Review of the Louisville Kids Fair By: Stephanie

The Louisville Kids Fair was held this weekend at the convention center downtown.  Overall, I feel there is a lot of room for improvement but at the same time, my child had a lot of fun.  My son loves exploring and doing new things, so entering the fair and roaming around was really entertaining for him.  This was it’s first year; I think it has potential!

First, I will just put it out there that as a parent, I was bothered by the hodge-podge of vendor booths.  For a kids fair, I felt the vendors should be restricted to only those that cater to children.  I can see all of these vendors for free at events like the Middletown Family Festival and other community/chruch festivals throughout the year.  I would have loved to see some of the places that I know from around town there to give everyone information and maybe prizes or free passes. Instead, we had to weed through home improvement vendors or lawyers to get to the kids information.  For whatever reason, many of the kid-friendly businesses were not at the fair.  However, they do list the vendors on their website so in the future, you can check who will be there and see if you are interested in those particular vendors.

Also, I thought that for the amount of families in attendance, there were not enough activities for the kids. This problem could be seen by the length of the lines and the confusion on some people’s faces.  In some areas near the bounce houses and by the pony rides, it was hard to tell who was on line for which activity because the lines were so long and interwoven.  For many activities, people were waiting on lines at least 20-30 people deep for a short pony ride, some very simplistic face painting or about 3 minutes of bouncing.  In the future, maybe they will have a better idea of how many people will attend and add more activities and spread the event to a larger space to account for the lines.

Last, it was very hectic.  Part of this was the venue. It was not large enough to account for lots of people with strollers, long lines and big bounce houses.  It felt spread out in the middle and then cramps on the sides.  I think that for a family event, there needs to be plenty of space so that children don’t get lost weaving in and out of crowds.  As for the bounce houses, when we were there, the woman running the obstacle course had great control over the people and spacing it out for safety. However, the people working the other bounce houses seemed frazzled and overwhelmed by the crowd losing count of the number of kids in there, who was in line first, allowing people in that were too old/tall and allowing kids to jump down the slides or go down head first. 

We were pleased with the area in the back set up for the stage and the firetruck.  There were plenty of seats for people to watch the little shows and those there looked like they were really enjoying it.  My son really enjoyed the firetruck and the firemen really kept the line moving and talked with the kids.  Also, there were tables and chairs for families to take breaks or have a snack from the refreshment area, which is great.  But, the refreshment area was at the front and the tables were in the back of the hall so maybe the tables should have been placed closer to the refreshment stand instead of the petting zoo!  As for the bounce houses, when we did make it through the lines, my son did have fun in the 3 bounce houses that he tried. 

We did like that each vendor had something to giveaway for the kids such as toothbrushes, stickers or candy. My son liked browsing to see if they had games to play or things to get while I picked up a flyer, entered a contest, got some passes to try things or chatted with the vendors. He loved all of the characters that were dressed up and walking around the shake hands like a horse from a riding lessons booth, the LG &E bug and a polar bear from the Zoo booth.

All in all, we were there for about an hour and a half and although I got bored faster than my son, we both left happy since he had fun.  I came home learning about one new place that I can tell readers about, so that’s an added bonus!  Like I said, it does have potential!  I hope to see the event grow and improve so that it can truly become what it should be: an informative and fun event for all things KIDS in Louisville!

DCPD
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