Act, wherein a gymnast did flips and stuff on a balance beam which was held on her brothers' shoulders, The Flying Pages, a "family of aerialists", "Mind-boggling gravity defying feats" from the Calusari Teeterboard Troupe, a clown with trained little dogs, and

"Guiness World Record holder Alesya's Hula Hoops." She was excellent!

I can't find anything on the website or in the $3 program we had to buy for the schedule (can you tell that annoyed me?) but there was a young lady who did great balancing stuff too. You can see her above, dislocating her shoulders so that she could flip over. She was cool in an ew sort of way.

B and I enjoyed a 20 minute thing on "Great Cheeses of New England". They talked about the cheeses and what goes well with them, and gave out samples of what they were talking about. That was cool for us.

One of my personal favorite things about this fair was the butter sculpture. We got to see the guy actually working on it.

We watched the "Daily Parade" at 5pm. The Bristol High School marching band was in it, which was fun to see. It was right near the entrance to the theater for the evening's entertainment though, and we were very surprised to see people on line for it already. When we walked past the security guards I asked one if he thought we'd get in if we got on line closer to 7:30 (show started at 8) and he said we probably wouldn't be near the front, but we'd get in just fine. Another security guard jumped in and advised us to go in the other entrance because it seemed people didn't realize both would be open and the line was forming at only one. Good tidbit!

We did a couple more rides, then spent some time watching JUGI! Thunder Drums of China, which was lots of fun. We couldn't watch the whole thing though, because we did need to get into the theater to see the evening's entertainment: Joan Jett!

Yes, the whole reason we went to The Big E this year is so we could see Joan Jett. We had seen her three years ago at the Durham Fair, and in fact it was her guitarist who inspired R to get a mohawk, and the opportunity to see her again was one I couldn't resist. So we used the alternate line and arrived just when the gates opened, and got 12th row seats! Thank you security guard!

This photo actually gives you a decent idea of how close we were. It was really great. We had seats in front of two women with their son, who was a year or so younger than E and we chatted the time away with them (son had gotten the cool Star Wars Pez collection that E already owned, and they were from Connecticut too) until the show started.

Kind of cool that Joan Jett was R's first concert and now E's too (he slept through the whole thing at the Durham Fair). I even bought t-shirts for the boys. She was fantastic. She is one rockin' bitch, gotta say. And her new music sounds as good as her old. I put the new CD on my SwapaCD wish list. I'll actually buy it if I don't get it free soon. It was also cool to have R know many of the words in the songs since I had downloaded some of them for him after we saw her last time. She puts on a really energetic show, it really was great.

We were pretty hungry by the time we left, so we saved a few bucks by stopping at McDonald's on the way home.

We didn't have time to do everything. I was a little bummed to miss the commercial building, but went in knowing we might not have time for it. We also didn't see any animals, which we actually don't really care about since we can see them at the Durham Fair. We missed The Big E's Circus Museum, which is fine since we go to the Barnum Museum occasionally. We missed The New England Center, which looks pretty interesting from the $3 program. We missed Storrowton Village Museum which from the $3 program (okay, I'll stop now) looks very much like Old Sturbridge Village. And my biggest disappointment was arriving at the Cream Puff Bakery too late to use my coupon from my program on a giant eclair, since it was closed. Oh well. Lots to look forward to next year!