104 It Just Ain't FAIR!

Technically it is the Horn Lake Fall Festival. I think the main difference is that the whole thing is TINY, not just the carnies hands. Prices are still horrendously high. Like the Ferris Wheel should cost $5 a person!!! And really, a big slide is $3 a person!! INSANITY!! Katie did win a prize, a 6 inch tall Panda, which looks like it was rubbed on the ground first ... that only cost $15. Sure, you know the games are a ripoff, but that was crazy!! Chip paid $10 for 7 darts, popped 7 balloons ... which qualified him for a SMALL prize. Then you could pay more and build up to a bigger prize. Since when is this a progressive thing? He paid $5 more for Katie to throw 3 darts (which he said guaranteed any child under 6 a medium prize) she popped another balloon. Even with his 7 and her guaranteed medium prize we still ended up with, you guessed it - A MEDIUM PRIZE! At that point I wanted to throw a dart at the carnie, but I figured that might turn out badly, so she picked out her panda and we walked away. So, let's do the math.
$43.00 for ride tickets
$15.00 for a game of darts
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$58.00 for a child that whined and cried the minute we said we had to go
While we were riding and playing she had a great time. She even managed to smile for me to take pictures. It was great being able to ride a few rides with her. I rode the Tilt-A-Whirl with her and the Ferris Wheel. Chip rode the Gravitron, the Ferris Wheel, and the Tilt-A-Whirl with her. By herself she rode a little motorcycle on a merry-go-round type thing, and she went down a big slide (smacking her elbow and hurting her arm, of course). Connor was a good boy the whole time. It was a wonderful family outing, aside from the price-gouging, UNTIL it was time to go. You would have thought we never did anything for that child. That we had brought her to the Festival, showed her the rides, then laughed gleefully as we dragged her back home without allowing her to ride them. Sure, 58 bucks is not crazy, but we weren't even there for two hours. Chip had to go to work, so we had to make a short trip (thank goodness). Seriously, her attitude about having to leave pretty much ruined the trip for us. The happy fuzzy feeling from spending a wonderful afternoon with our children was destroyed by her "give me more" attitude. One day I will look back and not remember the snarl on her face, but it might take a while. And to top it all off, she wouldn't even let me clean off that nasty panda ... *shudder*