When we got there, we established the entrance as a meeting spot at 8:30 should we split up for some reason. I naively replied “Split up? Why would we ever do that (This is foreshadowing, to all of you close readers)?” At first, things went pretty smoothly: we started exploring the Fair and waiting for each other whenever one of us wanted to stop for food or something. After a few stops for snacks though, Rali wanted to get food from the fairgrounds’ Italian restaurant, but after waiting for around 15 minutes, we never found her, so we decided that we’d go off for a while and she’d just text us when she was ready to meet up again. We never heard from her again until the end of the night.
Anyway, we wanted to go on some rides, but upon checking their prices, we found that they were ridiculously expensive (the cheapest ride was $4, and there was only one of those! Most of the others cost around $6 or $7), so we decided to just walk around the fair looking for games to play and food to eat. Bryan had a fixation on winning the unicorn plushie from Despicable Me for a while, so we vigorously checked out the games in search of a doable game with the unicorn plushie as a prize, but alas, we never found the plushie in as a prize for any of the games.
After we had our fair share (Haha, get it? Fair? It’s like a pun–oh, never mind.) of carnival food–I had dippin’ dots and donuts while Bryan and Zach had the iconic but heart attack-inducing fried twinkies along with some bubble tea–we finally decided to go on some rides. Zach and Bryan wanted to go on a water ride, but I hate getting wet at amusement parks and Matthew didn’t want to spend the money on the rides, so he and I watched as they spent $7 worth of tickets on barely getting wet.
I did, however, decide to join them for the Ferris wheel after the water ride because as a fair lover, how could I not join them for the most iconic amusement park ride, even if it was still (in my opinion) way too early in the day to go on it? The Ferris wheel ride was pretty uneventful–no one tried to jump out of the cart, and it didn’t roll off its axis–so there’s not much to recap there.
After that, though, Zach and I wanted to go on a really cool swing ride that gave an amazing view of the park. The ride only allowed for two people per seat, and I could have sworn that it said no single riders, so Bryan decided to sit out the ride with Matthew while Zach and I went on it. The view really was amazing–it was better than the view we got from the Ferris wheel because 1. It went higher up than the wheel and 2. There’s just something magical about looking at a bunch of lights in the twilight while flying around in a circle. I’m just saying.
We thought that there wasn’t much left to do after the three of us had gone on our coveted rides, but then the unexpected happened: Matthew found the perfect ride for himself. It was a tall, terrifying-looking stick that spun in a circle while its riders sat at the ends of the stick, rotating in the same manner as they would on a Ferris wheel, except they would be turned upside down occasionally. It looked a lot more terrifying than I am describing it, believe me. Anyway, Zach bravely volunteered to cough up $9 on tickets so he could accompany Matthew on the ride while Bryan went off to go play some games. I decided to watch the boys on the ride while trying not to laugh at Zach’s purely stoic face and Matthew’s expression of pure glee.
When they got off the ride, they declared themselves satisfied for the night, but I wasn’t quite yet–I still had 16 tickets left! That was $8 worth of tickets that I couldn’t let go to waste! So, I suggested that we walk to one end of the ski lift and take it back to the entrance where we had to meet Bryan (and hopefully Rali) at 8:30; I would split my remaining tickets between me and Zach and have him pay me back while Matthew would just buy 8 tickets for the ride. The plan worked perfectly: we ended up being a little late, but so was Bryan and I ended up having just the right amount to get both me and Zach into the ride. The ride did not go as smoothly (literally) as the actual plan, though, because Zach almost killed us with his constant rocking of the ski lift! I had to hold him so he would stop rocking back and forth but that didn’t stop him from debating with Matthew over whether or not we’d actually die if he did end up breaking the ski lift.
Amazingly, we ended up getting off the ski lift safe and sound, made it to our meeting spot right before Bryan got there, and most importantly, found Rali (her phone died as soon as she got separated from us, so she ended up spending the day wandering around and being advised by a nice Mexican family on what was good to eat at the Fair)! So even though the LA County Fair was not quite the Miami-Dade County Youth Fair, it was still enough to satisfy my Fair connoisseur’s palate.