City Spotlight Larkspur: Colorado Renaissance Festival

Getting Ready To Go

If you like to dress in period clothing then the Colorado Renaissance Festival may be for you. I have been going to the festival since I was a kid and I still get enjoyment from it. Last year was the first year I missed in over a decade and it was only due to the festival being closed because of covid. The drive down from Denver can get bad on I-25 so I would recommended using some of the back routes and get there as early as possible. For tickets you can buy them online or at the door. I have watched the prices keep jumping up and if they get much higher I may stop going all together. There is a trick to this though. Every year they have a partnership with a fast food joint to hand out coupons that get you in for half price on one specific weekend. It used to be opening weekend, but this year it was the second weekend. In the past they have used Wendy’s, but at least the last two years it has run the coupons were at Subway. Many of the shops and all of the food are cash only. Make sure you take a lot of it because there is so much to buy and things are not cheap. They do have ATMs, but the line for them can take over an hour. Another thing to keep in mind before you go is the heat and son. It is very easy to overheat here and everyone is fighting for shady spots to rest. Make sure you drink a lot and wear sun screen. Also stay aware of the people you are with. I have had to help people avoid heat stroke here and it is easy for them to get in trouble fast if you do not cool them off.

Dressing Up:

If you are also going to dress in costume, be careful of what you wear. Period clothes have lots of layers, but the layers will make you get hot faster. Even if you look really great, your costume could land you in the hospital. This is also a mostly natural area with dirt and dust everywhere, and this means that whatever you wear will get dirty. There are also shops that allow you to rent costumes as well if you do not want to risk your personal outfit. This year I was at one of the shows and the gentleman running it was talking about the funny things he has seen at the festival. “The Renaissance Festival is just one bucket of green body paint away from being a nerd convention.” Best line ever and very true. He went on to talk about how one time he had a back row that had Klingons on one side and Storm Troopers on the other with one of the Troopers in a kilt. There seems to be a lot of freedom in what you can wear. I could also see costumes like Lord of the Rings, Sword Art Online, and other fantasy ones fitting right in. 

A mix of new and old dress styles. Who do you think is hotter?

The Terrain:

Even though they have built buildings and some stairs, it is still built on the side of a mountain. There are some very steep sections and the ground is uneven everywhere else (there are also a lot of tree roots that can trip you). It can be a real workout and if you are out of shape it will help to tax your body. It can also be very hard for people with disabilities. This place is not ADA friendly in the least and it is just something that you need to expect if you go here. I have managed to push a person around in a wheel chair there, but there were many sections and stores we could not get in to. People with disabilities will not have the same experience that others will have, it’s just the nature of the event. As part of this I also want to talk about being situationally aware here. One-year pre-covid, my mother and I had set on one of the picnic tables to eat our food. When the people at the other end got up the table flipped on us and we were both injured. My mother was hurt so bad we had to get her to the ER. The tables are not bolted down even though the terrain is very uneven and it has led to people like my mother getting hurt. This is one of the many basic safety failures this place has. While at the hospital in Castle Rock we found out from the ER staff that the festival always keeps them busy while it is going on. I’m actually surprised that the authorities have not looked into this to see why so many “accidents” happen here.

This was me trying to show how uneven the ground is. This is looking down a small hill.

The Food:

The food is really hit or miss. This year we tried the mashed potatoes and they were dried out even with the added butter. At the same time the artichoke is normally our favorite thing to get there. If you have special food needs or allergies it may be hard for you to eat here. Their vegie options seem vegetarian friendly, but not vegan. If you need low fat, good luck finding food. This year the challenge was trying to find soft food for a person with a tooth issue and that is how we landed on the dried out mashed potatoes. The lines for food were also the worst I have ever seen them and I heard one guy complaining that he had been in line for over 45 minutes. It took me about a half an hour to get the mashed potatoes, but only about 15 to get breadsticks. The lines really do depend on the perceived popularity of the food item. I saw perceived because of how bad the mashed potatoes turned out to be. Also, some of the serving sizes seem a little small. I stopped buying the turkey legs here years ago due to their small size when compared to other festivals and events I go to (like the taste of Colorado). Drinks run around $3 dollars with alcohol being more. I do not recommend drinking alcohol here because of how easy it is to dehydrate here. 

Shopping!!!!:

This is the main reason to go here. Prices can be very high so I recommend to shop around first to see which of the venders has the best price on the type of item you want. You will find everything from clothes to hand made craft items. Some of the shops are actually set up so you can see the people making the items. One of my favorite stops was the dragon puppet place. They have this thing where you can by a foam dragon egg and put it through a machine. When it is broken open there is a piece of paper on the inside that says if you won a small prize or a dragon puppet. The smallest eggs used to be $5 and even if you did not get the big prize you still got a cool dragon statue. A few years ago, they switched from the cool dragon statues to cheap necklaces that break easily. We had won dragon puppets in the past, but when they made this switch we decided it just was not worth the money any more. It’s just one example of how things have kind of gone downhill over the years.

This is one of the shops set up to demo how they make their items.

Shows:

There are plenty of shows for you to watch. None of them can compare to the glory days when they had the comedian duo of Puke and Snot. When one of them passed it was the end of the show. The survivor tried with a different partner, but it just did not work and the show went away. If you want to see some of their great work you can find it on YouTube, like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr7jpiFf1WM . Their humor was designed so you could take kinds to the shows, but only the adults would get the punchlines. Since then the shows just have not been as good. The washing wenches have taken over the ship stage. The animal shows in the past have also been interesting to watch and they are also educational for kids. The jousting is ok, but after you have seen it a few times it gets old quick and it always draws big crowds. 

Gone are the days of Puke and Snot.

This music show was kind of funny.

There is also a petting zoo for the kids and adults. It can sometimes be hard to pet the animals because they stay out of arms reach most of the time. I they get tired of all the people trying to pet them so it is best to hit it first thing in the morning while they are still in a good mood.

The petting zoo area does have an area where people can wash their hands after petting the animals.

Yes they do have elephants. In all my time going I have never seen them abuse the animals. Some things may seem harsh to people that have not been trained how to work with large animals. I have worked with animals and even volunteered at the Denver zoo and nothing negative has stood out to me. The only thing that I have seen actually happened this year and it was with the horses that pull the carriage for the parade. There is a metal grate that the horses just did not want to cross and they panicked a little. The workers had to quickly back people up as the horses tried to go around the grate and the carriage slid on the terrain. It could have been bad if people wouldn't have been able to move quick enough. They need better crowd handlers to make space for the parade and make sure that they path out the parade better so that animals do not freak about where they are walking.

This is a booth where they teach about the conservation of birds and if you buy items there the money goes to a good cause. I feel slightly bad since I caught the woman in the middle of a sneeze.

There are also games where you can test your abilities. These range from a climbing wall to knife throwing.

Do you think you have skills like Hawkeye? You can try to prove it to your friends on both the kids range or the adult range. The bows are not of the highest quality and are more for fun then actual use.