The 29th Annual Carolina Renaissance Festival.
The popular Carolina Renaissance Festival, a combination of outdoor theater, circus, arts and crafts fair, jousting tournament, and feast, returns for 8 consecutive weekends, Saturdays and Sundays, October 1 through November 20.
Each Festival day is filled with an abundance of attractions. The 25-acre village of Fairhaven has sixteen stages packed with costumed performers offer a unique mix of continuous music, dance, comedy, and circus entertainments. Swimming mermaids, Birds of Prey Falconry demonstrations, and the popular Jousting Tournament with horse mounted armored knights battling three times daily are all examples of the endless entertainment options offered. The shows are always spontaneous, and you will never know what happens next, on stage or off.
The Renaissance Festival is the largest costume party in the Carolinas. Visitors can come as they are or to join in the spirit by visiting the village in costumes of all types. Each weekend has unique themes with many having costume contests with prizes and discount admission opportunities. Returning popular weekends like Halloween Daze & Spooky Knights, Pirate’s Christmas, and Time Travelers’ Weekend embrace visitors in non-renaissance costumes such as those dressed as superheroes (and villains) and characters inspired by Harry Potter, Games of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, and more. Visitors can wear their own costumes or acquire them at the village costume rental shop located just outside the Festival gates. Also available for rent are wagons, strollers, wheelchairs. And new for 2022; motorized scooters.
Also new this year:
New Entertainments: Four new musical artists, an end of Festival day drum jam, Songs and Stories by the Fairy Godmother, and Franklin Fertilizer’s Dung Show (aptly performed next to the Village Petting Farm).
New delicious food items: Joining the Fairhaven village kitchens located throughout the grounds are Transylvania Chimney Cakes and Chateau Hibbele with charcuterie on a stick, drunken mushrooms, brisket macaroni and cheese, and from the new world, barbacoa tacos.
New Hours: The Festival now opens at 9:30 AM and closes at dusk. Arrive early!
The Artisan Marketplace with over 140 merchants is filled with returning favorites that include an extensive array of vendors offering jewelry, clothing of renaissance and medieval fashion, handmade art and décor, pottery and blown and torched glass demonstrations, and activities for children that include people powered amusement rides and countryside faire games such as the castle climbing wall, archery and tomato tossing at a fool.
The Carolina Renaissance Festival is the fall destination for quality entertainment in the Carolinas. So, bust out your sense of good cheer, leave your cares behind, and spend a day at the wildly popular and entertaining time machine.
THE SCOOP!
Celebrating 29 Years of Cheers, the annual Carolina Renaissance Festival returns Saturdays and Sundays for eight consecutive weekends, from October 1st through November 20th, on a 250-acre farm located north of Charlotte, between Concord and Huntersville, at the junction of NC 73 and Poplar Tent Road. Tickets are now date-specific and will be available only online at Carolina.RenFestInfo.com.
