I wanted to start off the first post of The Ren Faire Traveler with a review week from a local fair I covered back in January 2023 known as the Brevard Renaissance Fair. The Brevard Renaissance celebrated its eighth year of production at Wickham Park in Melbourne, FL. It’s five weekends of entertainment bringing people back to a recreation of a Renaissance or medieval village. This fair supported 35 different acts, over 100 stage shows, and 100 artisans for your shopping pleasure. I attended this festival the first year it opened and thought it was great then. Eight years later it was even better. This is one of my “must attend” fairs each year.
Side note, while my website uses the spelling “faire”, you will find many of these events will use either “faire”, “fair”, or “festival”. For these reviews, I’ll use the word and spelling they provide for the event.
The fair ran every Saturday and Sunday for five weeks starting on January 7th and 8th and ended on February 4th and 5th. The fair has free parking for the event and ticket prices separated for adult and children. They also offer a VIP style ticket known as a Royal Family member. The Royal Family ticket is essentially a season passholder for all 5 weekends with a lot of great perks including closer parking, a private tent to sit in for some shade (did I mention the Royal Tent has its own bar?), 1 free drink token per visit per member, and private air-conditioned bathrooms. And Royal Family member gets two free guest single-day tickets so you can bring your friends. The Royal Family passes are sold out quickly for 2023. If you live in the Central Florida area, I highly recommend purchasing the pass for 2024. It is absolutely well worth the money. Tickets were cheaper if you bought them online instead of buying them at the gate. And there were options to buy multi-day tickets too.
There were additional add-ons you can purchase including pub crawls, beer tasting, and there is even a concert series! Every Saturday a band performed after the fair is closed. The concert series for this year was:
- January 7th – Musical Blades & The Bawdy Boys
- January 14th – Sanctus with Star Shanties
- January 21st – Albannach
- January 28th – Celtica Nova & Black Velvet Band
- February 4th – Gaelic Storm
The concert series was an additional cost, but Royal Family members got admission to these concerts as part of their pass.
When you enter the fair you’ll found yourself immediately greeted by a plethora of artisans. These artisans brought a variety of merchandise for sale from jewelry to clothing to armor to books and there was even a tabletop and board gaming vendor selling a variety of games and dice. And the food selection was amazing. This year were are two separate food areas that sold everything from kabobs to pizza to shepherd’s pie and even tacos. And there were pastries and other snacks for those with a sweet tooth. For those who do attend Renaissance fairs regularly, you’ll had a great selection of mead for your taste buds!
While I didn’t get the chance to see all the events I wanted to on opening weekend, I did get to see some very memorable ones. The first was the Blades of Death show. Ichabod Wainwright and his assistant Jimmy already have great personalities for the stage. Performing right outside of the Royal Family Tent, the pair made the crowd laugh while doing some amazing juggling. Jimmy made the crowd cringe at times juggling two bowling balls…..with his feet. There was a moment when you thought one was coming crash down on him, but Jimmy had it well in hand, or feet in his case. But, balancing a long flaming pipe with his feet and even spinning it inches from his face made the crowd gasp numerous times over.
Ichabod went with the more death-defying style of stunts stacking chairs on top of one another to form a tower. And note, these chairs were not linked in any way to one other. Ichabod showed how easily they could slip out. He climbed the chairs and stood on top of them all, having him pretty high in the air. Jimmy then lit three axes on fire and then one by one threw them up to Ichabod. Once he had them all, Ichabod juggled the flaming axes for a bit before coming down and thanking the crowd. They were one of my favorite acts from 2023.
I also had the opportunity to catch that weekend Cirque Du Sewer. Comedy and pet tricks including rats and cats. What could go wrong? OK, the rats and cats weren’t out at the same time, but both are a lot of fun. One of the rats ran through an obstacle course, which is impressive, but the cats might do tricks that day. After all, they are cats. Packinmeow, Spootnik, and Schrodinger that day were all very cat-like. Schrodinger wasn’t having it and took off under the stage. And that’s part of the charm of the show, they’re cats! When they did perform tricks, they did so with grace and cuteness. It was a really fun show.
Of course, to me at least, the star event of the Brevard Renaissance Fair is The Joust. Performed by Noble Cause Productions, the joust is a storyline that runs throughout the day of the fair. It started off at 12 PM, continued at 2:30 PM, and then wraps up the story at 5:30 PM. This year we had the noble Sir Michael going up against Sir Lilith The Knightmare. Sir Michael fighting for chivalry and honor while Sir Lilith is looking to smash someone’s face and see some blood spilled. Sir William of Whitehall was the Master at Arms who oversaw the joust. Queen Elizabeth and her Royal Court also make an appearance to oversee the knights that day. I absolutely loved the troupe Noble Cause Production had this weekend. The storyline is great, the actors are phenomenal, and the stunts they perform are amazing. Noble Cause Productions travels to many fairs and I highly recommend seeing them if they’re at one close to you.
If you’ve never been to the Brevard Renaissance Fair, I truly recommend attending. You can find more info over at https://brevardrenaissancefair.com/.