No cute title.
No funny mascot hunt.
Nothing.
Don’t get me wrong, the State Fair of Texas wasn’t bad… It just wasn’t very special either.
It was a great time to catch up with a member of our No Home Just Roam Inner Circle and her family (Hi Meghan, Adam and baby girl!), but otherwise I wasn’t overly impressed. Especially when compared to the Tulsa State Fair.
The State Fair of Texas Highlights
There was a birthing center with baby pigs, goats and sheep.
There was a fun corn dog spiced beer to try with mustard rim.
And giant margaritas.
A butter sculpture of Big Tex – the fair’s mascot.
One of our favorite things – a massive, tiny home, made from the log of a redwood tree.
Prize winning animals – that may become future tasty animals.
Treats for Truffles were available and she loved her chicken foot when we brought it back to the hotel.
A few decent food options for people who like deep-fried shepherds pie and nachos with Texas-shaped chips.
And a GIANT pig named Boris.
Animal selfies at the petting zoo.
You’re welcome – you’ve just been to the State Fair of Texas.
OK, maybe not quite, but the rides, food, animals and experience were very similar to the Tulsa State Fair and yet somehow not quite as good. I’m not sure if the novelty of the fair had worn off, but overall I loved the Tulsa State Fair and I only liked the State Fair of Texas.
The State Fair Of Texas Lowlights
Money
I’m all about spending money. I’m definitely not the saver in our team. But even I was choking on some of the prices at the fair – for example, one glass of wine in the wine garden area was $12. So was my giant margarita from above.
Then not only is it all expensive, you have to do math all day too!
The State Fair of Texas works on a coupon system. You change cash for coupons for everything – food, rides and activities. Each coupon is worth $0.50. So you’d check the price of something and see that it was 24 coupons to find that it was $12.
You might think this makes it better since everything is ‘half-price’, but really it just makes you go through coupons that much faster. You also can’t exchange your coupons at the end of the day to get your money back, so you need to be conservative if you don’t want to be left with a bunch of fair coupons at the end of the day.
Mascot
Despite my inability to secure a Dizzee from the Tulsa State Fair, their mascot was incredibly fun. He was cute and personable and really made the fair seem like a fun place to be. Big Tex on the other hand just felt out of date and didn’t translate well to merchandise in my opinion.
Side note: There were a bunch of places to get state fair merchandise and Tulsa you would do well to emulate this. We want Dizzees! Give the people what they want – even if they don’t know they want it yet!
Fried Foods
At the Tulsa State Fair I almost couldn’t decide what I wanted because there were so many fun and creative options to choose from.
At the State Fair of Texas, Stephen and I didn’t see a whole lot to try that seemed fun and unique. We ended up going with one of the Top 10 things to have at the fair – a cotton candy taco. Stephen enjoyed it.
I did not. The cotton candy wasn’t sweet enough for me and the waffle-cone shell tasted kind of burnt.
Final Thoughts
As I said before, my State Fair of Texas experience certainly wasn’t bad. And it led us to some new friends that we met – Hi Verena, Suzanne and Melanie – and we subsequently ended up spending an evening with them at a community potluck, so I’m grateful we went.
I’ll be curious to see over the years how our other state fairs stack up next to Tulsa to find out if it’s just because it was our first that made it amazing or if it really was just that special.
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