The San Diego County Fair

Yesterday morning we woke up bright and early (read as "7 am") to head out to the San Diego County Fair. The first thing we did was BREAKFAST at Perry's Cafe, which is REALLY tasty. Good prices too.

Then we headed to the Del Mar Fairgrounds. We parked at the horse farm area, although I can't tell you how to get to it because I am really bad with directions and I couldn't find it online. We road a Double Decker Bus to the fairgrounds where we entered.

After getting through the line, the bag check and the metal detectors we had our tickets scanned. I figured that if I have to pay to get in the fair, then I am NOT paying for the overpriced drinks, so we brought our own to start with. I didn't buy too many drinks after that because I am NOT paying $2.75 for 20 ounces of soda. That's just ridiculous!

We went through all the shopping areas which really resembled a Flea Market, and I ended up buying a bag to carry my stuff in. It was reasonably priced ($7.95). But some of the item prices were outrageous! Tank tops for $89? No thank you! We did find some good deals, like the $9.95 skirts. There was a room with jacuzzi, windows and stuff like that. Then there were some pretty darned cool exhibits that I got sucked into like they were black holes. Especially the rocks, gems, jewels and fossils exhibit. THAT was cool.

We ate an overpriced lunch. Food should not be that expensive. Chicken on a stick was $4. And a paper plate with chow mein noodles was $5.43. I figured they made a killing off the chow mein noodles. It wasn't really chow mein noodles either. It was more like oodles of noodles, complete with oversalting, with a few veggies thrown on top. Each packet costs me .16 at the store (for name brand) and the veggies couldn't have been more than .10 worth. The pizza looked better than that. My tongue still burns from all that salt. But I paid $5.43 for it so I felt REALLY bad letting it go to waste. It wasn't horrible, but it was horribly salty!

After that we headed to the booth for $30 all day wrist bands. Apparently this is only on special days. The rides were okay. The kids had fun. But some were pretty lame. I bought tickets for myself rather than the wrist band. Individual tickets were .75 each. I bought 14 tickets for $10 (71 cent each). Most rides are 4-6 tickets each.

Sorry to report this, but a lot these rides are not worth the $4.50 (at most) you spend to get the tickets. The "haunted house" was so non-scary. I nearly died from laughter rather than fright. It wasn't sealed well either so there was light streaming in from the cracked and you could see the whole set up.

One ride I went on with Mendel 2.0 had me asking "that was it?" at te end of it. We sat down (after paying 5 tickets) in a little "car" type thing. It went up a ramp and curved through the doors so we went out onto a balcony and could see everyone down below. So far there was nothing interesting except the doors we went through. It wnt across the balcony, into another door and down to the exiting ramp where we stopped and got off. That was it. The spinning bears were more entertaining. This thing was BORING! What a waste of money.

There were some rides that were fun. Bumper Cars, of course, a roller coaster, tilt a whirl, the vortex ride... all the classics.

We ended up leaving about 6 pm and drove back to Coronado and ate dinner at KFC Taco Hut (which is KFC, taco bell and pizza hut combined). Then we went to the movies and watched Spiderman 3. I LOVED IT!

By the time I went to bed, I couldn't stay awake long enough to finish telling my hubby about the day.

Next year, I think we'll just save up and go to Knott's Berry Farm. Afterall, if we are going to waste our hard earned money, we might as well spend it on something that is worth it. Lake Winnie was more fun than this and it's about the same as far as quality goes.