Those of you who follow my website know I love covering music events. For the past three years The Photo Pit has been blessed to cover many concerts from a variety of bands and a few festivals too. But, I always wanted my website to grow beyond just music. I always said we review live events and that can be pretty much anything. Last year, I loved getting to review a touring Mystery Science Theater 3000 show. So this year, I decided I was going to provide a review to an event I’ve attended many times, the Brevard Renaissance Fair.
The Brevard Renaissance is now in its eighth year of production at Wickham Park in Melbourne, FL. It’s five weekends of entertainment bringing people back to a recreation of a renaissance or medieval village. This fair supports 35 different acts, over 100 stage shows, and 100 artisans for your shopping pleasure. I attended this festival the first year it opened and thought it was great then. Eight years later it is even better than ever.
The fair runs every Saturday and Sunday for five weeks starting on January 7th and 8th and ending on February 4th and 5th. As a family, we are Royal Family members, which is essentially a season passholder for all 5 weekends with a lot of great perks including closer parking, a private tent to sit in some shade, which also has its own bar, 1 free drink token per visit, and private air-conditioned bathrooms. And each Royal Family member gets two free guest single-day tickets so you can bring your friends. While the Royal Family passes are sold out for 2023, if you live in the Central Florida area, I highly recommend purchasing the pass for 2024. It is absolutely well worth the money. 2023 Single-day tickets run at $22 a day for an adult if you buy them online instead of buying them at the gate. And there are options to buy multi-day tickets too.
There are additional add-ons you can purchase including pub crawls, beer tasting, and there is even a concert series! Every Saturday a band performs after the fair is closed. The concert series for this year is:
- January 7th – Musical Blades & The Bawdy Boys
- January 14th – Sanctus with Star Shanties
- January 21st – Albannach
- January 28th – Celtica Nova & Black Velvet Band
- February 4th – Gaelic Storm
Did I mention Royal Family members get admission to these concerts as part of their pass?
When you enter the fair you’ll find yourself immediately greeted by a plethora of artisans. These artisans bring a variety of merchandise for sale from jewelry to clothing to armor to books and there is even a tabletop and board gaming vendor selling a variety of games and dice. And the food selection is also amazing. This year there are two separate food areas that sell everything from kabobs to jambalaya to pizza to shepherd’s pie and even tacos. And there are pastries and other snacks for those with a sweet tooth. But, those who do attend Renaissance faires regularly, you’ll have a great selection of mead for your taste buds!
While I didn’t get the chance to see all the events I wanted to on opening weekend, I did get to see some very memorable ones. The first was the Blades of Death show. Ichabod Wainwright and his assistant Jimmy already have great personalities for the stage. Performing right outside of the Royal Family Tent, the pair like to make the crowd laugh while doing some amazing juggling. Jimmy made the crowd cringe at times juggling two bowling balls…..with his feet. There was a moment when you thought one was coming crash down on him, but Jimmy had it well in hand, or feet in his case. But balancing a long flaming pipe with his feet and even spinning it inches from his face made the crowd gasp numerous times over.
Ichabod went with the more death-defying style of stunts stacking chairs on top of one another to form a tower. And note, these chairs were not linked in any way to one other. Ichabod showed how easily they could slip out. He climbed the chairs and stood on top of them all, having him pretty high in the air. Jimmy then lit three axes on fire and then one by one threw them up to Ichabod. Once he had them all, Ichabod juggled the flaming axes for a bit before coming down and thanking the crowd. Great performers.
I followed up that show catch a little bit of the Cirque Du Sewer. Comedy and pet tricks including rats and cats. What could go wrong? OK the rats and cats aren’t out at the same time, but both are a lot of fun. One of the rats makes a run through an obstacle course, which is impressive, but the cats might do tricks that day. After all, they are cats. Packinmeow, Spootnik, and Schrodinger that day were all being very cat like. Schrodinger wasn’t having it and took off under the stage. And that’s part of the charm of the show, they’re cats! When they did perform tricks, they did so with grace and cuteness. It is a really fun show and highly recommend catching it if you can.
Of course, to me at least, the star event of the Brevard Renaissance Fair is The Joust. Performed by Noble Cause Productions, the joust is a storyline that runs throughout the day of the fair. It starts off at 12 PM, continues at 2:30 PM, and then wraps up the story at 5:30 PM. This year we have the noble Sir Michael going up against Sir Lilith also known as The Knightmare. Sir Michael fighting for chivalry and honor while Sir Lilith is looking to smash someone’s face and see some blood spilled. Sir William of Whitehall is the Master at Arms. Queen Elizabeth and her Royal Court also make an appearance to oversee the knights that day.
I was only able to catch the 2:30 PM joust that day but it is a pretty intense show. The two knights make some jousting passes at each other before swords are getting drawn and now it’s a fight on horseback before they dismount and take it to the ground. The ending (no spoilers but the pics give it away, fair warning!) sets up the joust for the 5:30 PM show. By far, this is my favorite event of the fair. And if you think people are booing for Sir Lilith as the villain, she may have been getting more cheers than Sir Michael! All in all, The Joust is phenomenal entertainment.
If you’ve never been to the Brevard Renaissance Fair, do yourself a favor and come. I promise you won’t regret it and hopefully, you’ll return for the following weekends until the end of the fair. You can find more info over at https://brevardrenaissancefair.com/.
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