For some of us, we’re coming up on that time of year again, Renaissance festival (or faire) season. All things considered, I find these some of the easier events to budget for once the basics are known. My numbers here are what can be expected at the Texas Renaissance Festival; others may vary a bit, particularly when it comes to food, drinks, and admission. They are also from the standpoint of an all-adult group (TRF considers adult to be ages 13 and up) so I am only mentioning adult ticket prices.
TRF has three discounted admission days: both days of opening weekend, and Thanksgiving Friday (which was a relatively recent addition). The cost for advance tickets bought for any one of those three days will be (in 2009) $12. (Opening weekend tickets are only valid opening weekend, and Thanksgiving Friday tickets will only be valid that day.)
The price of tickets goes up as you move to other days, from advance to regular discount tickets, and finally to tickets purchased at the gate. For advance discount tickets during the rest of the festival dates, the price is $16; regular discount tickets, $19; tickets bought at the gate, $23. Again, it pays to buy in advance.
My expenses this year will probably look something like this, based on my actual expense records from three prior TRF visits:
- Admission: $12
- Food: $7 to $10
- Drinks: $10 to $25+
- Performer tips: $8 to $12 (see notes)
- Merchandise: highly variable
- Other stuff: up to $20
- Total: $37 to about $100, not including merchandise
Note this is for just me, and does not include camping nor transportation expenses. I don’t camp at faire, yet, and if I could predict fuel prices, I’d probably rather focus my energy predicting the winning lottery numbers. (Wouldn’t you?)
I’ll go through the rest of the items and explain in more detail how I arrive at each figure. We’ve already covered admission, so I’m skipping that.
Most food items are right around the $5-7 range. The reason sometimes this goes up to $10 is for snack items before or after lunch. One certainly may choose to forgo snack items. At least for TRF, the food prices are not overly marked up, and are comparable to a decent meal at a fast food restaurant. Other festivals may vary.
The same goes for drinks, however note that the profit margin is much higher on drinks than food. Three sodas and a hot chocolate will cover the $10 end of the range. The time I ran the total over $25, that included a beer and to be fair about it, I could afford to splurge on that trip. I might also add that if one considers getting drunk the high point of your trip back to the 16th century, one should almost certainly consider $25 the starting point for expenses rather than the upper end.
The tricky part comes to performer tips, and this is the part that is also going to be highly variable for different people. The figures I have listed are honest figures taken straight out of my records. I’m not particularly proud of the fact these figures are that low. I urge those who can afford to tip $5 or more per performance and/or buy merchandise, please do so. I will add I don’t think there is a valid excuse for not tipping at least $1 per show, unless it was a truly bad show. Many performers actually make their living at Renaissance festivals/faires. The first time I planned one of these trips on my own, I was kind of caught by surprise at this, but I did throw in a cushion of about $10 “just in case.” This turned out to be one of my wiser decisions, in fact the rare decision for which I have no regrets.
One certainly can forgo purchasing merchandise at all. I include this as “highly variable” because I don’t buy merchandise on every trip, and what I do get varies.
The same goes for the “other stuff” category, which is where I lump other diversions such as the games, face painting, fortune tellers, etc. This category, also, can be completely forgone if one chooses.
The best way I can think of to avoid running afoul of outspending one’s budget is simply not to bring money over the amount budgeted and spend only cash. I can understand some may not feel comfortable with this option at all and/or find it infeasible; the next best choice is to keep a running total of what one has spent over the course of the day and from where (cash, credit card, debit card). I do this anyway even though I use only cash, as I categorize my expenses for my records, or I would not have had the numbers to plug in to write this post.